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 Also, for many of the different systems, if you do get the information, it's either out of date or incorrect.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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needed improvements
gray
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Maybe you need to try Sprint PCS
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...
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Re: needed improvements
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Re: needed improvements
Phillip.
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Re: needed improvements
NOT!
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Re: needed improvements
poseidon
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minutes used
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