HOW TO SAVE MONEY IN ‘BITS’

OK Film+Fashion+Fun readers, Pete Foster is back for another guest post today. Are your cell phone bills unusually high? You might want to check on that. See what happened when Pete checked on ours.

Happy guest post Wednesday! xoxo- Tanya

I’ve always regarded big tech companies (to put it kindly) “inelastic” in the pricing of their services.  Not so anymore, apparently.  I’ll share a recent experience with AT&T Wireless as an example.

In June, I noticed we were getting a lot more “You are reaching the limits of your data plan” texts from AT&T Wireless about our family cellular phone account.  We had a 10 GB Family data plan with 5 phones and 3 iPads.  Alarmed, I did an analysis using the on-line version of my paper phone bills.  To say the bill was confusing was quite an understatement.  It was quite clear that while our usage was hitting an all-time high, our activities seemed to be the same.  So I called AT&T Wireless.  After being told it was probably due to some app using data while I wasn’t using my phone.  I told them I had shut down all apps updating in the background several months ago, so this wasn’t it.  I had also had my kids force their phones to use Wi-Fi vs. Cellular Data at that time.

Finally we determined that we had no earthly idea why the usage had gone up so much.  We “bantered” back and forth for a couple of minutes and the AT&T representative suggested that they “analyze” my usage.  This was quickly performed.  Result:  I needed to be on a plan that gave me 50% more data with a $60/month decrease in my bill.

My advice is to immediately take a close look at your last few cellular bills for accuracy.  Then contact your mobile provider to have an analysis of your usage patterns performed to see if another cellular plan would help lower your monthly cellphone charges.  Separately, I’ve also found that AT&T U-verse will negotiate to lower your bill thanks to a much faster Internet offered by the cable companies.  Just check your local cable company to see what they offer.  Their Internet speeds are usually much faster than U-verse.

Thanks for reading! – Pete

ABOUT PETE FOSTER

Peter Foster is an avid technologist, engineer and fan of US space operations.  He has over 25 years’ experience as CEO of technology companies, 12 US Patents, has co-authored a book on speech recognition and is an instrument-rated private pilot with over 2500 hours. 

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