Telephones and Television
Technology has created a world where mobile phones are getting cheaper and more sophisticated all the time, allowing social networking and text messaging on the go to become the preferred way of communicating. It’s also ushered in a new era of the television age, where price points are constantly dropping on flat screens that offer jaw-dropping high-definition possibilities.
In this chapter, I’ll show you how to get into a cheap unlimited phone plan with no contract, use your computer to make calls for extra cheap, and even make and receive international calls while traveling for next to nothing. Plus, I’ll show you how you can fire your cable or satellite provider and start enjoying a flood of cheaper programming that’s available over the Internet.
PHONES AND MOBILE DEVICES
Don’t sign a twenty-four-month cell phone contract
New cellular industry data from FierceWireless.com shows that two out of every three customers who signed up for service toward the end of the last decade did so with a noncontract carrier.
The Big Four carriers—AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon—had a long love affair with twenty-four-month contracts or “service agreements,” as they were euphemistically called.
For the longest time, the Big Four argued that contracts were necessary because they helped subsidize the cost of cell phones. But this explanation turned out to be bogus; early iPhone customers had to pay full market price for their phones, and they were still forced into a contract!
Let’s face it, in capitalism, contracts are for cowards. Carriers had to default to them because of the industry’s spotty record of customer service. It was their way of preventing you from fleeing. But Americans have grown tired of contracts.
Interestingly, T-Mobile (the smallest of the Big Four) has been experimenting with a European-style plan called Even More Plus. This plans allows you to bring your own phone to their network; there’s no contract; and you typically pay $10 less than someone who’s in a contract. No word yet on how successful this market initiative will be.
Remember, there are also a whole host of no-contract providers out there, such as MetroPCS, Cricket Communications, Straight Talk, Boost Mobile, and Virgin Mobile. See the “Switch to a Cheap No-Contract Cell Phone Provider” entry in the “Help Me Now, Clark” chapter at the beginning of this book (see page 9).
Contracts will eventually go the way of the dodo bird. But don’t wait for that to happen down the road. If you’re out of a contract, why not go noncontract instead of re-upping with a service agreement that just handcuffs you for another twenty-four months?
Don’t buy cell phone insurance
With how expensive some iPhones and Android phones can be, a lot of consumers are tempted to buy cell phone insurance. They end up paying about $5 or $7 per month for the insurance, plus a deductible of up to $100 or more if the phone gets damaged or lost.
Insurance should just be for catastrophic kinds of things that you could never afford to replace. Let’s face it, if your smartphone goes kaput, you could always get a cheaper phone or activate an old one you might have sitting in a drawer somewhere.
Most phones come with a one-year manufacturer’s warranty anyway. As I told you in “Help Me Now, Clarke,” you can extend a manufacturer’s original warranty for free. You do this by using a credit card to double it up to one additional year at the time of purchase. That’s two years of the equivalent of insurance for free.
Several years ago, there was a lawsuit alleging that cell phone insurance is fraud. The suit states that you’re paying for insurance on a used phone. That’s right—when you turn in your damaged phone and get another one, it’s usually “refurbished” anyway. Consumer Reports weighed in on this topic, saying that people should get cell phone insurance only if they own a very expensive phone. Insurance rates are the same for a $500 phone and a $50 phone. So it definitely makes no sense if you’re at the lower end of the scale. And they found that only one in five people actually used the insurance.
Consider a prepaid cell phone plan for light-volume calling
If you need a cell phone for only occasional use, there’s almost no reason to be with one of the Big Four cell providers, who generally give you a block of minutes and eat you alive if you go over those minutes.
For light cell phone users, there are so many options in the market. One of the old standbys has been Net10.com. No roaming charges, no long distance charges, no monthly fees, and a flat 10 cents per minute for calls.
Net10 plans start at $15 per month for 150 minutes. Their phones start at around $20 and are available online and at Walmart stores. If you want one with a keyboard for texting, you’ll pay $79 and up.
The Common Cents phones start at around $19 and are available online and at Walmart stores. If you want a phone that has a keyboard for texting, those start at $69.
These are all no-contract plans and no-contract is the wave of the future in the industry. Find out when your contract ends and reshop the market!
