Hit With Cellular Overage Charge

Yesterday I received our latest cellular phone bill and I was a bit shocked when I opened the envelope. For the first time since we have had cellular phones, we have exceeded the minutes in our package.

Our Cellular Package
We have service with T-Mobile and currently have one of the family plans with 1000 anytime minutes and free mobile-to-mobile calling. Last year I dropped our Vonage service and moved our home number over to our cellular package. With three phones now using the plan, we have been using more minutes but we were always within the allowed minutes as most of our calls are to each other during the week.

As I reviewed the bill I could not help but think how nice it would be if T-Mobile were to offer the rollover minutes on our package. Up until this month, we have always been under the 1000 minutes and usually by 100 minutes or more. This month we went over by 46 minutes and we were dinged for an additional $18.40 or $0.40 per minute. Unfortunately all those months of using less minutes than we are allocated did not buy us anything for this one time we exceeded our minutes.

Need for Action?
As I looked through the log of calls to try and determine why we had surpassed our 1000 minutes, I realized that this is likely a one-time occurrence. Last month we had two deaths in the family and as you can imagine, there were many phone calls back and forth to other family members during that time. One would hope that the loss of a loved one does not become a regular occurrence but obviously there are no guarantees, however I feel confident that this is not likely to be recurring.

In addition to those calls, I had spent 60 minutes on the phone walking them through a few computer related problems. This is also something that does not happen frequently and I will certainly cut these type of calls short in the future. In this case it would have been better for me to drive over and fix the problem in person rather than use my minutes on the phone.

For the time being, I am planning to keep a close eye on our monthly usage and if we are nearing the 1000 minute limit for the current month I will have to call T-Mobile and revise our package. I don’t think there is a need for immediate action since this is the first time we have exceeded our minutes in years.

If only I could convince T-Mobile to waive the $18.40 overage charge since this is the first time this has happened in all the time we have been a customer. Is there anyone from T-Mobile reading this?