Unassuming daily charges found in fine print in Go Phones

Cingular touts its GO Phones as pay as you go, .10 a minutes with $1 per day ONLY on days you use your phone*

defining that as:

Only get charges when 'customer initiates call'

but footnotes it as:

*Daily Access Charge:
Daily access fee of $1.00 for the Unlimited Mobile to Mobile plan is assessed each day you use your phone for a voice call and is debited from your account balance the day after you use your phone.

So the thought is: if I don't use my phone that day I dont get charged. They emphasize the words "ONLY on days you use" to bring that point home to the consumer.

However, there's a catch. When you first turn on your account to your GO phone, as the default, you have voicemail among the other FREE features they offer. Consequently, ANY call placed to your phone on the new day will charge your phone $1.00 for the daily rate. Though you've not "used" your phone, "initiated" a call, or answered the call, even if your phone is turned off, you will be charged 1.00 for any incoming call.

Presuming any "Chargeable Time" incurs a daily $1.00 charge , the Chargeable Time is defined in fine print in the Terms of Service this way :

Chargeable Time begins for outgoing calls when you press SEND (or similar key) and for incoming calls when a signal connection from the caller is established with our facilities.
Answer supervision is generally received when a call is answered; however, answer supervision may also be generated by voicemail systems, private branch exchanges, and interexchange switching equipment.

Chargeable Time may include time for us to recognize that only one party has disconnected from the call, time to clear the channels in use, and ring time; however, there will be no charged time for unanswered incoming calls.

And then you'd say, hmmmm Voice mail is a free service from Cingular as part of my account, and its an "unaswered incoming call" if I don't actually answer it, right? nope. By the way, if this is what you truely want, then you may call Cingular and ask the call-forwarding to voicemail be turned off. So, then its not so bad if you go a couple of days without "using" your phone. Then, your voicemail really becomes optional and only free if you chance being charged the daily $1.00 on an incoming call.

Bottom line, is if the phone rings to voice mail, you get charged. So for all intended purposes, you pay $30.00 a month on top of which ever increment of pre-paid minutes you pay for. Even a wrong number which you'd check the ID and not answer, would click into voice mail, and though the caller may hang up, you get charged the daily fee.

Its that unconscionability problem of putting the definition of a "call" in the fine print and being deceptive in the bold advertisement that gets us every time, eh?

This makes the GO phone useless for much anything but Emergency Usage, in that, if the phone should ring through once a day, then your minimum cost is $45.00 a month ($30 daily + $15 minimum pre-paid) yet you can get the cheapest "Pick your Plan" for $39.99 ($43 with tax) with generally a moderate amount of minutes to use. Certainly , pre-paid plans are not for the chatty, but as minimal usage goes, the GO Phone becomes costly in comparison to perhaps a virginmobile pre-paid.

This is not a complaint as all plans are carefully adjusted to gain the most profit from the typical usage of the customer, but again, its the baiting in the ad which is clearly muddling and the knowledge of what the average consumer is assuming to get from their GO phone that is sad to consider.

why not check the VM from a landline...it will save you a buck...

and by the way... in the plan terms (at the website for your easy reference) I quote

"Per-minute charges apply to feature usage, including Call Waiting, Call Forwarding, Three-Way Calling and voicemail retrievals."

so its not like the company is trying to hide anything...post paid (contracted customers) are charged airtime for VM as well...so it not a conspiracy against prepaid customers

I'm not charged for retrieving VM

what city is your phone number from?

Norwich CT

are you former ATT or Cingular?

if you are Cingular... this may change in the near future...

Customer Impact:
Before billing change:

If the customer has a mobile to mobile feature, calls placed to retrieve voice mail messages are considered Mobile to Mobile airtime minutes (not charged).
Last Updated: 07/10/2006

After billing change:

If the customer has a mobile to mobile feature, calls placed to retrieve voice mail messages are charged standard airtime minutes.
Customers will continue to be able to retrieve voice mail messages from a landline without any airtime charges.

When is this billing change taking place? This is terrible. This is a great feature and one of the reasons I like Cingular so much

that update was posted 10 jul..when it will be implemented in CT I couldnt find...generally its done on a market by market basis

Unassuming daily charges found in fine print in Go Phones

Similar Topics

New AT&T Cell Phones

Carriers Talk

Manufacturers Talk

Mobiledia Community