Cellular Phone Plans for Families
We’ve had quite a go with cellular phones. My son got his first cell phone when he was in Middle School. We got him a ‘pay as you go’ model just in case it got lost. Good thing, because within the first month of school, he had lost it. We did not replace it. We tried to cancel it, but by the time he admitted it was lost, all the minutes ($100 worth) had been used.
After a year without it, we decided to try it again. We got another ‘pay as you go’ phone. This one went a little better, lasting a few months until it was lost. An uncle looking for a cool gift got him a replacement which lasted for half a year until it was washed in the pocket of a pair of pants.
We did without until August of this year. With my son in High School and my daughter entering Middle School, we needed to get cell phones. Both are involved in after-school activities and often have changes in schedule. I did an extensive analysis of plans and costs and determined that the cheapest way to go was to get a pay-as-you-go plan for my daughter, while (gulp) adding my son to our plan. My biggest concern about adding him to the plan was a lost phone and the possibility of getting slammed by overage fees before actually finding out that the phone was missing.
However, my cell provider has changed it’s plans and may have saved me. T-Mobile has added a management system to Family Plans that allows me to lock down my son’s phone in a variety of ways. I can enable, limit, or disable text messaging by phone. I can limit how many shared minutes he can use each month. I can limit what hours the phone will work. I can set restrictions on who can be called. In amongst all of these limitations, I can set numbers that can work all the time.
I’ll explain. We had Unlimited Family Texting, but he was texting during class in school. Additionally, he was calling his girlfriend and talking to her long past he was supposedly going to bed. I went into the dashboard via the T-Mobile site and set the number of texts allowed each month to zero. Then I restricted the hours of use so the phone can only function between 3 and 11pm each night. However, I added all of our family cell phones, work numbers, and the home number as “always available” so if he needs to call at lunch, or if he is stuck at a party or a friends house after 11, he can still get through to us. Finally, because he shares 11 hours of minutes with Mom and I each month, I can limit him to no more than 4 of those hours. That way he doesn’t leave us with an end of month overage.
The site also now allows you to disable receipt of text messages. One problem we had previously was that his friends all had unlimited text messaging. He didn’t have ANY text messaging! They would send him a text message, which was free to them but cost me fifteen cents. With that fee now at twenty cents, something had to be done. I now have his phone set only to receive system messages from T-Mobile.
If your service does NOT allow this type of customization, call and ask when or if they will. Raise a ruckus. With these new limits set, I am considering adding my daughter’s phone to our plan as well. I figure that if I have to purchase minutes, I will spend $100 this year. If I add her to the plan, I will spend $120 and never have to worry whether she has enough minutes, whether she is wasting them, and I will actually have MORE control of her phone than I do now. Oh, if ONLY they had done this 3 months earlier, I could have saved about $50 and be done with the entire process.
