Ringtones Newsletter
Issue 33, April 2012

In This Issue

Dialing In by CEO John Marick »
Feature Focus: Usage Alerts Save Customers $10 Million in Just Two Years! »
Spring Cleaning? Don't Forget to Recycle Your Old Cell Phone »
Customer Star: Anna Daly »
Save Trees with Autopay and Email Billing »
Refer A Friend: An Easy $10 for You »

Consumer Cellular Home | Newsletter Archive

What’s New

One of the Best for Two Years in a Row. Read More »
Introducing Two Writers for Double the Fun. Read More »
LG Thrive in Blue. Read More »

Refer A Friend, Earn Ten

Give Yourself and Your Friends $10! Refer someone who signs up with Consumer Cellular and you’ll receive a $10 credit on your upcoming invoice. Your friends will be happy, too. Not only will they get fantastic cell service at great rates from the best cell phone service company in America, they'll also get a $10 credit on their first invoice. Don’t wait to share the wealth! The best gifts don’t require contracts.

Want to tell a friend? Click here to send an email.

Dialing In

by John Marick

There’s a saying I remember from my childhood: April showers bring May flowers. It’s an expression still used today and it talks solely about the planet we live on — fresh rain, bright flowers, happy days are here again. The saying had nothing to do with sports teams or rock bands or any other childhood fascination. It was all about nature.

I’m thinking of that saying, as we prepare for the 42nd anniversary of Earth Day on April 22nd. In a campaign known as a Billion Acts of Green^®, event organizers plan to show individuals that even the smallest of pro-green acts can contribute to protecting the world we live in and on.

Here at Consumer Cellular, we’ve taken and will continue to take steps to cut back our reliance on paper, as well as reduce what goes into our landfills. Today, I’m very excited to report, 76 percent of our customers have signed up for a paper-saving billing method. Plus, 99 percent of our shipping by-products are recycled.

We also make it easy for our customers to recycle their old cell phones. Every phone we ship comes with a postage-paid envelope for mailing an old phone back to us. And if anyone has a phone they no longer need, we encourage them to visit our website and print out our free mailing label. We partner with a company who either refurbishes or recycles the phones received and then we donate 100 percent of the proceeds to Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, part of the Children’s Miracle Network. So far, this recycling effort has resulted in over $105,000 in donations while also keeping hundreds of thousands of phones out of the landfills.

Last year we teamed up with the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA), an organization committed to protecting America’s national parks and landmarks. Every time a customer signed up for our Email Billing service, we made a $5 donation to the NPCA. In only 10 months, this program has already generated $100,000 in contributions. So, as a Consumer Cellular customer, here’s one little step you can take this Earth Day (or at any time): go to My Account and sign up for our email billing program. Helping to preserve America’s legacy for future generations couldn’t be any easier.

Earth is the only home we know. It’s important that we all do whatever we can to protect it. In the words of a popular folk song: “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.”

John

For more comments and industry insights from John, read his latest blog.

Feature Focus

Usage Alerts Save Customers $10 Million in Just Two Years!

Usage Alerts save you money! Our free Usage Alerts program has been saving our customers money since April of 2010. You might be surprised to learn Consumer Cellular customers saved more than a combined $10 million in potential overage fees by this free service!

Sometimes it’s hard to know how many minutes or messages you'll need in a billing cycle. Your usage might be normal one month, and then jump up the following month because of a family emergency, which can push you into overage fee territory. That’s where Usage Alerts, our unique and free automated cell phone usage monitoring system, can help.

A Usage Alert notifies you before you exceed your plan’s limit, ensuring you’re not surprised by or stuck with unexpected overage fees. Unlike many other cell phone service providers, we have no intention of boosting our revenue through overage fees. Furthermore, you can upgrade your plan at any time retroactively to the start of your current billing cycle, enabling you to take advantage of the best pricing possible for your current usage.

With Usage Alerts, you’ll no longer have to worry about your cell phone usage or be surprised with unexpected overage charges. And remember, this great service is completely free! We won’t even charge you for the text message alert you receive.

Visit our website for more information about our Usage Alerts program.

Spring Cleaning?

Don't Forget to Recycle Your Old Cell Phone

Did you know every year hundreds of millions of cell phones are discarded and replaced with new phones? Does recycling matter? You bet it does. According to the EPA, if 100 million cell phones are recycled and not discarded, we could save enough energy to power 194,000 U.S. homes for an entire year!

To recycle your old phone, just use the postage-paid envelope we sent with your new phone. Or you can print out the mailing label from our website. Remember, no matter what shape your cell phone is in, you can still send it back. But only send us your phones, batteries, and accessories.

