<p>Two weeks ago, my husband and I moved our daughter into her dorm for her freshman year. All is well--roommate, classes, on-campus job. The problem is that her cell phone use has increased dramatically since she left home. We have a family plan with shared minutes, and we increased 'her share' to 600 minutes. However, at her current rate, she will nearly double that, sending us (her!) into overage charges of 40 cents/minute. We noticed the 'problem' after week one, discussed it with her, but week 2 is no better.</p>
<p>Question: Is 600 minutes/month unreasonably low?</p>
<p>I think 600 minutes sounds generous. That's 10 hours of being on the telephone.</p>
<p>We have 500 for the family (3 phones). D has been told only to use her cell after 9 pm or on weekends when minutes are unlimited. Otherwise she is to use the dorm phone in her room for local calls which has no airtime charges. We'll see what happens when we get the first bill.</p>
<p>As a freshman, I split 1000 minutes with my mother on a family plan. Not counting my "in" minutes (we have verizon, so I could call my parent's cell phones for free anytime, as well as any other verizon customer), I used about 400 a month. I'm not a huge talker, but I use my phone at least once a day to talk to someone, and sometimes for awhile. </p>
<p>IN minutes helped keep my tally low (does your carrier offer this?) but since at college, your cell phone is pretty much your only phone, it's reasonable for the usage to jump. I used about 200 minutes a month on my previous plan, and that about doubled.</p>
<p>However, she might be talking too much if she needs 1200 minutes a month. If she goes over, the overage should probably be her responsibility- 600 minutes is plenty even for a pretty big talker. Six hundred minutes is 10 hours on the phone, approximately. 1200 minutes is 20 hours of talking...that's a lot.</p>
<p>Remember, every 10 second 'Where are you?' or 'Meet me at the library at 6' call counts as one minute, So the minutes for non-talkers can add up too. Make sure you have text message allowance. Even my non-talker uses the phone to text.</p>
<p>My d left for school with a plan for 450 minutes. She went over the first month. So we upgraded her, the next plan had 900 minutes. (Which she doesn't use all of--but there is no plan in the middle.)</p>
<p>We did increase her text messages, 200 a month incoming and outgoing and she comes close to the total each month. </p>
<p>Is she calling old friends from high school to catch up. If so, that may die down as they all get settled into their new schools</p>
<p>Depending on the relative cost, you may want to consider signing up for something like <a href="http://www.onesuite.com%5B/url%5D">www.onesuite.com</a>. It gives you calls for 3 cents a minute from land lines. My daughter uses this quite a bit for long distance calls because her cell phone reception is really lousy (offtimes nonexistent) inside her dorm. Local calls she uses land line if she is in her room, which leaves cell phone calls limited to when she is elsewhere -- and minutes haven't been a problem.</p>
<p>Our cell phone bill went up last year when my daughter was a freshman in direct proportion to the number of friends she made. We found it was not her phone minutes but her text messaging which increased the bill. We upped the it to unlimited incoming and 500 for her for $10 a month on our Verizon family plan.</p>
<p>We are also on a family plan, (3 of us and my secretary) with free calls anytime between cell phones in our network and then we buy down the nights to 7 p.m.. No problem yet. She just doesn't call before 7 unless it's on the cell. She also has unlimited text incoming.</p>
<p>Thank you for all of the quick replies! Most of you have confirmed my feeling that her current 'share' is adequate. To answer some of your questions and add additional info:
1. Yes, we have Verizon, so her calls to us or Verizon friends are free. But her boyfriend, who hasn't left for college yet, has a different carrier. Therein could like the problem, I know.<br>
2. Text messaging has increased also, but she has 500 and only uses ~300 now.
3. If her usage continues to be out of line, yes she will pay the charges! Could be painful to the pocketbook.
4. We have considered upgrading our plan to add additional minutes, which would cost an additional $20/month. Daughter would have to pay the $20. The drawback to this is that it would extend our contract with Verizon. (I hate cell phone contracts, but that is a different topic!)</p>
<p>Easy answer. Tell her to make the boyfriend switch or add him to your plan JUST TO TALK TO HER. That's what my secretary's phone is for. Just to call me and get calls from me. $10 dollars I think, plus fees. Saves me 1000 minutes a month or more of daytime minutes. Works like a champ, and it was my salesman's idea after looking at my bill.</p>
<p>We have a huge family share plan. 4500 minutes for 4 phones. But my husband uses his cell as his primary business phone from 8 AM - 7 PM every day! And most of his calls are not in network (we're on Verizon). The kids (college freshman & a hs soph) are pretty good with it.... Most of their friends are also on Verizon (except a very close friend of the younger one). Both boys have travelled extensively over the summers.... and I've always told them that they should call cell to cell as much as possible if they're going to call during the day.... I usually have the phone somewhere near me. Same with calling their grandparents, friends, etc. And eachother (OK, that's my fantasy family. The only time the younger one calls his brother is for a ride... and that's coming to an end now that he's leaving today. ) But! I'll tell you where we go over, and its all the younger S's fault -- downloads! No matter how often I tell him NOT to do it.... it seems he can't help himself, and I'll find a $20 bill on my desk, with a note "for Verizon". One month, before I caught on, he had a joke a day (at $1/day) emailed to him!<br>
My advice: If your kid has an addiction like mine did.... read your bill closesly!</p>
<p>curmudgeon: I've actually thought about your 'easy answer'. Unfortunately, we already have the maximum number of phones on our share plan (5), 4 in our family + 81-year-old mother-in-law. Mother-in-law hasn't used a single minute in 5 months (she may not even remember how to turn the phone on!!), but do we take it away from her to give to the boyfriend? It may be the easy solution, but is it the right solution, to give boyfriend a phone?</p>
<p>If your MIL is not using her minutes, why don't you buy her a tracphone and giver her phone to the boyfiend. Seems crazy, huh! Would be easier if said boyfriend would switch to Verizon. His phone bill must be crazy also, so it would seem that his parents would want him to be on the same carrier as his GF.</p>
<p>A tracphone would be cheap, I think that you can buy a phone for $20 and only have to put a bare min. of minutes every 3 months. </p>
<p>If I did this, I would charge your D for Grandma's phone. This would be a cheaper option for her than paying overages.</p>
<p>Only problem would be getting phone back from BF if they broke up and if he abused the phone for calling GF.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Only problem would be getting phone back from BF if they broke up and if he abused the phone for calling GF.
