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| CUB Says Money Can be Saved on Cell Phone Bills |
You can probably save money on your cell phone bill. This is the conclusion of the Citizens Utility Board, which analyzed every charge on 7,000 bills submitted to www.CUBCellPhoneSaver.com over the last 11 months. The web site recommends ways to save. CUB found ways to save on 73 percent of those bills.
Among the findings:
* Many customers are paying for too many minutes. The average customer used only 46 percent of his or her allotted minutes. Most carriers offer plans that are cheaper that allow fewer minutes, says CUB director David Kolata, urging customers to downgrade. Only 9 percent of bills had "overage" penalties, for customers exceeding their allotted air time.
* Customers are paying for services they don't need, such as roadside assistance or insurance on the phone itself. Kolata says those insurance programs are so limited that they are unlikely to pay off if you need a new phone, and phone companies would probably supply you with one at a cheap price anyway. In some cases, the customers don’t recall ordering these services.
* Calls for information, at $1.54 a pop, were found on 23 percent of bills. Free directory assistance is available at 800-FREE-411, 800-INFO-FAST, and 800-GOOG-411.
* The study found that there are two types of people: those who send and receive text messages, and those who don't. The non-texters should not pay for a monthly texting plan, while the texters should, because the per-message charges add up in a hurry.
While there is nothing customers can do about it, CUB reported that miscellaneous fees and surcharges, not including tax, represented 13 percent of cell phone charges, up from 11 percent in a previous study. The organization believes that these charges should be included in the quoted price for service, even if it makes the price higher.
In the bills analyzed, subscribers made or received 3.2 million calls and used 11.2 million minutes. The average use per line was 698 minutes. Cell Phone Saver users made or received an average of 793 text messages a month.
Cell Phone Saver recommends calling plans only with the top five carriers in Illinois: AT&T, Sprint/Nextel, T-Mobile , U.S. Cellular and Verizon.
(Illinois Radio Network) |
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| 08 18 09 by Newsroom |
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