How To Save On Your Phone Bills
There are various ways to save money on your phone bills. Many people just take
it for granted and never check out other opportunities.
I hope to steer you in the right direction so you can cut your costs.
The first step is discussing the phone service that is your concern. It might be your local service, your long distance, or maybe your cell phone that you are concerned about.
I'll discuss each one of these. Feel free to skip down to the section that relates to you. Or use the "Quick Index To This Page" in the right-hand column.
Get To Know Your Phone Bill
There are many ways to save money with your phone bills. One of the first things you should do is look at your bills and analyze them carefully. Get to understand what each item is and if it is something you are using, something required for the service, or simply an additional expense you didn't know you had and something that you can remove from your bill.After reviewing your bills, call the customer service number on the bill and discuss with them any questions you have. Request to make the appropriate changes with items or features you don't use and don't need.
Question anything that you don't understand and make sure they give you a clear explanation of the charge. Don't let them intimidate you. If you are not comfortable with how you are being treated, then look for an alternative solution. You may end up finding a better deal or even another vendor with better features and better support.
Below are some other areas to look into for various alternatives to phone services.
How To Save Minutes On Your Cell Phone
Did you know that you could call your cellular voice mail to pick up your messages from any other phone? You don't need to use up minutes calling from your cell phone. When you check your voice mail from a landline you are not using up your cellular minutes. If you call from a local landline where the cost of that call is free, then you beat the system.Of course you may need to stay closely in touch while on a trip and you will want to pick up your messages remotely, but whenever you have the opportunity to use a landline, remember to do it. The savings can add up, especially if you end up listening to lengthy messages some people may leave.
Prepaid Cellular
There are two companies that offer prepaid airtime where minutes are purchased as needed. TracFone and NET10®. NET10 is owned by TracFone Wireless, Inc. But they both offer different deals.When you use one of these prepaid cellular services your phone actually uses any carrier with the strongest signal from AT&T, Verizon, Alltel or T-Mobile. This is because they have contracted with these carriers to resell the minutes to you. Due to the high volume from all their prepaid customers, they get a rate so low that they can offer you low rates and still make a small profit. You get the advantage of more coverage without monthly fees. With prepaid service you pay only for the minutes you use. And you get all the standard features the carriers offer except unlimited data plans. You do get voicemail, Caller-ID, call-forwarding and texting included.
TracFone charges 25¢ per minute. But they offer double minutes for the life of some phones.
If you get a phone that does not include double minutes, you can buy a double minute plan
for $24.99. That brings it down to 12.5¢ per minute.
They often have promo codes that bring the cost down a little more.
NET10 prepaid cellular makes things a lot simpler. They offer simple low-cost prepaid plans without the need to try to get double minutes just to save. The savings is already built into each plan. I think that's so much easier than looking for promo codes just to double your minutes like TracFone does.
NET10 recently added several new prepaid plans that can reduce your cost below 10¢ per minute. You can have NET10 service for only $15 per month and get 150 minutes for 30 days. If you use a lot of minutes, you can buy more minutes in a 30 day period and save more. For example, You can add 750 minutes to use in 30 days and pay only $25 for that, which comes to less than 4¢ per minute!
If you don't use it all up and you add more minutes before the 30 days then the unused minutes roll over. You don't lose them. And the additional 30 days is added to the end of your present prepaid term.
As with any prepaid airtime card, when you add minutes before the expiration, any unused minutes roll over.
You don't lose your minutes unless you let it expire. For that reason I recommend using the 1-year airtime card.
So you only need to think about it, and pay for it, once a year. The one-year airtime card gives you 2000 minutes
for $200 and you have a year to use it up. Any unused minutes roll over when you add more minutes.
If you use up your minutes sooner, just add more minutes.
If you don't want to think about it so ofter and just want to prepay for a longer period, NET10 has a 2-year, 4000-minute airtime card for $400 It includes a 1000-minute bonus for a total of 5000 minutes that you have two years to use up.
You can find both TracFone and NET10 phones, as well as their airtime cards, in local electronics and department stores. But compare to the phones you can order online. The phones in the stores may be older models they have in inventory.