Thanks to Clark’s recommendation, I ditched a contract phone plan and went to a prepaid plan from T-Mobile. I found that was the only way to take control of my outrageously expensive cell phone bill. Now, not only do I decide how much I pay, I decide when I want to buy more minutes. To make it ever sweeter, Clark told me about CallingMart.com. I use it to buy my minutes without paying sales tax, and it often has promotions where I get 10 percent off. I buy 1,000 minutes at a time (they’re good for a year) and they usually cost me only 9 cents a minute. Since switching over a year ago, I’ve cut my monthly cell phone cost from $58 to about $15. I tell everyone I know about this and many have made the switch too. Thanks, Clark!! You rock!!!
Nathan D., UT
Try Google Voice
One of Google’s latest free services, Google Voice, is the search engine giant’s attempt to get into the phone business. This free service offers users a single number for their cell, home phone, office phone, and any other phones to ring on. There are no monthly fees, no minimums, and no sign-up fees. As always, going forward, this service is likely to be monetized with ads.
Other Google Voice features include free voice mail, free call forwarding, and free conference calling. With the voice mail feature, you’re able to listen in as voice mails are being left for you and pick up in the middle of the call—just like you would with an answering machine. You can also have voice mails automatically converted into text messages.
Google Voice is likely to get the wireless carriers twisted into pretzels. FierceWireless. com reports that the service might allow you to stop paying big bucks for unlimited calling to a select group of “favorite” numbers. You’ll be able to route your calls through Google Voice for nada, thereby freeing you up to cut your plan down to the lowest level for unlimited calling. I’m figuring that will be about $29 per month on most plans. But wait, there’s more! You can also do international calling using Google Voice at a tiny fraction of the cost of what it is with your wireless provider.
This is a lot of functionality wrapped up into one package. So how do you get it? Go to Google.com/voice (the lowercase “v” in “voice” is case sensitive) to watch an introductory video and sign up.
Vet your cell phone bill for the cram
There could be a scam lurking in your cell phone bill that’s ugly yet quite preventable; it’s called the “cram.” Cramming is the practice by which crooks set up third-party marketing groups to post bogus charges to your monthly bill. Once limited to the monopoly landline industry, the cram is now popping up on cell phone bills, according to the Federal Trade Commission. With more and more Americans disconnecting their landlines, criminals have unfortunately migrated to where there is opportunity.
One Florida man who was running a cram operation from his jail cell (!) managed to steal $35 million by posting charges on the last pages of cell phone bills that consumers didn’t even notice. That’s probably because the hieroglyphics of your bill are almost unintelligible. Cram charges on a cellular statement may be masked with an innocuous term like “Internet advertising,” “service fee,” “calling plan,” “premium content,” “direct bill charge,” or “minimum monthly usage fee.”
The FTC also busted another cram scheme that netted $19 million over a five-year period, with fake charges that ranged from $12.95 to $39.95 per month. An operation called Inc21 outsourced its cram business to foreign telemarketers who called people to offer “free” trials for website hosting, directory listings, search engine advertising, and Internet-based faxing. The telemarketers offered no disclosure that unsuspecting customers would have to take steps to avoid charges.
No one should be calling you on your cell phone offering supposedly “free” services. Be especially careful of fill-out sweepstakes entry forms or toll-free services like a date line or a psychic line. Buried in the mice-type of your terms of services could be a clause that says you give permission to have your account dinged each month for a certain number of dollars.
So what’s the alternative to getting ripped off? Either be sure to go through your bill every month page by page to vet out any cram charges or, better yet, call your wireless carrier and tell them to block access for third-party charges. This block is usually free.
After hearing Clark’s comment on cramming, I decided to check my Verizon [Wireless] bill. Under “Usage Charges, Data” I found a $9.99 charge from a ringtone company called Flycell. So I called Verizon to ask about the reason for the charge. They said that it had been going on for over a year and it is something that I authorized. I said, “Heck no,” and the operator replied, “I can give you a $50 refund, but I can’t go over that without supervisor approval.” But they won’t grant approval because I am supposed to check my bill. I can’t get all the horses that have been stolen, but I stopped more from being stolen!
