mObscure

I saw a report in the BBC news website recently that suggested people – on average – were paying nearly £200 more each year then they needed to. To work this out, the researchers counted how many minutes and texts people were using and then compared it to how many they paid for. This showed them that the vast majority of people were not making the most out of their current plan and should downgrade to one with less minutes.

The problem is, most people have had a cheaper contract at one point in their lives and ended up going over their limit and having to pay a fee. When we get a fee for our mobile phone contract that we weren’t expecting then it’s a major problem and we immediately notice. This tends to make us go for more expensive contracts to avoid these extra fees, without realising that in the long run they are much more expensive.

Say, for example, that you normally pay £15 a month for your contract. One month you had to make a lot of phone calls and had to pay an extra £20 as a penalty. This sounds like a lot of money and could force you to upgrade your contract. If you then upgraded to an 18 month £20 contract, you would pay an extra £90 over the course of the deal. Assuming you didn’t regularly go over your budget before, this is definitely not the most cost effective way of doing things.

I hope a lot of people see this report, as I’m sure loads of mobile phone users (including me) could make big savings.