How Many Minutes Have You Used?
from the no-one-will-tell-you dept
I’ve been using the same mobile phone plan for a while now, and I’ve never come anywhere near the allotted minute total – so I’m happy with it. However, I know that going over would cost some ridiculous amount per minute. The problem is that it’s nearly impossible to tell how many minutes you’ve used up in your plan. Since the wireless carriers make 10% of their revenue (and plenty of margin) from these overplan minutes, they have very little incentive to let you know. While banks and credit cards can give you easy access to up-to-the-minute account information, you’d be lucky to find such things when checking to see how many minutes you have left. The Wall Street Journal (republished at MSNBC) spent some time checking the various wireless carrier plans to see how they compared in letting people know their usage. It seems that most of them make it very difficult to get the info (for AT&T you actually have to be on a higher level plan to get such privileged info). Also, for many of the different systems, if you do get the information, it’s either out of date or incorrect.
Comments on “How Many Minutes Have You Used?”
needed improvements
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, but yea it makes sense for them NOT to do it. Why can’t they implement either in the phone or in the network, or maybe a wap page, that keeps up with you peak minutes and nights and weekend minutes. Now a days there are huge differences in your nights and weekend and your other time, so why not keep up with them both. I asked a guy at alltel about it and he gave me some bullshit about having to upgrade equipment because of the differences in analog/digital and how the phone recieves the time with the digital signal. I don’t think it would be that hard to implement into the cell phone and it would certianly get used.. MOTOROLA GET ON IT! 🙂
gray
Re: Maybe you need to try Sprint PCS
I just went to the Sprint PCS website, logged in and checked my utilization report
Start Date: Tuesday, May 21, 2002
End Date: Thursday, June 20, 2002
Current as of: Wednesday, June 19, 2002 at 9:11 CDT
39.99 Plan
Minute Usage Included Used Remaining Overage
MINUTES IN PLAN 300 196 104 0
Other Usage Included Used Remaining Overage
OFF-PEAK OPTION 1200 41 1159 0
Well, I can’t get the table formatted here, but it looks nicer on their website…
Re: needed improvements
Yes, Motorola is on it. My StarTac has two resettable counters showing the number of minutes used. They’ve had this feature for a couple years, so other phones probably have it too. RTFM.
Re: Re: needed improvements
In the UK you can dial a number and get a breakdown of how much you’ve used and your bill at that point in time. Even better is that you can get a flat-rate fee for unlimited calls (inc land lines) 24/7. T-Mobile costs ?60/month, which more than halved my phone bill when I switched to it.
Phillip.
Re: Re: needed improvements
don’t tell me to RTFM.. you don’t even know what the hell I was talking about… wow a timer that tells you how long your LAST conversation was.. and another that is resetable.. that’s EXACTLY what I’m talking about..
NOT!
Re: needed improvements
I think your a very rude and ignorant person…You clearly have no concept of how the cell phone technology we use today is set up…It has come along way and unlike things we see in the movies things don’t just happen…they take time and money…but yet people wanna complain when there cell phone bills go up…In todays world you get what you pay for…Think about what you say before insulting people that work hard to make your life easier…
poseidon
minutes used
find