How to Avoid Being Scammed on Your Cellular Telephone Bill

With the rapidly increasing use of cellular telephones, often called wireless devices by the cellular phone service providers, comes the increasing complexity of understanding the bill for those services. Even more confusing are the increasing number of "fees" that wireless providers assess, that aren't disclosed until the wireless invoice, otherwise known as the cell phone bill, arrives. It isn't possible to go through a discussion of the entire list of fees and how you may be getting charged for things you never wanted to pay for, as that would require writing a book. What will be discussed are the most frequent ones that show up and how to avoid them.

The very nomenclature of the wireless phone business itself is difficult to understand, when they use such terms as activation fee or upgrade fee. To make a quick distinction for the unitiated, an activation fee is charged when you start up a new line of service, and upgrade fee is charged when you buy a new cell phone and commit to an extension of your contract. Anyone who gets a discount on their wireless service through their employer should check and see if the activation fee or upgrade fee is waived. Typically, these fees will appear on an invoice the month following an activation or an upgrade, but when they're buried in the fine print on page 8 of a twelve-page invoice, you're not likely to detect it. You should ask a representative of a wireless carrier if you're going to be charged these type of fees ahead of time, and get it in writing if they tell you that you're not charged. It is a frequent occurrence to see these charges appear on an invoice following an activation or an upgrade, even when a customer is assured that they won't be charged.

Many people notice their cell phone bill increases after they've upgraded to a new cell phone. It seems their cell phone bill goes up by $10 or $20 a month and they wonder why. What most people don't realize, when they upgrade their phones, is that if they take advantage of a rebate offer that takes four to eight weeks to process, that the rebate offer usually contains a "free trial" to a subscription for some type of GPS service, roadside assistance, or voice-activated automatic dialing. Buried in the fine print of many rebate offers are these free trials that last about 30 days, and then the charges start to appear on the wireless invoice. A GPS service, typically called Navigation, will cost about $10.00 a month. Roadside assistance, usually covered on most people's auto insurance, costs about $3.00 a month, and Voice-activated automatic dialing will cost about $5.00 a month. The charges can often appear in a section called, "Credits, Adjustments, and Other Charges," and are difficult to detect. Sometimes a cellular phone store will offer you a discounted package on a new phone during upgrade and have the same type of "trial" subscriptions included as part of the new 2-year contract, but it's buried in the fine print and the store representative is usually only trained well enough to tell you which make and model of phones they offer, and not how to interpret the legalese in a wireless phone contract.

It pays to watch your wireless phone bill all the time, but especially so after activating a new line of service or upgrading to a new device. Do not hesitate to contact your wireless provider and demand credit for any charges for unauthorized features such as Voice-activated automatic dialing or GPS service. The wireless provider will typically credit your account up to 90 days if you've failed to notice the unauthorized charges for that length of time. Typically, you have up to 100 days to dispute any charges, so you have to take action and contact the wireless provider. What's bad about these "free trials" is that they can last anywhere from 30 to 60 days before the charges start appearing on your cell phone bill.

Another thing to watch out for are prorated charges. Whenever you change the rate plan you use, whether you're on a 400 minute plan or a 3000 minute plan, or if you add or remove a data plan (internet access on your wireless device), or add a text messaging feature, ALWAYS find out when the bill cycle ends for your service for that month. If a customer's bill cycle ends on the 5th of the month, and he decides to change his rate plan on the 10th of that month, or add new services, the next bill will result in almost two months' worth of charges for everything that customer has added or changed. It is advisable to ask if you can either backdate a feature on your account that you are deleting, so as to receive a credit on your next bill, or to future date a rate plan change or addition of any other service to the start of your next bill cycle to avoid prorated charges.

With regard to your cell phone bills, it pays to ask for a full disclosure of charges any time you activate a line or upgrade a phone, or change any feature (text messaging or data plan) on your account and get them in writing. If you were promised that an upgrade fee would be waived, ask to see it in writing on the contract or get a name of the person you're talking to, and have them put it in writing. Without it in writing, the charge may well appear on your next invoice and whether the charge will be credited or not, will depend largely on the mood of the customer service representative and their supervisor(s). It isn't worth the time or stress if you just take the extra precautionary step of getting any promise of charges to be waived in writing. If you have asked for full disclosure and they fail to disclose it, you have a basis for getting that charge waived. Remember, that you only have 100 days to dispute a charge and it's usually best to dispute a charge as soon as you can find it, rather than wait.