The latest models are always available online and NET10 is offering free shipping on any phone over $19.99. Just select 3-day and it will deduct the shipping cost at the last step of checkout.
You can examine your phone when it arrives and decide if you want to keep it and activate it with a new number or with a transfer of your existing cellular number. Transferring your number cancels your existing cellular service. But don't cancel before transferring.
I switched my cellular to NET10 and cut my cost to one-third.
Read about my experience with NET10 in my blog
Does Tracfone or NET10 cancel your phone if you don't use it?
Keep your unused cellular minutes.Both Tracfone and NET10 let you keep your unused minutes when you continue your service. The important thing to remember is that if you go past your expiration date without adding more airtime, then your service is canceled. That means you lose your number and you lose any remaining minutes in your account.
It's easy to keep the unused minutes simply by adding more airtime before the expiration date. Airtime comes with minutes so you are adding more minutes to your account, keeping the unused minutes, and you are extending the service time by adding the additional days of usage to the end of the present term. That is an important thing to understand. It indicates how honest these companies are about that. If you buy more airtime early, you don't lose the remaining time. You keep that too. They simply tag on the extra time to the end of the present expiration date.
All you have to remember is that you will lose anything remaining if you let it lapse. NET10 has a solution for those who can't remember. You can sign-up for a monthly service. For $15 a month they automatically extend your service for another 30 days and add another 150 minutes to whatever you have left. You never lose it and you can cancel this automatic renewal anytime. It is not a contract. It's always up to you if you want to keep it going.
International Calling Low as 3¢
I have never found anything cheaper than Centsible Calling for making
international calls. I use it myself.
It's only pennies to call most anywhere in the world.
No PIN required, No minimum, No monthly fee, No connection fees. And the prepaid minutes you buy never ever expire. They stay in your account until you use them.
See full story... How To Avoid Hidden Charges On Prepaid International Calls
Save on Toll-Free Service
If you are paying more than $2 a month for a tollfree number you are paying too much.
If you don't have the ability to change the number your toll-free incoming calls will ring to, in real time, then your service is not offering you an important feature.
What about other features you may want with your tollfree number? Your service provider should not be charging you extra and you should have the direct control over the settings.
Kall8 gives you a toll-free number for only $2 a month and that includes many useful features, such as voice mail, fax mail, custom call routing, incoming call blocking by area code, by state, or even by specific number, and more.
You can select a really nice number from a list and have it activated instantly! Or you can transfer and keep your existing number at Kall8's lower cost.
For a family with an aging parent or children away at camp or at college, it makes perfect sense to have a Toll-Free number so loved ones can easily call home from anywhere without dropping a ton of change into a pay phone.
Learn more about Kall8 toll-free service
Dedicated Fax Line For Only $2
Are you paying for an extra phone line just to connect your fax machine? kall8 can be used as your dedicated fax line for only $2 a month. So you can get rid of that higher priced extra phone line. See my short review of Kall8 for a dedicated fax line
Bundled Services: Phone, Internet, TV
You may find that you can reduce your overall cost by dropping your local phone company and taking advantage of a combined service from your local cable company with Internet, television and phone.The phone service is provided via the Internet by using Voice Over Internet Protocol (or VoIP). A special adapter connected to your cable modem allows connecting regular phones to your VoIP service. This adapter converts the analog phone lines to digital so it actually goes over the Internet. This technology has been perfected in recent years. VoIP phone services usually include unlimited long distance within the USA and Canada.
Some cable companies will provide you with a modem that has the adapter built in. One thing to keep in mind about VoIP is that it requires your own supplied power. If you lose power, you lose your phone service, unless you have an Uninterrupable Power Source (UPS) for extended power.
Some modems that include a VoIP Adapter even have a UPS built in to supply continuous power in case of a power outage. Ask what options you have with the equipment they offer.
If you have DSL for your Internet service, I don't recommend using a VoIP phone service. The bandwidth may not be high enough to support voice communication. DSL is provided over your old copper phone lines and is no match to the better quality of cable.
If you are in an area where Fiber has already been installed, this is the best of all.
Check with your local carrie3r to see what options they provide to combine all your services
to save on your bill and even improve your service at the same time.