| Anytime minutes make up the bulk of what you pay each month according to your wireless plan. While most plans offer features such as caller ID, voice mail, or three way calling, these features usually are included no matter what level of plan you choose. What alters how much you pay each month for your wireless service is your choice of anytime minutes.
Anytime minutes are pretty much self defined. Each month, you pay your wireless service for a pre-set number of minutes that you can use on your cellular phone. These minutes can be use to make cellular calls anytime during the day. Each minute you spend on the phone is subtracted from your monthly allowance. If you go over your pre-set allowance of minutes, you are charged extra for each minute over. The amount you go over is similarly called overage minutes. Overage charges can be quite expensive. For example, at 40 cents a minute for an overage charge can cost a subscriber an additional 40 dollars a month if they use 100 minutes over their anytime minutes.
The best way to prevent excessive overage charges is to determine how many minutes you will use per month either by looking at previous wireless bills or taking time to form a reasonable estimate. Take into consideration where you will be during the anytime minutes window. If you are at home, you may be apt to use more minutes than if you work during the day or if you are in school. Also, take note of policies regarding phone calls if you work during the anytime minute window. If your workplace has a strict policy against the use of cell phones at work you may not be as inclined to use as many minutes as a person whose workplace encourages cell phone use over company phones. For those who are on family plans it is important to remember that the minutes are shared. For example, a plan that offers a family of four 1000 anytime minutes will be shared across all four phone lines. These 1000 anytime minutes are not evenly distributed. One person could use 500 minutes leaving the remainder for the other three members.
Certain wireless providers offer unlimited anytime minutes as a higher end plan. These unlimited anytime minute cell phone plans are among the most popular packages and if it fits in the customer’s budget, is the best way to avoid overage charges because there are none.
Be careful not to underestimate what you expect to use each month as the convenience of talking on a cell phone makes it very easy to run up additional minutes that you never accounted for. Once you have come up with a reasonable estimate, make sure to sign up for a plan that is slightly over your estimated minutes. This can save quite a bit of money in the long run should you frequently go over your estimate.
Some plans offer unlimited night and weekend calling. When this is included in a wireless plan, calls made during the weekend, and after a pre-determined time each evening, will not count towards your allotted minutes for the month.
Another feature to take into consideration is if your wireless provider offers an adjustable minutes option or plan.
Certain providers allow customers to carry any unused minutes for a monthly period over to a bank. This bank collects all of the unused minutes throughout the year as a buffer. Should you go over your allotted monthly minutes, you can take minutes from your bank at no additional charge. Plans with this option are extremely popular but it is still important to accurately estimate your monthly usage since you still can incur overage charges if there are no minutes in your bank. Cingular’s anytime minutes policy was one of the originators of this type of plan. Their Rollover minutes policy was so popular that AT & T kept it when it acquired Cingular wireless.
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