Making Cents: Plan on being smart about your phone charges

MOBILE phones are our cameras, video recorders, sat-navs, social diaries and fitness trackers – for many of us, taking and receiving actual phone calls is the activity we use our phone for least, writes Gráinne McGuinness.

Most of us admit we’d be lost without them, but all this activity comes at a cost.

There are several ways to keep mobile phone charges down.

Savvy users need to look at whether they would save money by:

• paying as they go or running up a bill
• ensuring they are using the right price plan and bundles for their usage
• using their smartphones ‘smartly’ to minimise charges.

PREPAY:

More than half of mobile phone owners in Ireland use pre-pay for their mobile phones. It gives the security of knowing that you can’t run up a bill, and for many light users an occasional top-up makes financial sense. Operators offer attractive deals to pre-pay users to allow them use a portion of their credit to buy a certain amount of data, and also bundles of texts/calls as they need them. Pre-pay doesn’t require any commitment, and allows the user freedom to get data etc as they need and can afford it. However, it is easy to lose track of what you are actually spending if you are buying credit on an ad-hoc basis. So keep track of what you put into your phone for a month or two. If it is more than €25 or so a month, you would almost certainly get better value by committing to a monthly plan. And if you are a heavy user of calls or data, particularly if you use your phone for work, there will be a bill-pay option you can tailor to your needs.

THE RIGHT PLAN:

The next important area to look at is which plan to use. If you are pre-pay think about what you use most of your credit on, and then search around to see which network offers you the best value to bulk-buy that item with your credit. Irish users can keep their numbers across networks so there is nothing to stop you switching to take advantage of a good deal on data or call/text bundles.

The same advice goes for bill-pay users – analyse your usage and look for a package that will include it all in the set monthly rate. The ideal is to have your monthly bill be almost exactly the agreed amount, with no extra charges where you have used up your allowance. When signing up the salesperson in the shop may offer you what they advise is the best package, but don’t take their word for it. Have your research done and don’t be distracted by the shiny new phone they are offering. With 18- and 24-month terms now common in contracts, the pleasure of the latest smartphone will be well and truly worn off long before you are free to exit the deal, so make sure it is the right one for you. The website www.callcosts.ie, run by COMREG, can help you compare tariffs and work out the best deal. Input your average usage and the site will tell you what you can expect to pay on different bill plans across all networks available in Ireland.

MINIMISING CHARGES:

After you decide your payment method and plan you still have control over costs. Ensure you make maximum use of any bundles or add-in you pay for. If you have plenty of free texts left then don’t make a call that you will be charged for and vice versa. A few minutes spent on your phone settings will help you minimise your data usage. Turn off mobile data unless you need it for a specific reason; use wi-fi wherever possible. Be careful of 4G – it’s quick, but it can eat into your data bundle at a frightening rate. Don’t forget that many apps keep running in the background even when you’re not using them – hence notifications from social media, news and sports apps. You can prevent them opening up with the ‘background data’ option in settings. Adjust it so that your phone will only check this background data at set intervals. Also you can check on iPhones and Androids what apps are eating most of your data. On iPhone that means checking your cellular data usage in settings, or data usage on Android. Also, there are great free apps out there that will drill down into your data usage so you can be phone smart.

DEAL OF THE WEEK:

For Deal of the Week I decided to try out new Irish app Killbiller, which describes itself as: “a free app that examines your mobile phone usage and tells you exactly how much you would pay on every mobile phone plan in Ireland”. The app is available on both Android and Apple devices.

It reads information on calls and texts from your phone and also asks about your browsing.

I would be a fairly typical mobile user, using the phone daily for text and calls, and also browsing the internet and social media sites several times a day. I don’t use the phone for work.

Killbiller suggested I should be on Meteor Regular 30 Day contract. It’s an impressive offer— giving 400 minutes to any network, 2GB data and unlimited texts for €25 per month. It is also a rolling contract, meaning users aren’t tied into a long deal, but can leave on 30 days’ notice.

I highly recommend giving Killbiller a try — the Meteor contract it suggested is €10-€15 less than my existing bill.

Consumer advice with Gráinne McGuinness