Harvey C., WA
Avoid “off deck” charges on your kids’ cell phones
Half of all children age twelve and up now have a cell phone, according to the global connectivity research outfit Yankee Group. That means parents have to be especially wary of what are being termed “off deck” deals, where the cell phone provider partners with marketers who offer supposedly free ringtones, jokes of the day, and other services.
A recent article in The New York Times reported on a consumer whose child responded for a “free” joke of the day that cost $20!
The business model here is that the cell providers split the money in half with the marketers. Cell providers particularly love those cheap add-a-phone offers for kids that tend to price out around $10 each month because the parent must also accept responsibility for any charges that are incurred.
So it’s incumbent on you to teach your kids that they are not to respond to any “free” offers that are being pitched on their cell phone.
If you get hit with off deck charges, call your cell phone company and tell them to remove the charge. Try explaining that you know they’re in cahoots with the marketer. Even my executive radio producer, Christa DiBiase, got taken in by one of these rip-offs. But I get the monthly bill for her cell phone as a business expense! It took me three months of calls (and three months of charges) before I finally got the cell phone company to behave.
This is why it’s so important to read through your cell bill page by page, as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this book. Don’t get taken advantage of because of how confusing the bills can be.
The New York Times also reported that some cell providers offer a $60 per year service in which they agree not to rip you off with all these off deck charges.
In just one example, AT&T’s Smart Limits option lets you control the dollar amount of downloads purchased and put constraints on the number of text and instant messages and more for a monthly fee of $5. But why should you have to pay a fee to prevent a company from ripping you off as a customer? That’s outrageous!
Use free directory assistance
Do you remember when it was free to call directory assistance? Some free services are making a comeback thanks to new ad-based business models.
Several years ago, my eldest daughter called old-fashioned directory assistance and was charged $1.80! That was until I told her about a variety of free alternatives.
For the longest time, one of my favorites was 800-FREE-411 (800-373-3411) because you only had to listen to an advertisement to get the number you wanted. Another free option I’m aware of is the ad-supported 800-YELLOWPAGES (800-935-5697).
People sometimes gripe that the numbers they get from these free services aren’t always correct. But several years ago I saw a study that found that the numbers you get from paid services are just as likely to be wrong. So why pay extra for the chance of a wrong number?
I often turn to the Internet when I’m looking for a number. I practically never look in a phone book anymore. In the 1979 move The Jerk, starring Steve Martin, there is a scene where the new phone book arrives and Martin goes running for it, looks up his name, and shouts, “I am somebody! I’m in the phone book!” Pretty soon people won’t know what the whole phone book phenomenon was about. In the future there might not be any phone books, because the costs to print and distribute them are so high compared with the costs of looking up phone numbers on the Internet.
Jailbreak your iPhone
Adding unauthorized apps to an iPhone has been deemed a legal activity by the Library of Congress during a recent routine review of copyright rules.
The process of adding non-Apple-approved apps to the iPhone or other Apple devices is known as “jailbreaking.” The term also denotes unlocking a locked device so it can be used on another network, such as taking your iPhone and making it work on T-Mobile.
Doing so had been considered illegal under an existing interpretation of the rules. But that didn’t stop iPhone owners from doing it! More than 4 million iPhones and iPod Touch devices were jailbroken by the end of the last decade, according to the Los Angeles Times.
One word of caution: Jailbreaking your iPhone will void your warranty. So if the iPhone is damaged in the process, Apple is not required to provide technical support to help you resolve any issues.
But in general, I love that jailbreaking has gotten the thumbs-up on legal grounds. If you want to jailbreak a phone, one listener to my radio show recently suggested searching for tutorial videos on YouTube that will have step-by-step instructions. I would add that you should read the user comments below any video you’re considering following to make sure others who have tried the advice give it a thumbs-up.
Get better home cell reception with a femtocell
Cell phones are great, but they can be a real pain if you get a lousy signal at home. That’s where a “femtocell” can come in handy. Femtocells are like tiny cell towers you can put in your home to improve cellular reception. They should not be confused with those “fembots” with the exploding heads from the Austin Powers movies!
Most cell phone companies now offer this product, but you have to ask for it. Depending on your company, they will either give you the device for free with no monthly fee, charge you for it up front with no monthly fee, or charge you both for the device and a monthly fee.
