For anyone who has gotten a heart attack when your cell phone bill showed up and said you owe $600 due to not being able to stop talking, your days of worry are over it appears. Under FCC recommendations, new policies from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile will start effective October 17, 2012. I saw recommendations loosely, as the FCC is already working on new policies to force smaller regional carriers to follow along and play ball. The FCC also warned the big 4 that if they don't play ball under teh agreements, there would be "strict consequences." Awesome!
Under the new policies, carriers must send alerts to customers when they are close to their allocation of voice, text, or data. Yes, some of these people still have bucket plans for texting. It's amazing. It also requires notification when you're about to incur international roaming charges (because you obviously had no clue you mysteriously wondered outside the U.S.), and disclose tools where consumers can check their use themselves.
At this point, Verizon already offers the free alerts, as does AT&T. T-Mobile offers free alerts although I'm not sure if they're automatic, and Sprint has an option to text for usage info. All four carriers also provide self help tools online to check use.
Ok so there's all your happy info, and I'm sure millions of cellular customers will rejoice. It seems though that after conversing with some co workers (I work for a cell phone carrier) about the changes, I'm an odd man odd for not doing cartwheels after reading about this. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for not dealing with people calling and screaming like an idiot after getting $200 in overages they swear are totally wrong. I am, however, against The Great FCC stepping in and forcing these changes on cellular carriers. The minor concern, oddly enough, is cost. Services like this take resources to perform them. Resources in place for the constant monitoring of thousands or millions of customer accounts depending on the size of the carrier, and systems to then push those notice as they hit the marks to require them. These resources require cash to provide them, and that cash has to come from somewhere. That somewhere ends up being your wallet. Cell phone carriers ate the full cost or majority cost of a lot of fees they endure for being in business, so you can count on this being one you'll pay something toward.
That's all great you say? I don't mind paying a little extra to know where my usage is. It ends up being less in the end than paying the overages. Right, right?
This brings me to my second dispute, customers tend to be complete idiots. Yes, it's a large majority. Cell phone companies already provide tools available 24/7 to check your use. You ALREADY have these services, yet a large majority of customers either don't know about them or ignore them. Most times, it's that they ignore them. The problem is personal responsibility. They don't proactively check their use, which is YOUR responsibility and NOT the carrier. You are an adult, and you made an adult decision to get a service. You're given the information up front on what you get with your plan, and how to monitor it. You should be ashamed of demanding a babysitter.
You're usually going to get at least 2 out of the 3 options below...
Internet: Log into your account online. You'll probably find a big bright button as soon as you log in to check your current usage. They don't hide this.
Call in: It's a safe bet when you call your carrier, that annoying little menu system has an option there to check your use.
Text message alert: You shoot a text to a short code, and it sends a text back telling you the use.
So let's try a new approach, let's be proactive to our responsibilities and put on our big kids pants. Now hopefully I get a bit of relief and someone else agrees with me lol.
