Making Sense of Family Cell Phone Plans
If you tried shopping for family cell phone plans as part of the back-to-school upheaval your family has just been through, there is certainly one thing that’s made itself clear to you – these plans get more expensive every year. Sprint, for instance, announced to holders of family cell phone plans back in the summer that it would not allow employee discounts to additional family members. That actually, would translate to hundreds extra each year on the bill. AT&T and Verizon have done the same. Carriers have always gone in the direction of making their plans evermore complex; and this recent change only adds one more layer of complexity.
They’ve always been trying to make family cell phone add-on plans a little more expensive each year. They usually cost $5 or $10 per additional line. What with Facebook, messaging, movies and music on phones now, carriers can now sell all kinds of additional profitable cell phone services to make more money off the traditionally unprofitable family cell phone program. Still, family plans are a great idea if for one reason only – they let you pool your minutes.
Make sure though that when you give your child a smartphone with voice capabilities, that you are aware that those things have a healthy appetite for gigabytes of data. On T-Mobile for instance, a data plan tacked on to a phone and family plan could cost as much as $40 more. Some carriers can give you an add-on for data and text for individual lines of family plan. They can also offer you plans for everyone involved. To decide on which way to go, look closely at your family’s usage pattern. If it seems like your family doesn’t use much data, having one line for everyone might be a good idea. Sprint, for instance, charges you an additional $5 for 300 text messages.
People usually think that an unlimited plan is the safest bet around. An unlimited plan doesn’t necessarily make sense every time though. Every family plan in the country already has unlimited mobile to mobile calling within the family. They leaves you with little opportunity to use whatever limited number of minutes they let you have. Add to that the fact that adding new lines to an unlimited plan can be much more expensive, and it begins to make less and less sense. Consider how it is on AT&T. A plan with limited family airtime will cost you an additional $10 (with 2000 family minutes and rollover). If you went unlimited, it would cost you $40 more..