How to Beat Hidden Cell Phone Costs

Bypassing Messages Saves Time and Money

Jul 31, 2009 Naomi Szeben

Even the cheapest cell phone plans make money the same way: Use of time. Here are some ways to cut through phone companies' time-eating ploys.

Though not all cell phone providers profit from service charges, but all companies profit from the use of time. Calling a provider to listen to a phone messages is one use of time. Leaving voicemail, that’s another use of time – and money.

Even leaving a voicemail message for someone else still eats into most time plans, and can be an un-necessary waste of money, should the listener take the time to listen through the entire message, (“…leave a message at the tone…”) followed by any instructions, (“Press 1 for more options…”)

New York Times reporter David Pogue challenged his readers to “Bypass Stupid Voicemail Instructions,” as anyone familiar with telephones knows to wait for the tone. He simply wants to readers to learn to bypass the instructions, so they don’t have to pay for wasted time.

Save Money: Bypass Phone Messages

Using an average model of Rogers, with a pay-as-you-go monthly rate for their “Text, Click and Call” Plan of $60 which includes a $30 monthly service fee and airtime. At 900 minutes a month, that comes to 6.67 cents per minute. Pogue estimates in his article that if each of the American provider Verizon’s 70 million customers only check their phone messages twice a day, and listens to the 15 second instructions and recorded messages, it comes out roughly $852,092,500 (US.).

This estimate is intriguing, even using Canadian plans and services. If cell phone users exercise a bit more savvy, and find out how to bypass the messages to go straight to the tone, money can be saved monthly on any cell phone plan and tighten even the most affordable of phone plans. However, each carrier has a slightly different bypass code: on Canada’s Virgin Mobile, to get to the tone, one must press # “the pound key.”

How to Find out Which Button is the Bypass Key

Unless it’s known which carrier is used by the person that is being called, pressing # may not always work. Some use “*” (“The ‘star’ key) while still other services may use 1. A way to get to the ‘beep’ to leave a message is to use blogger Jeremy Toeman’s “one-star-pound” method:

1. One you start to hear your friend’s message, immediately press “1” if you hear a message that says, “One is not a valid option” continue to Step Two.
2. Press the “star” (*) button. If the beep that notifies the caller to leave a message is not heard, go to Step Three.
3. Press 3, the “pound” (#) key. This last one should allow a message to be left.

It may not sound like much, but if only seconds are left on a phone plan or battery power is seriously low, every moment saved counts.

Check Your Cell Phone Messages From a Land Line

Assuming the cell phone is not the only phone used for home, business and travel, checking phone messages via cell phone is not the best use of cell phone rates. Turning the cell phone off and calling the cell to check for phone messages is a better choice: No by-the-minute rates are charged to home lines.

The final bit of advice for reducing charges and fees is to be aware of rates that are out there. A solid site for comparing rates is comparecellular.com. Provinces can be selected, and a wide range of providers can be found on the site. Assess your needs first, and measure up what you are paying on a monthly basis against other providers.

The copyright of the article How to Beat Hidden Cell Phone Costs in Personal Budgeting/Finance is owned by Naomi Szeben. Permission to republish How to Beat Hidden Cell Phone Costs in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Getting to The Tone faster Means Saving Money