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CUB: Your Cell Phone Bill is Too High
(IRN) -- Illinoisans could spend less on their cell phone bills.

The Citizens Utility Board analyzed a year's worth of results from the CUB cell phone saver, in which people upload their phone bills and the program tells them where they could have saved. CUB Director David Kolata says the biggest problem is people have plans that give them way more minutes than they use.

"The cell phone saver revealed that nine out of 10 callers on individual plans paid for 450 minutes or more even though most of those callers never used more than 300 minutes a month, and 30 percent used less than 100 minutes," Kolata said in releasing his report, Dodging the Wireless Industry's Pitfalls.

The CELL PHONE SAVER analyzes monthly calling plans for individual consumers with the five major carriers in Illinois: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and U.S. Cellular.

Kolata says the cell phone industry should offer medium-sized plans that suit customers' needs better, and offer loyalty programs, so that customers could cash in unused minutes like credit card points for airplane seat upgrades or car rentals.

Other problems: Customers paying for phone insurance; billing errors, such as bills for downloads that a customer didn’t order; and directory assistance charges, which other services offer free. Kolata says the average Illinois cell phone customer could save $359 a year.

(Illinois Radio Network)
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