A femtocell will use your broadband connection to deliver a reliable, crystal-clear connection. I’ve used Sprint’s femtocell at home and my wife and I are now getting nine bars on our cells! The ads show five bars—who knew you could have nine?
An alternative is third-party antenna boosters that can blast a signal through your house or office for no monthly fee. Fair warning, though, these third-party signal boosters are very expensive, usually $200 to $400.
A website called Wi-Ex.com offers a femtocell called the zBoost for $169 that works with most popular phones. But you must have an existing signal outside your home for a femtocell to amplify; if you don’t have a signal, it won’t be of any help.
A femtocell might be able to give you enough signal on your cell that you’ll want to disconnect your landline and drop your monopoly local phone company. Femtocells are the next step in the evolution of the cell phone’s destroying the need for an antiquated home landline. There’s almost no reason left to have a home phone from a local company in today’s world.
Moisture strips in cell phones can be inaccurate
There are moisture strips inside cell phones that show whether your phone has gotten wet or been submerged. Cell phone companies use these like law to void your warranty and deny you repair service.
The cell companies claim the moisture strips are foolproof, but in fact, according to the New York Post, they are faulty. It’s been proven that just by putting a damp cloth next to the phone, you can change the color of the strip!
So if you have a problem with your cell phone, and you are told your warranty is void because you got it wet (when you know you really didn’t), here’s what I recommend. Find an old cell phone you’re not using anymore, take it back to the store, put a damp cloth near the strip on the battery, and prove to them right there that the strip is not accurate!
LANDLINE AND VoIP
Get cheap VoIP calling for $20 per year
Being a cheap guy, I’m often willing to take a chance on the next great thrifty thing—including dubious tech services that soon fail and go into Clark’s Graveyard! (See page 241 for the complete body count!)
One of the things I’ve tried in recent years is magicJack.com, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) service. VoIPs are a lot less complicated than their name suggests. These kinds of plans work just like traditional calls. The only difference is that you’re using your high-speed Internet as your connection to make and receive the calls.
With magicJack, a scant $40 buys you one year of unlimited local/long distance phone service through your computer. You simply plug a landline phone into the magicJack USB device and then plug it into your computer’s USB port to start making calls. A subsequent year of service costs about $20.
I’ve used magicJack on four continents with the free Internet connection in my hotel rooms. It’s allowed me to call back to the United States for nada. Boy, have I loved the money that it’s saved me!
The ultimate test is when I’m overseas and call my college-age daughter on magicJack. She’ll start telling me a story about what happened in class that day, like I’m in the room with her! These ultra-inexpensive phone services eliminate the long-distance charges. Likewise, when my wife and I were in Italy, we had magicJack hooked up in Sorrento and the phone would ring and it would be one of the kids or my wife’s parents calling to say hello!
The magicJack business model is a complete mystery to me, and I long ago expected it to be in the Graveyard. But I sure hope it stays around.
One caveat to share with you: Along with ZenniOptical.com, magicJack is one of the most polarizing things I talk about on my show. A lot of people love that magicJack allows them to make unlimited long distance calls over the Internet for about $3 and change per month. Others have griped endlessly about the call quality and lack of customer service.
So let the buyer beware on this one. As for me, I’m perfectly willing to accept lower quality for a lower price!
A CLARK FAVORITE
Drop your landline
If you’re looking for an easy way to reduce your monthly budget, consider dropping your landline and going cell phone only. About one in five Americans have disconnected their home phone, while an additional 13 percent say they have a home phone that they never use. That’s about one-third of all Americans who have gone cell phone only or are very close to it.
What about you? Can you go cell phone only—with a VoIP service like Skype, magicJack, or Ooma as a backup—and get rid of your home phone?
Whenever I discuss this issue, I hear from those who say, “Well, what do I do after a natural disaster when my cell phone doesn’t work?” I did medical evacuations in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. There were no working cell phones. However, the cable operator was still working. Vonage saved the day for many people who would have been otherwise cut off. Today many emergency personnel have satellite phones in the event of an emergency.
Another common objection to dropping the landline comes from people who say they need it for their burglar alarm system. But professional burglars will simply cut the phone line before going in. That’s why security consultants routinely recommend wireless monitoring instead.
