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5 ways your mobile phone company might be over charging you

Most people we know never look at their mobile phone bills in great detail. And this is where they lose out because chances are your mobile company might have used one or more ways to get more money from you than was necessary. Be aware of these and be diligent in checking your bill to ensure you have not been over charged.

1. Billing mistakes
2. Caller tunes
3. Cancellation of Value Added Services
4. Security deposits
5. Calls and SMS to special numbers
1. Billing mistakes: This one is simple and obvious. The operator might have billed you more than was necessary because there could be a simple billing error in their software. Calls might not be charged according to your monthly plan. You might have been over-billed for services you did not use or do not want.
2. Caller tunes: Many mobile operators offer caller tunes without the subscriber having even asked for them, and then charge the customer for it. The charge seems like a lowly Rs 40 or so per month, but when you measure that across 10s of millions of subscribers for the operators, that's a lot of money the operator is earning at your expense.
3. Cancellation of Value Added Services: Operators are smart and they bill you for value added services, on a pro-rata basis, i.e., only for the duration of time that you had the service active. Yet, even when you have cancelled this service, the charge for the next month often shows up on your bill.
4. Security deposits: Your deposit for services remains with the operator, earning interest for the operator. Yet, your money is returned to you months after you cancelled the service, that too without any interest earned on it. And if you happen to be late with your bill payment, the operator charges a late payment fee, yet they do nothing when they are late in refunding your money to you.
5. Calls and SMS to special numbers: Often these are charged at 3x - 5x the cost of a normal call or SMS, without the costs of these services being disclosed. For instance, dialing your operator's suggested number to get missed call info is expensive. Similarly, sometimes you might have unsuccessfully made a an ISD call but you still get charged for the same.

We are thankful for mobile operators for having empowered millions of Indians to communicate with each other. Sure, they need to charge for their services, but it would be great to see more transparent ways of dealing with customers.

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