1. Choose The Right Plan
The easiest solution to high cell phone bills is as simple as switching your plan. If you’re not using all your monthly minutes, then downgrade to a cheaper plan with less talk time. If you’re going over your minutes, then it’s upgrade time. But there are other options: Whether or not you have a family, you should still consider a Family Plan, which lets you get extra cell phones and bulk minutes at reduced rates, and the best thing is that any calls to other phones on the plan don’t use up any of your minutes. Unlimited features such as data, text messaging, unlimited incoming calls, etc are also feasible. Check with your carrier for pricing and options to see what best fits your budget.
2 .Contact The Company And Tell Them That You’re About to Start Shopping Around For Better Rates Unless They Can Help You Out
As long as the company has a competitor in the area and your payment history with them is decent, they’ll most likely work with you. Sometimes if you are in the middle of the contract, you need to prove to the carrier you are trying to barter with that it is in your best interest, cost wise, to move. If this is the case you need to add up all of your bills, preferably for the last 6 months at least. Let them know that you can save yourself over $XXX by switching. Remember to calculate in your cancellation fees as well (typically $20 per month)!
3. Ask You Provider About Their Current Promotions
4. Make Appointments For Long Calls In The Evening
This might sound like a no brainer but every little bit counts. A random call during the day could easily chew up 20-30 mins of monthly talk time. If you know a call will take some time make sure you make it during your plans evening and weekend hours so it’s unlimited and not using your day time.
5. Avoid Calling 411
Back in the day everyone was calling 411 to look up phone numbers. Now you have two cheap options. For smartphone users download a 411 application for free phone number lookups. If you are not using a smartphone but have unlimited text messaging you can text Google at 466453. Simply put in the city and business or persons name and you’ll receive the phone number back as the answer. It’s really easy and virtually instant.
6. Track Your Data Usage
Going over on your data could be very costly and most of the time we don’t even know it. Install a data tracker on your phone to monitor the amount of data usage. This might seem a bit mundane but it will save you a load of cash in the long run if you are data heavy for a month. We recommend the following data trackers
Android: 3G Watchdog (free)
Blackberry: Mobile Minutes Tracker (free)
iPhone: DataMan Lite (free)
7. Use WiFi when avaiable.
Most customers are on a basic 500MB/month data plan which can be eaten up quickly with applications. Make sure to utilize WiFi hotspots as much as possible to safeguard your data plan.
8. Turn Of Data Roaming
International data charges can be a nightmare. Make sure you have data roaming turned off so when you travel abroad you won’t be chareged $2+ per MB of data used.