Best of all, when we recycle your old cell phone, we donate the proceeds to the Doernbecher Children’s Hospital Foundation at Oregon Health & Science University.

Visit our Phone Recycling page for more details.

Customer Star

Anna Daly

With three young grandsons, Consumer Cellular customer Anna Daly and her husband Bob, love getting away with the entire family to what she calls their “little spot in the country.”

A cell phone user for a dozen years, Anna subscribed to Consumer Cellular about 18 months ago, selecting the 700-minute plan. A fan of the Nokia brand, Anna ordered the Nokia 2720, a flip phone that she could keep in her purse. However, cell phones have a way of ending up elsewhere.

“When I dropped my cell phone in the dishwater, I had to order a new one,” recalled Anna. “Thinking I had to pay a higher price for the new phone, I was very happy to find out my new Consumer Cellular phone was about the same price.”

Today, Anna accesses the Web with her cell phone and enjoys text messaging family and friends. She finds it comforting to know she can call long distance and not worry about the bill. Specifically, she likes Consumer Cellular’s Usage Alerts, which give her peace of mind knowing she and Bob will not have any surprises on their phone bill, from one month to the next.

After becoming disabled with stage IV breast cancer that had spread to her spine, Anna taught herself to crochet and now belongs to a group of breast cancer survivors who make afghans for fellow cancer sisters.

“Besides no contract, I saw that with Consumer Cellular I could actually raise my minutes, when needed,” said Anna. “And I was not obligated to keep the higher amount as other companies require.”

Anna tells people if they want “super customer service, quality phones, no contracts, reasonable prices and no hassle… then go with Consumer Cellular.”

We could not have summarized our service any better. In fact, Anna's description of Consumer Cellular is what we like to think of as our "little spot in the industry."

Save Trees

With AutoPay and Email Billing

As part of our Every-Day-is-Earth-Day philosophy, we offer two easy-to-use electronic billing and payment systems. These online processes are designed to make it easier for you to receive invoices or make payments — and help reduce our reliance on paper. Our statements are easy to read, review, and manage from your online account at any time.

National Parks Conservation Association Consumer Cellular’s email billing option delivers a detailed invoice straight to your inbox that’s convenient to store and easy to read. With our AutoPay program, you can set up automatic payments for your cell phone bill using your credit or debit card. These are quick and easy ways to reduce the size of your carbon footprint and help our fragile planet.

Thanks to our paper-saving billing methods, we’ve already saved over 1.1 million pages of paper. Put another way, that’s a stack of paper more than 3 miles high or ten times taller than the Empire State Building.

That’s not all. Remember, every time a Consumer Cellular customer signs up for our Email Billing program, we will donate $5 to the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA).

What’s New…

One of the Best for Two Years in a Row

For the second year in a row Consumer Cellular made the list of the 100 Best Companies to Work For in Oregon. What is especially meaningful for us is that the award is based on confidential employee responses to a survey. In other words, it’s what our employees said about working here that ranked Consumer Cellular as one of the 100 Best Companies in the state. More than 14,000 employees completed work satisfaction surveys from 263 companies. The survey asked employees to rate their employer in five areas: Work Environment, Management & Communications, Decision-Making & Trust, Career Development & Learning, and, last but not least, Benefits & Compensation.

Simply put, employee satisfaction is invaluable to our success and results in better customer service. It might sound corny, but we think happy employees make for happy customers.

Introducing Two Writers for Double the Fun

John Marick and Pat Boyle

The lyrics for the old Wrigley Chewing Gum campaign for Doublemint sure were catchy: “Double your pleasure, double your fun…” Now, Consumer Cellular plans to double your reading fun and add more value with two writers contributing to our blog.

John, president of Consumer Cellular, will continue to offer his industry big-picture insights. While Pat — you may remember Pat from several of our YouTube videos — will talk about service-related topics and give you tips on getting the most value out of your cell phone. We’ll also be showcasing “Apps of the Month,” to help you find the perfect add-ons to your smartphone, as well as provide links to brief public service videos. These videos are designed to offer consumer-saving tips that any cell phone user would find useful.

Our “double blogs” may not be gum but it is content you can chew on and savor for a long time. See our latest blog entry and don’t forget to share it on Facebook or your social media network of choice.

LG Thrive in Blue

LG Thrive in Blue Last month, we announced the availability of the LG Thrive as an excellent entry-level smartphone. The Thrive delivers powerful features without denting the pocketbook, thus making it the ideal starter smartphone. Customer response to the Thrive has been overwhelmingly positive, making it one of our more popular selections almost overnight. So popular, in fact, we’re immediately adding a second color: blue.

To learn more or to order your blue LG Thrive, visit our phone details page.

Ringtones Newsletter Issue 33, April 2012