[/quote]
[quote]
It may be the easy solution, but is it the right solution, to give boyfriend a phone?
[/quote]
He isn't gifted the phone. He can use the phone . I wasn't thinking psycho-social signals . I was thinking "cheap". Hmmmmmm. (That 's me thinking.) HMMMMMMMMMMMMM. (That's me thinking harder.) Nope. I got nothing. I don't know. I'll defer to smarter BF/GF folks.</p>
<p>There is obviously a LARGE element of trust involved that would rule out all but the best of the b/f's.</p>
<ol>
<li>Call any time as long as it's in network (i.e. free calls). Family members are all on the same network.</li>
<li>Call off network to anyone after 9PM (i.e. free calls). </li>
<li>Calls other than 1 or 2 need to be limited as much as possible and it's their responsibility to be cognizant of it and pay for overages.</li>
</ol>
<p>Keep in mind that typically for a college student, 9PM is like about 4 or 5 PM to the rest of us - i.e. it's not late.</p>
<p>I recently had a conversation with my daughter and son about their cell phone useage. We have 3 phones and share 500 minutes. This was fine when son was home and daughter was on campus. Now however, daughter is living off campus and son is on campus as college freshman. Both oos - different states. I checked our Verizon bill and son, who rarely talked on his cell, has used up 64 peak minutes in less then a week. Daughter was already consious of the peak/off-peak/in-network and out-of-network but still used up 200 peak minutes in 3 weeks. Son did not bother to get a landline phone for dorm so was using just his cell. Daughter has a shared landline phone for her apartment but most of the people that she wanted to call were long distance so she would use the cell. Here is part of an e-mail that I sent both kids that might help others on this board. (Ignore the time zone comment if it doesn't pertain!) :</p>
<p>You must update your phone by hitting *228 and you should do that monthly. This will not only update the cell tower information if new ones have been added but will also make sure that your billing times will be on central time and not eastern standard. Peak time is 6 am to 9 pm. This will also make your new phone area considered the local area for your phone.</p>
<p>You can check our balance by hitting #646 on your cell phone. Pay attention only to peak minutes. Those are the ones we share.</p>
<p>Cur, we had a similar situation with our daughter when she started college with BF at home. I too thought of adding him to our plan but fortunately, they broke up by Spring so I didn't have to deal with prying the phone back. If BF is already on another plan, I can't imagine that he or his parents would be in favor of breaking the contract or him having a phone (the one they gave him!) not being used. Calling after peak time seems the best solution to me.</p>
<p>We got a plan that is unlimited minutes and unlimited texting...we text a lot...some months we may be below what we would have used on old plan, but somemonths, wow, we are way above it, so we are ahead with no stress or worrying about time of day, etc</p>
<p>the whole system needs major revamping, imo, and I think it will, but if we don't ask for change, ie, extra charges if you call after 7:00:01pm, and why should 10 seconds count as a minute...they say its for billing ease,,,, hogwash....</p>
<p>I'm pretty much operating on the same theory as citygirlsmom- I'd rather adjust the plan to fit our use than try to change our habits to fit the plan. Less stress all around. I might review the plan in a couple of months after I see how it all shakes out with my daughter at college, though I don't think it's too likely that her usage will go down.</p>
<p>I remember when I first went to college - I couldn't afford a phone so I simply didn't have one - no worries about minutes (long before the days of the cell phone). Phone use is fairly ridiculous in this age of cell phones. People think they need to be on the phone constantly - especially when driving. I don't mind paying for fairly basic cell phone useage for my Ds but I'd never pay for anything close to 'unlimited minutes'. It's not needed and IMO is counter-productive. If they want to banter with their friends on the phone half the day, they can pay for it.</p>
<p>Agree with UCSD<em>UCLA</em>dad. Use the phone in network and offpeak. My D made the boyfriend calling mistake. Once I made her pay up for minutes she adjusted to the nights and weekends calling.</p>