According to a recent news story, a Florida woman who typically spends about $175 a month for her cell phone plan was shocked when she received a $200,000 cell phone bill. I’d be shocked, too! It’s what I’d call a budget buster.
The good news is we’ve taken steps to prevent such bill shock from happening to our customers. Thanks to Consumer Cellular’s Usage Alerts program, customers are automatically notified whenever their usage approaches or exceeds their plan’s limit.
And we don’t stop there. We let our customers upgrade their rate plan retroactively up to the last day of their billing cycle. This means they can get the best pricing for the month, even when the month is almost over. Our customers can change their cell phone plan as often as needed and are never charged a service fee for doing so. Best of all, they save money.
We introduced our free Usage Alerts monitoring service in April of 2010. Popular from the start, it’s estimated the program has saved our customers more than $9 million over the last 18 months.
The wireless industry is catching on and following our lead. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and several major wireless carriers announced plans to begin voluntary usage alerts programs by April 2013, phasing in their respective programs over an 18-month period.
But by the time their programs fully roll out, our customers will already have enjoyed usage protection as a regular, free benefit of Consumer Cellular’s service for three years.
Implementing our Usage Alerts program was an easy decision. We simply put ourselves in our customers’ shoes. We knew they would appreciate always knowing how much money to set aside each month for their cell phone usage. We also knew they would face occasional spikes in usage and didn’t think they should be penalized for it.
We believe the needs of our customers should always come first. And understanding—or anticipating—those needs has helped make us the number one rated no-contract wireless service provider in America.
Our Usage Alerts program is just one example of doing what’s right for your customers. And we did it because we wanted to, not because we had to.