2/25/2009 www.mountainviewcellphones.com

In many ways, the carrier has an internal tow truck service for customers.  When the customers don’t have the right plan for, exceed their plans, and/or share their phones with ignorant family users, it’s very much like getting your car towed or ticketed.

Although customers don’t believe they have done anything, carrier billing systems are pretty accurate that something was activated on the phone.  The worst offenders tend to be texting, 3rd party services/media/games, and/or data overages.  With each of these services, you need a permit to park in the texting or data usage spot.  If you don’t have the right permit, you get a ticket or a tow to impoundment and your phone is shut off once it exceeds the spending limit.  With 3rd party apps, you didn’t even know you bought a use permit. 

Unfortunately, consumers don’t see the no parking signs, they bought the wrong permits, don’t know the permits they bought, or just plain can’t control phone use in their family.  Carriers have been segmenting their services in a pay for use way for a while.  You buy the permit and you are free to use it every month.  If you use the service without a permit, you pay the non-permit price.  If you buy a limited permit texting plan, and you exceed the use, you pay the non-permit price for each text beyond that. 

Consumers often run into problems if they don’t understand the permits/plans they bought and the sales person or representative doesn’t understand them.  We have weekly training at our local store to help with keeping up to date on plans and changes in wireless.  It’s something that is necessary and sometimes every week is not enough to annouce changes and fixes.  We are not perfect but we try our best to keep abreast of every major component of billing and use.  Other cellular outlets don’t have very well trained people and that is where problems start.  In stores that sell more than one carrier, I wish you luck in getting any proficienty in anything but the most basic questions answered for each carrier (it’s humanly impossible to keep up with 3 or more carriers and the change in wireless technology at all three and marketing plan changes and billing system changes and etc…). 

Secondly, consumers don’t take the time to review and question the plans that they purchase.  They get the 80% (minutes and texting) and assume the other 20% (should include data).  This is not always the case and consumers should know what they are paying for and what they are not paying for.  When you go get a parking permit, you should know how it’s used, the cost, where you can park or not park the car.  Sometimes you get your car towed or ticketed in these situations for not understanding the rules.  Sure you get mad but there is very little recourse, you either pay or beg for leniency (carriers can often waive charges once but not for repeat offenders).

Onto the general problems… 

The texting problems are pretty simple.  Generally, get the unlimited texting plan AND don’t text internationally to control the bills.  If you text alot, like people under 21 tend to, unlimited texting is preferred.  International text messaging generally has different rates and charges, please be aware of these for your specific carrier and country you are texting.  If you find out you don’t text that much, bring down the plan or eliminate it and go pay per use.             

3rd party applications are very insidious things.  These are essentially permits you don’t know you bought for applications you probably rarely if ever use.  Some of them install and start billing after playing a game on the phone.  There is a class action lawsuit against Mobile Messenger that settled for $12MM.  These things are like Spam email viruses that install and do bad things to your computer.  Often times, this happens in families or businesses where the person paying the bill is not the user, so they are surprised why charges are suddenly appearing for users activating applications.  Then, it’s a real pain to remove these applications, and that’s what application providers rely on for their revenues.  Given the success of this lawsuit, I’m certain practices will change to make it easy to add and remove 3rd party applications.  With Sprint, the company provides a consolidated place online to activate and deactivate the applications on the mySprint accounts.  If you don’t have a mySprint account, you will need to change your relationship to computers and the Internet and get one to better manage your bills.

Data overages are occurring in two big areas.  International data usage roaming charges and use of the phone for data without data plans.  As a general footnote, don’t bring your phone to a foreign country unless you are going to use it.  If it’s a smartphone and picks up email service and you don’t have a global data plan, you are happily paying global data roaming charges while you tour the country.  Your smartphone is just doing what it always does but the billing system is running full bore.  I had a client that took their aircard to Canada and she used it with her computer, but the computer had a ticker application to show stock prices in real time.  The computer and the aircard pulled and displayed information as it always did, but the billing was atrocious due to international data roaming charges.  Unless you plan to use your wireless device in a foreign country and you want to bring it with you for security purposes, leave it off and check with your carrier before you travel.  Using data without a data plan usually happens in families or companies where there is again a separation of user and bill payer.  Users don’t understand or is not liable for the bill, so they use until notified otherwise.

Texting, data, and 3rd party apps are three phone problems you want to avoid by buying the right permits AHEAD of time or not accepting the wrong permits.

Permalink