tribute the problems on our bill to the fact that we are new customers. Over the next thirty days our family enjoys the use of their phones, being careful to monitor their anytime minute usage. Then the next cell phone bill arrives in the mail. This time it is $25.00 higher than the monthly amount of the service plan. Upon checking the bill, it shows we exceeded our anytime minutes by 200 minutes.

After verifying that no one exceeded monthly anytime minutes, once again it becomes necessary to call the phone company. This time, it only takes three minutes to navigate the path to a custome

When we we decide to join the 21st century and take the plunge to buy a cell phone, we do our due diligence. We check the plans offered by the different companies and find the one best suited for our needs. We are told what the monthly charges are, and that as long as we do not exceed our plan minutes, the charges will be the same each month. We feel a sense of excitement as we wait for our new phones to be activated. Within the next thirty days we receive our cell phone bill and it is 30%-50% higher than the amount quoted to us by the salesperson at the time we signed our contract. Remembering what the salesperson told us about our minutes, we immediately try to navigate the bill thinking that one of our family members must have exceeded the limit.

We check our statement and find that we are, in fact, well over our monthly minutes. After talking to family members and not being able to locate the source of the overage, we realize that we need to contact the phone company. When customers call their cell phone company, they are asked by an electronic voice to state the nature of their call. The computerized voice then recites a multitude of choices available to the customer. Sometimes none of the choices given answer the specific concerns of the customer. When the customer tells the computerized voice that he or she wants to talk to a customer service representative, the caller is prodded once more to disclose the nature of the call. Usually it takes at least five minutes for a caller to be connected to a customer service representative.

The customer service representative then asks a series of screening questions to identify and protect the phone account. After we complete that process, we tell the representative that we do not believe that we have exceeded our monthly anytime minutes allowed by the plan. The customer service representative agrees to access the detailed call summary on each individual cell phone number. As the larger account charges are recited on the account summary, we realize that a large number of calls were not made by our phones. When we finish identifying the erroneous charges, the customer service representative agrees to credit our account on our next bill. From start to finish, this call took thirty minutes out of our day. We hang up the phone with a sense of accomplishment for getting our cell phone account in order, and attribute the problems on our bill to the fact that we are new customers. Over the next thirty days our family enjoys the use of their phones, being careful to monitor their anytime minute usage. Then the next cell phone bill arrives in the mail. This time it is $25.00 higher than the monthly amount of the service plan. Upon checking the bill, it shows we exceeded our anytime minutes by 200 minutes.

After verifying that no one exceeded monthly anytime minutes, once again it becomes necessary to call the phone company. This time, it only takes three minutes to navigate the path to a customer

what the salesperson told us about our minutes, we immediately try to navigate the bill thinking that one of our family members must have exceeded the limit.

We check our statement and find that we are, in fact, well over our monthly minutes. After talking to family members and not being able to locate the source of the overage, we realize that we need to contact the phone company. When customers call their cell phone company, they are asked by an electronic voice to state the nature of their call. The computerized voice then recites a multitude of choices available to the customer. Sometimes none of the choices given answer the specific concerns of the customer. When the customer tells the computerized voice that he or she wants to talk to a customer service representative, the caller is prodded once more to disclose the nature of the call. Usually it takes at least five minutes for a caller to be connected to a customer service representative.

The customer service representative then asks a series of screening questions to identify and protect the phone account. After we complete that process, we tell the representative that we do not believe that we have exceeded our monthly anytime minutes allowed by the plan. The customer service representative agrees to access the detailed call summary on each individual cell phone number. As the larger account charges are recited on the account summary, we realize that a large number of calls were not made by our phones. When we finish identifying the erroneous charges, the customer service representative agrees to credit our account on our next bill. From start to finish, this call took thirty minutes out of our day. We hang up the phone with a sense of accomplishment for getting our cell phone account in order, and attribute the problems on our bill to the fact that we are new customers. Over the next thirty days our family enjoys the use of their phones, being careful to monitor their anytime minute usage. Then the next cell phone bill arrives in the mail. This time it is $25.00 higher than the monthly amount of the service plan. Upon checking the bill, it shows we exceeded our anytime minutes by 200 minutes.

