Posted on 08/27/2004 12:53:47 PM PDT by solicitor77
A weekly series by UPI examining emerging wireless telecommunications technologies.--CHICAGO, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- Christi Dixon savors the roll-over minutes her mobile phone company recently started offering. "All of my minutes transfer to the next month," Dixon, who works in marketing in St. Louis, told United Press International. "And on the months that I talk a lot, I avoid all the overage fees."As recently as two years ago, mobile phone companies gouged consumers, selling them cool technologies, with seemingly cheap monthly plans. Consumers recoiled when they received their phone bills, and were charged huge fees, often two or three times the agreed-upon amount, for exceeding their allotted airtime minutes. Research by PlanetFeedback.com, an online consumer-market research firm owned by IntelliSeek, has found that over 80 percent of the comments made by customers of wireless carriers in recent years have been complaints.That is because most cellular subscribers simply did not know in advance how many minutes they would consume in a given month -- only college students and families with poor cash flow would budget properly in advance, experts said.Now, phone companies, led by Cingular Wireless, are changing the telecom culture. To assuage furor over overages, carriers are letting consumers move unused minutes from one month to the next, or, alternatively, offering them unlimited calling for just about $40 per month.A spokeswoman for Cingular told UPI the minutes may be rolled over, "month to month for up to one year."These savvy technology companies are not having to build out their infrastructure, however, or add scores of new cell phone towers and repeaters to handle what one might expect would be dramatic increases in telephone traffic." Gene Koprowski covers telecommunications for UPI Science News. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com
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Actually, If you look at how much more you pay for 'rollover' plans, it really isn't worth it, and almost more of a rip-off than traditional plans.
With roll-over plans you are paying for the chance you may go over in the future.
No thanks, I have shopped around a lot, but I will stick w/ my alltell plan that does not roll-over but I never go over, even though I am on my phone all the time.
I also really hate all these comments about companies 'gouging' people. People have the choice to shop around. It is about being a smart consumer!
Any word on Sprint PCS?
t-mobile is the cellphone company from hell. So is Cingular! What a fricking waste of time.
Thank you.
Please don't post to all those topics, sidebars, and states.
You weren't really expecting the cell phone companies to play fair, were you? Nah, they're far too used to getting lots and lots of money.
People have the choice to shop around. It is about being a smart consumer!
The more you shop around, the more you find that all the companies are the same. Trust me here; I used to work for one of the big ones, and a lot of my friends have worked for retailers that handle multiple companies' products, so I've got about as much experience with them as you can get.
Sorry, I'm not sounding bitter, am I?
Actually I do expect fair play. Many companies, be it wireless or other, realize that with market penetration at the levels it is and the amount of information available to consumers, keeping CHURN rates down through customer satisfaction is becoming a primary goal.
The days of companies screwing customers is slowly going away. The value of customers as an asset is becoming as tangable as the actualized revenue these customers bring in.
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