Cell phones can be very convenient, but before you sign a contract for wireless phone service, you will want to ask yourself a few questions.
- Where can you make and receive calls? Most cellular providers now promote their plans as local, regional or netional. A local plan offers a low cost option if most of your calls are near home. Regional plans generally offer a much larger geographic area, sometimes in several states. If you call outside the area covered by these plans, you will pay long distance and roaming charges in addition to the airtime used. National plans are the most expensive, but they let you use your phone anywhere in the country for a single per-minute price. Roaming and long distance charges are replaced by a single, predictable flat rate.
- How often will you use the phone? If you just need a phone for emergencies, an economy plan with a few minutes a month might be all that you need. On the other hand, if you are going to be a heavy user, a plan with several free hours and the lowest airtime charge is a wiser choice.
- Is a family plan option available? Instead of individual cell phone plans for each member of the family, you can share one cellular service plan among several phones. Everyone shares the same pool of monthly minutes. The cost of the additional numbers per month is usually less than if you purchased individual accounts.
- Is there a trial period during which you can test the service? Many people experience dead spots where a cell phone doesn't work. A trial period lets you test your service in places where you will be using it, for example, in your office, in all the rooms of your house, in your car, and in other places where you travel.
- Are there any fees or limits on changing your plan? Some providers charge a fee if you want to downsize or upgrade your plan. Others limit how often you can make changes.
- What happens if you want to cancel your service? Most providers have a penalty. This is a concern if you have to move out of the area covered by your plan. By the way these cell phone companies DO send you collections for these early termination fees, so don't mess your credit up with this!
Pay-As-You-Go-Plans
If you want cell phone service for emergencies or aren't sure how much you will actually use a cell phone once you get it, you may want to consider a prepaid cell phone before you commit to along-term wireless contract. With a prepaid cell phone, there is no contract to sign and no monthly bill to worry about. You will know exactly how much you will spend. The downside of prepaid plans is that in some cases you pay more per minute, and if you don't use the phone for an extended period of time, you could lose the money in your account!
Text Messaging
Do you send a lot of text messages or no? If not you may wanna take a look a the text messaging plan being offered by your carrier to make sure you find a text plan that equals out to the amount of text you send every month, If you go over your text message usage this can get very costly because most if not all carriers charge you a per text fee for every one message that you go over with your text plan. This can get very expensive.
Picture Messaging
Picture messaging has become very popular with sending photos to friends & family using your mobile device, but it can also be expensive if you are paying for a picture service you are not even using, so make sure you take a look at the plan being offered for your picture messaging needs.
I HOPE THESE TIPS WILL HELP YOU SAVE BIG MONEY ON YOUR MONTHLY CELL PHONE BILLS!!!!