After verifying that no one exceeded monthly anytime minutes, once again it becomes necessary to call the phone company. This time, it only takes three minutes to navigate the path to a custome

etimes none of the choices given answer the specific concerns of the customer. When the customer tells the computerized voice that he or she wants to talk to a customer service representative, the caller is prodded once more to disclose the nature of the call. Usually it takes at least five minutes for a caller to be connected to a customer service representative.

The customer service representative then asks a series of screening questions to identify and protect the phone account. After we complete that process, we tell the representative that we do not believe that we have exceeded our monthly anytime minutes allowed by the plan. The customer service representative agrees to access the detailed call summary on each individual cell phone number. As the larger account charges are recited on the account summary, we realize that a large number of calls were not made by our phones. When we finish identifying the erroneous charges, the customer service representative agrees to credit our account on our next bill. From start to finish, this call took thirty minutes out of our day. We hang up the phone with a sense of accomplishment for getting our cell phone account in order, and attribute the problems on our bill to the fact that we are new customers. Over the next thirty days our family enjoys the use of their phones, being careful to monitor their anytime minute usage. Then the next cell phone bill arrives in the mail. This time it is $25.00 higher than the monthly amount of the service plan. Upon checking the bill, it shows we exceeded our anytime minutes by 200 minutes.

After verifying that no one exceeded monthly anytime minutes, once again it becomes necessary to call the phone company. This time, it only takes three minutes to navigate the path to a custome

onthly anytime minutes allowed by the plan. The customer service representative agrees to access the detailed call summary on each individual cell phone number. As the larger account charges are recited on the account summary, we realize that a large number of calls were not made by our phones. When we finish identifying the erroneous charges, the customer service representative agrees to credit our account on our next bill. From start to finish, this call took thirty minutes out of our day. We hang up the phone with a sense of accomplishment for getting our cell phone account in order, and attribute the problems on our bill to the fact that we are new customers. Over the next thirty days our family enjoys the use of their phones, being careful to monitor their anytime minute usage. Then the next cell phone bill arrives in the mail. This time it is $25.00 higher than the monthly amount of the service plan. Upon checking the bill, it shows we exceeded our anytime minutes by 200 minutes.

After verifying that no one exceeded monthly anytime minutes, once again it becomes necessary to call the phone company. This time, it only takes three minutes to navigate the path to a custome

tribute the problems on our bill to the fact that we are new customers. Over the next thirty days our family enjoys the use of their phones, being careful to monitor their anytime minute usage. Then the next cell phone bill arrives in the mail. This time it is $25.00 higher than the monthly amount of the service plan. Upon checking the bill, it shows we exceeded our anytime minutes by 200 minutes.

After verifying that no one exceeded monthly anytime minutes, once again it becomes necessary to call the phone company. This time, it only takes three minutes to navigate the path to a customer service representative. Upon review of the account, it is once again evident that erroneous charges have been added to the the phone bill. The customer service representative agrees to credit the account and asks if there are any other items to address. We ask to receive itemized phone bills in the future, because we want to see a complete break down of the charges. When we open the next itemized bill, we discover no erroneous charges added to the minutes on our plan, but that there is a mysterious $9.99 fee on two of the three phones in our plan, and some charges for unknown text messages.

As before, the customer service representative is very pleasant. When asked about these particular charges we are informed that these are third party ring tones. It is explained that a third party ring tone is when an independent company adds ring tones to our phones, and bills them through our cell phone carrier. It is further disclosed that the unknown text messages are associated with the same unknown ring tone company. We notify the customer service representative that not only did we not order the ring tones, or use them, but that we have no idea where they came from. Per usual, the customer service representative is very accommodating and offers immediate credit on the next bill. The cell phone company also requests that we text message the ring tone company to cancel our service. These are just a few examples of the problems we encounter with our cell phone bills. Other problems include, but are not limited to:

1) Duplicate charges for services such as text messaging.
2) Third party billing (games, ring tones, music etc., ) which the caller disputes having ordered.
3) Text message charges, even though text messaging is included in the plan.
4) Credits given by customer service representatives which are not recorded on the following statement.

Cell phones have become an integral communication tool in our society, and improve our quality of life. They do, however come at a high cost of time and energy in analyzing the monthly bill and spending the time it takes to rectify any errors.