Other people tell me they need a landline for Internet access and for pay satellite TV. But you can get naked DSL for the Internet (see page 50) and then watch free TV and movies over the Internet (see page 2). There’s always a way to get around having a landline at home!
The typical local phone bill is $30 to $50 each month. That could be $360 or $600 back in your pocket annually if you make the jump.
Vet your landline bill for the cram
For those of you who still have a landline, you’ve got to be extra careful about that oldie but baddie scam involving false charges being posted to your bill I mentioned earlier—the practice that’s known as cramming.
Businesses with landlines face typical cram charges, perhaps for a bogus 800 or 900 number, of $10 or $15. For a consumer with a home phone, it’s more like $5 to $10. But here’s the dirty secret: The monopoly phone company that does the “courtesy” third-party billing for these crooks takes a cut of the proceeds. It’s to their benefit to cram these charges on your bill! Worse yet, if you call their bluff, they’ll give you back only a month or two of the money you’ve lost—no matter how long you’ve been getting ripped off.
Verizon and AT&T are the two big monopoly local phone companies across much of the nation. Fortunately, Verizon does offer a free Bill Block service where they effectively prevent themselves from putting third-party charges on your bill. If you’re a Verizon customer, simply get in touch with them and request this free service. Special thanks to Mitch Lipka of The Boston Globe for reporting this tidbit.
AT&T, however, refuses to follow Verizon with the bill blocking. When my show staff questioned them on this, their statement read in part, “Currently we do not have the ability to automatically block third-party charges.”
The ability or the desire? AT&T needs to wake up and realize it’s not a good idea for a corporate citizen to be in business with criminals. How much could they possibly make from cram charges, and is it worth the price of their reputation? AT&T went on to explain in a page of corporate doublespeak that you can work with customer service to have the cram charges removed from your bill. But I say, just do the right thing in the first place, AT&T. It’s your job to go through your phone bill line by line each month and make sure you’re not on the hook for cram charges, especially if you’re a business customer.
TELEVISION
Know your flat-screen TVs before buying
Several years ago, I made a statement on my radio show to the effect that most women would rather buy and receive jewelry than electronics. Boy, did I get an earful from that! A poll on ClarkHoward.com about who was purchasing flat-screen televisions proved that my statement was a chauvinistic one.
Now when I’m in stores, more women than men ask me for advice on buying high-definition TVs. Both sexes have their heads spinning like Linda Blair in The Exorcist with all the choices out there. With that in mind, I want to offer you a primer on the three types of HDTVs that dominate the market: LCDs (liquid crystal display), DLPs (digital light processing), and plasma TVs.
Get an LCD if you’re looking to reduce energy consumption and want something with a small cabinet. LCDs are also good if there’s a lot of natural sunlight available.
DLPs are great if you have space for foot-long cabinets and huge screens. They might look huge, but they are actually very light. One drawback with DLPs is that you have to look straight at your TV to see the image. They’re not good if your room has lots of side-viewing angles. In that instance, you probably want a plasma because the picture is rich and true from any angle. But plasmas are bad in rooms with natural sunlight, which washes out the picture.
For my money, I prefer plasmas over LCDs for picture quality. But keep in mind that plasmas use more energy than LCDs.
A lot of shoppers also get confused by the 1080p versus 720p resolution issue. The manufacturing industry is moving toward 1080p, but all the programming is in 720p. My advice is to buy a cheaper 720p set for now. By the time all the programming switches over, 1080p sets will be more affordable than they are now. Don’t overbuy at today’s prices for something that will steadily be cheaper tomorrow.
Finally, here are some target price points to keep in mind. For 32-inch LCDs, look for deals in the $400s. Don’t pay more than $600. The 42-inch plasmas should go for around $700, while 50-inch ones will go up to $900. If you’re going to spend around $900 for a DLP, make sure you get a 60-inch set. DLPs tend to have more repair issues than the other two, but they’re all basically reliable. Do not under any circumstances buy an extended warranty! (See my tip “Avoid extended warranties” on page 8.)
