You know you are being overchanged when...
Friday, December 14, 2007
I haven't had a cell phone for quite sometime. I work from home, so I rarely need one. I have had them in the past, however. The last one I had was the "pay as you model," where you buy phone cards whenever you need them. I like this model: I used to buy $10 cards every other month or so. For about 3 months I didn't buy a card, hence my phone number was disconnected. This happened about a year (maybe more) ago, and I haven't bothered getting a new one. Although the BlackBerry Curve looks very cool, and you get
spam email on the go.
One of the reasons I don't have a cell phone is that I don't like long term contracts with cell phone companies. Somehow, you know you are being overcharged. For example, what's that $6 dollar monthly charge for access fees? Am I not already paying for the service?
Anyway, getting into bed with the 3 cell companies in Canada is something I dread. I hope
competition will bring down prices in a year or so. Note that I'm no Luddite; I think cell phones are a great service and a few industries would suffer without them. I just don't need one right now, but I may in the future. Like I said, we'll see what competition brings into the Canadian market.
And speaking about overcharging: an $85,000 cell phone bill (that's right, eighty-five thousand) would be surprising to anyone. Now imagine "
a 22-year old man from Calgary" when he found out his bill was not his usual $120, but just a bit over that. How did he manage to accumulate such debt? He was using his new cellphone as a modem, and in the process downloaded large media files (no word on charges of piracy, yet). I'm sure this doesn't happen everyday, but it's not unheard of overpaying for cell phone charges.
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