I just learned something about my cellular phone which is a bit surprising.
They require that you pay them in advance. Okay, thats fair -- we got the pay-as-you-go deal. We use the phone rarely, and this sounded about right. And we even knew there was an 'air time expiration' in about a month; though we didn't know exactly what that meant, we did know it meant that you'd better pony up more money to keep the account active.
What we didn't know was that the minimum payment was $15, and that would be good for only a month. They'd also take 50 or 75 dollars, good for thirty to 90 days, or $100, good for a year. Doing the math, that last seems the best deal (ignoring trivialities like loss of interest); it works out to 100/12, or $8.50 a month.
But wait. I use the phone less than that -- a lot less. At a quarter a minute, I use about three dollars worth a month. Where would that other $5.50 a month go? Or the other $12.50 a month, if I gave them the minimum payment?
(Did I just hear Cingular chuckling?)
5 comments:
You'll have to take advantage of that extra money you're paying them then. I'd rather pay for minutes that I end up having to use, then just handing over that extra money to them.
Do your minutes not roll over into the next month?
We used to have that 'no plan' through Rogers and any minutes you didn't use would roll over into the next month.
They do, but since we wouldn't be using even the base amount, it doesn't seem worth it to facilitate that. I'm thinking of simply letting them expire. As long as we put money into the account within 60 days of expiration, the phone number is still ours.
The cellphone thing is such a scam. We all did just fine without cell phones a few years ago but now people make you feel like a trilobyte if you don't have a cell phone.
I have plan where I rarely use the minutes much less the rollover minutes and there is always about $15 in taxes and surcharges each month added on to my bill.
Good to hear from you!
I don't think its a scam, in that its pretty nice to have as a backstop for traveling - we occasionally take drives into some relatively desolate areas --but I do think the pricing is a rip. I looked into their prepaid cards, and the pricing scale was about the same.
My daughter asked if she could have our old phones, and we said yes -- but, you do know that they don't work now, right? Oh. Forget it.
Points to you for use of the word trilobyte. Its actually trilobite, but I only know that because I just looked it up. It isn't often that people use words I don't know. I like the experience. Very cool.
Thanks for the spelling correction, I'll have to make a mental note of that.
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