CLARK’S GREATEST HITS
Go back to rabbit ears and fire your pay TV provider
With all the talk of where TV is going in the future, it’s easy to forget that it’s also extra cheap where it’s been in the past. Don’t overlook the original option: using an old-fashioned pair of rabbit-ear antennas to pick up local channels over the air for free!
The process is actually really simple. Go to AntennaWeb.org, click the “Choose an antenna” button, and enter your street address. They’ll tell you what channels will be available to you and what kind of antenna would be best for you.
Then you simply need to buy the antenna and a converter box to get the digital signal. Both are routinely available at any major electronics store. Just follow AntennaWeb’s recommendations about the best equipment for your home.
My family was fed up with paying so much for a television service when, in reality, we only ended up watching our local channels. Out of curiosity, I changed my newer televisions’ input over to digital antenna mode and was stunned by what I saw! I had a couple of stunning HD channels without even having an antenna hooked up! I was sold.
I went to AntennaWeb.org and found out what kind of antenna I would need. I hooked it up and now I have lots of quality channels. Most channels were HD. I did some research and discovered that TIVO will work with over-the-air service.
The only snag I ran into was my homeowners association not allowing me to put an antenna on my house. I did some more research and discovered that they were in the wrong and breaking the law by saying I could not have a reasonable -sized antenna on my house (do a search for “FCC OTARD” and you’ll see what I mean). So I am saving lots of money and with the DVR, I am enjoying my television service more than I ever have.
Jeffrey E., WA
Dump your cable or satellite provider for cheaper high-tech options
I love Netflix.com and its on-demand video service. But there’s another option called Vudu .com that has a slightly different business model.
With Netflix on demand, you sit down with a remote, select the movie you want to see, and then it streams to your computer or TV over the Internet via your Wii console. Wait times for a movie are generally less than one minute, and most subscription plans start at $8 per month. They also have a limited plan at $4.99 that offers one DVD a month and two hours of on-demand content.
Vudu, however, doesn’t lock you into any monthly contract. You pay for what you choose to watch. That means you can pay $1 for an older movie or up to about $8 for a hot title in full 1080p HD format, all streamed over the Internet through your HDTV or Blu-ray player.
Vudu became a real threat to Walmart, the nation’s largest seller of DVDs. That prompted the retail giant to buy out Vudu, with plans to keep the service fully operational and extra cheap!
Another way to beat hefty bills for pay TV is to watch at least some of your TV online for free. In the next few years it will get easier and easier to get programming from the Internet to your TV without being a techno-geek. For now, we have an interim technology called TVersity.com that lets you stream Internet video and more to your TV, Xbox, Wii, or PlayStation console.
The next wave of innovation will likely come from Google—who else? Sony has teamed up with Google to work on a new open-source method for getting Internet programming on your TV in a seamless, easy fashion.
By Christmas of 2011, it will be so easy to get Internet shows on your TV—regardless of your technical know-how—that it will be common and mainstream. Now this doesn’t mean that all Internet programming will be free. Hulu.com, for example, has begun charging for content. But at least these new solutions will render the middleman—the cable and satellite companies—unnecessary.
Watch Internet programming on your TV if you’re not tech-savvy
So much of where TV is headed involves getting content over the Internet. That’s great, but what if the only thing you know about computers is how to turn them on? Several years ago, I talked about a service called Sezmi.com on my radio show. Sezmi uses the Internet to provide some cable channels and all local broadcast stations right on your big screen with a fancy DVR. (Though there’s no ESPN, sports fans!) No technical know-how is required.
This service is now testing in select markets for $19.99 per month. It’s a good option for those who aren’t that tech-savvy but still want to watch some Web-based programming. High-speed Internet access is required. The DVR does have a cost of about $149 or more up front, but after that investment you pay only the monthly fee.
The real savings are for those who want limited Internet programming, because Sezmi also has a $4.99 per month option. With the cheaper plan, you get all your local channels (no cable), YouTube, video podcasts, and on-demand movies and TV shows from all the major Hollywood studios on your TV—all without any technical know-how on your part. (Most on-demand TV shows are free. The movies rent from less than a buck for older titles to up to $5 for new releases.)
Sezmi is available in thirty-six metro areas as I write this. Visit the website to see if it’s available in your town. This could be a great excuse to fire your cable or satellite provider and stop paying those hefty bills.