What Everyone Should Know About Cellular Phone Companies

Did you ever notice that you signed up, initially for a 400 minute plan with your service provider, but often find yourself using many more minutes? You are not sure how it happened, but according to your bill, you definately made all those calls. The truth is, you only remember using your phone a few times that month and really don't understand how this happened. You just let it go, because the bill is too complicated, and the company certainly knows what they are doing.

From my own experiences of working for a cellular company, I can tell you that the companies make billing mistakes. In fact, this can occur more than one would think. In a nutshell, many people sign up with companies that offer free mobile to mobile minutes. I can not tell you the amount of bills I reviewed where people were billed for their mobile to mobile minutes, which should have been free. Many people do not realize that they are paying for minutes, which should not have been considered overage. Sometimes people do not catch the mistake for several months. Although a customer service representative will fix up the mistakes the company made, they may only be able to credit your bill for the past three months despite that you were ripped off for a year. Somewhere in the fine print of the contract you signed (and probably didn't read) it states certain rules applying to crediting billing errors.

Of course, there are people that actually do go over their minutes. Many of these customers assume that they signed up for this plan so they have to stay with this plan during the course of their agreement. This is false. Customers have the right to change their plans. Many companies will also credit you for your last bill, if you change plans. All you have to do is negotiate. Change your plan to higher minutes, in trade for a bill rework on that massive $500 bill. What you may not know, however, is that if you change your plan you may have just extended your service agreement for another two years. The same rule applies for getting a free or discounted phone. You just added more time to your contract!