Understanding how your cellular minutes work is one of the most confusing and least understood aspects of any wireless communications plan. It's not surprising that this lack of understanding is what leads to shockingly high phone bill surprises. So if you want to prevent getting one it's important to have a basic understanding of how they work.

You basic cell phone plans come with a monthly allotment of anytime minutes, and usually free or night and/or weekend minutes. When you make a call the thing to understand is the phone company is going to use the most expensive minutes first. For example let's say your plan has 200 minutes per month. During the first week of the month all of your calls are made during the day using what are known as peak minutes. You make 120 minutes worth of calls. For the remainder of the month you make 200 minutes worth of calls but they are all at night during the time when your carrier offers free calling. You've used 320 minutes worth of calling time for the month. However to your wireless provider you used 200 of your anytime minutes, and they gave you 120 minutes of free night time calling.

Many people make the assumption they only used 120 minutes of calling time and have 80 minutes left unused, which is incorrect. This incorrect assumption can compound itself if the customers has a rollover plan and assumes 80 minutes are going into the bank. For this calling period however there will be no overage charges.

Lets look at another example. During the first three weeks of the month you make 200 minutes worth of calls at night during the free calling period. The the last week in the month you make 120 minutes of calls during the day or peak hours. You made 320 minutes worth of calls but the 200 were at night and were free and the 120 is less than the 200 so there will be no overage charges right? Well if you thought like that you'll be pretty surprised with the overage charges that came on your next bill. Your wireless provider used your 200 anytime minutes during the first three weeks when you were calling at night. So when you made the 120 minutes of calls the last week of the month they were all peak overage minutes. Overage minutes are always billed at higher cost than regular minutes which makes the problem worse.

The key point to understand is the wireless provider is always going to use the most expensive minutes first. In fact it's impossible to use free night and weekend minutes until you have gone through all of your anytime minutes first. Understanding exactly how your wireless minutes work can help you plan out how to avoid overage charges at the end of the month

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