My Cellphone My Terms

3 Tips for getting the best cell phone deal

#1. Understand your needs

What do you really use your cell phone for? Unlimited anything always seems attractive, however, “unlimited” typically comes with a hefty price tag.  I happen to have an unlimited data plan – a relic by today’s standards – but I only use 25MB of data per month.  So what do I with it? Well, I check and respond to emails repeatedly when on the road. I can’t say I enjoy typing emails on my phone so I keep it short; however, I do approximately 150 emails per month.  I don’t do a whole lot of web browsing from my device, in part because the experience isn’t the greatest, (HTC S720 – Slider Keyboard) but I do browse the web as more of a necessity. For example to win an argument or prove a point – I Google It -, to find a location or the contact information of a business or to get updated scores of games.  The cell phone market usually communicates data plans in gigabytes (GB), so to put it differently I use 0.025 GB of data per month.  So if I had a 1GB data plan I would be able to do 40 times as much as I do per month all things being equal.  The biggest culprit we hear off when it comes to exceeding one’s data plan is watching videos from YouTube on your cellphone.  That is the fastest way to run up a huge bill if you aren’t careful, so some common sense is required. Know where you stand in terms of data usage, check out this table to learn more about what you can do with the various data plans.

#2. Try not to be too aggressive

Here is an example of an overly aggressive proposal we saw recently:

Apple iPhone 3GS 16GB @ $0 450 Anytime Minutes Unlimited Data Unlimited Text 100 Long Distance minutes Evenings & Weekends (5PM-8AM) 2 year contract

$19 per month

If you are unclear what to ask for, create your proposal by leveraging our community deals as a starting point and customize the proposal further if you wish.  Our Dealer network is committed to offering you great value, so the only thing left to do is know a great deal when you see one.

#3. Know a good cell phone deal when you see one

A good cell phone deal really depends on your needs and that depends on how you put together your proposal to start with.  The myCELLmyTERMS website has a sophisticated ranking algorithm that presents the three most valuable deals by default, highlighting anything better than what you asked for in GREEN, anything shy of your ask in RED and CHECK MARKS to symbolize perfect matches.  While that speaks to the mechanics of understanding your deal, a good cell phone deal really depends on the features included and what’s being offered.  Understanding the value of these features and what they mean to you can be daunting and one of the reasons we put together this cell phone glossary to help understand what all the bells and whistles mean.

For many people “savings” is the name of the game. The following table highlights the likelihood of saving, depending on what you currently have (i.e. current terms) and what you are looking for (i.e. proposed terms).

Current Terms vs. Proposed Terms	Likelihood of Saving	Why?
From voice plan to voice plan	High	This is the biggest opportunity to save on your bill, because they are many tools in the market that can be used to reduce how much you are charged for voice calls.  Some examples include, calling circles, incoming minutes and carrier to carrier calling.
From voice plan to voice & data plan	Low	When adding data to an existing voice plan the overall cost typically increases. At times there is an opportunity to leverage a combined voice and data package at a reduced rate.
From voice & data plan to voice & data plan	Medium	Providing you are not increasing your data needs there is an opportunity to save on your data costs.

So let’s put these three tips to work and get you the best cell phone deal on your terms.