Chances Are You're Paying Way More for Mobile Than You Need To

Does your wireless plan suit your needs? Truly suit your needs? Because if it doesn’t, you’re potentially wasting hundreds of dollars. According to a yearlong BillShrink survey of more than 230,000 wireless users, people waste an average of $336 annually by miscalculating their voice and data needs. And in doing so, they unnecessarily hand an estimated $79 million to their carriers.

A few key findings from the survey:

People estimate they need 711 wireless anytime minutes per month, but in truth they need quite a bit less. BillShrink found 651 minutes to be the average.
The average person uses 1,555 text messages per month, yet most consumers believe they use 2,566. (1,555 per-month is the average!?!)
People assume they need 54MB of data per month, yet most need 81MB. Ironically, most tiered carrier plans start at 150MB.

What’s driving these disparities? Consumers’ skewed perception of their wireless needs, obviously. But the carriers are to blame too. Their tiered pricing plans might offer more choice, but they also make it tougher to assess our voice, text and data needs, and make it quite a bit easier to overpay for them.

http://pulse.yahoo.com/_PIISILARLW5FH4DHQUC3C6K4BA Mark®

John, why are you not covering the O’Reilly conference in Santa Clara?
http://blog.macb.net macbeach

The average person uses 1,555 text messages per month, !!!!!!!!
http://blog.macb.net macbeach

Meant to add: For strange values of “average”.
http://frjody.com Jody Howard

Having just renewed out cell phone plan with AT&T, we found that, indeed, we were paying for way more minutes than we use. The problem, however, is that you don’t by minutes a la carte, but in that tiered pricing structure you mention. If we had dropped our minutes, it wouldn’t have quite covered what we use, and it would’ve made us ineligible for AT&T’s “A-list” which would further impede our ability to stay within the lower number of minutes. Verizon was actually worse since we were grandfathered into our plan under an old price, while switching to Verizon would’ve meant paying current plan pricing.

I’d love to see examples of people beating this system–not that it will really help for another two years
http://www.facebook.com/people/Daniel-Johns/100001548685732 Daniel Johns

Just another reason why companies like Infinity Mobile can save you sooooo much money!
http://twitter.com/ai_mateu Mateu Bonet

These distributions are probably not Gaussian. Median would be more informative than mean.
http://profiles.yahoo.com/u/XFSPJEJ5BB6VLITL53FEIHHSHY Kimberly

I don’t know why people are so surprised that their bills are this high when you have to pay fee after fee take high price contracts to have better priced phones. Its no wonder really that I see so many articles mentioning prepaid companies being on the rise – that might also be because I bought into prepaid last year as result of these escalating bills. I had a bill with ATT that was supposed to be $39 but was reaching nearly $60 with fees that kept climbing year after year – I only had 450 minutes and was hardly using them hoping the fees would drop. Last year, I realized the fees weren’t going anywhere so I decided to switch to a prepaid company – something low cost to give me a different prespecitve. I went the super basic route with Tracfone and I mean a $20 phone and aircard at the most to try it out. There is something very liberating about paying for an aircard at the store and using the card and not having to worry about another bill at the end of the month. I will say that companies like Tracfone are great for savings, but its a lot of responsibilty on the part of the user when it comes to minutes – if you run out and are not on an automatic refill then the phone doesn’t work.

Chances Are You're Paying Way More for Mobile Than You Need To

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