Smartphone bill shock comes as no surprise
Thursday, October 14th, 2010 Karen Ambrose Hickey, Editor
Yesterday, this article ran in the New York Times: F.C.C. Wants to Stop Cellphone ‘Bill Shock’.
This comes after months of articles about bill overruns. In talking to our own IT Director, I learned that managing roaming charges are one of her top concerns.
Back when AT&T announced tiered pricing, I asked my colleagues and followers out on Twitter about peoples’ average consumption. I found that:
- No one checks (or cares to check)
- No one knows how to check
- Having checked, most had the counter going since they got the phone, rather than checking/restarting the counter each month.
From the article: “Most people still don’t know what a megabyte is,” Mr. Genachowski said. “So it’s hard to expect them to know when they have reached their limits.”
Our IT Director commented that seeing the MB number doesn’t do it either. A phone user needs to see the dollar amount, making the impact more tangible. It’s easier to decide whether to download or make the call, when faced with an overrun of costs.
A consumer will pay more attention when they themselves are paying the bill (look at these articles on “surprised” customers!). Enterprises, accordingly, have a dilemma, being further removed from the device. As we found in our Mobile Workforce Report, 76% of mobile employees surveyed said that they have their smartphone bill fully or partially paid by their company. They are probably paying less attention, if any, to those overruns and charges. And may never know what they are costing the company.
Tags: cost management
