Chit-Chat for Cheaper
A website that finds the best cell phone plan for you.
By Melanie Tutino
The cell phone – to the modern student, it is both friend and foe. When it serves to speedily connect you to the other voices in the world it seems nothing short of a necessity. When its accompanying bill shows up in your mailbox, its charm fades like your connection in a no-service zone.
The expense of owning a cell phone can amplify once one goes away to university. Even if an out-of-town Bishop’s student chooses to fasten an “819” to the front of his number, this will not decrease the (oftentimes colossal) long-distance charge of calling family and friends from “back home.” The trick is to find a plan that perfectly accommodates the way in which you use your cell phone – whether it be for local and/or long-distance use, for emergencies only or for nearly continuous use throughout the day.
The Cell Plan Expert (http://cellplanexpert.ca), a website started by Hamilton, Ontario-native David Lemstra, provides you with a list of the most inexpensive cell phone plans available in your Canadian city. In order to take advantage of this tool, you must first fill out a questionnaire on how you use your cell phone. Details like the times of day you most often spend on your phone and the percentage of out-of-towners versus locals that you typically telephone will factor into finding you your ideal plan. A few minutes to process and voilà, a list of varying length (mine was 18 pages) will be presented to you free of cost, with the plans listed in order of ascending price.
Interesting to note is that the Government of Canada spent over three years attempting to create a website that would provide a comparable service – using $1.4 million of taxpayers’ money to fund it. That website never made it online and seemingly never will; all attempts to realize the project have been dropped.
An Industry Canada spokesperson noted “technical limitations” as the reason for which the endeavour was abandoned. It has been suggested by some that the true reason stems from capitalistic, rather than technical, worries. The Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association pressured Industry Minister Tony Clement to drop the plan, fearing that cell phone companies would face a huge dip in their earnings.
Whether true or not, this speculation brings to the forefront another reason why the Cell Plan Expert is a legitimately helpful tool. Its sole aim is to cut the cost of its customers’ cell phone plans (without a thought toward the gain or loss of large corporations). In order to make money from advertising, the people at the Cell Plan Expert claim that they would need to promote different phone plans. This is the reason, they state, that they do not accept money in exchange for space on their website. They ask, on their site, if we would “still trust [them] to be impartial [if they did]?”
The other obvious perk of an independently-run versus government-headed website is that its creation is not funded with your tax-dollars. Lemstra told CBC reporters that he thinks $1.4 million to be an exorbitant sum to spend on such a project; his website, in fact, cost almost nothing to build.
Since he has rejected advertising as an option (and therefore makes no profit off his website), Lemstra does admit that a small fee may in future be added to the Cell Plan Expert. He thinks that the dollars saved on one’s cell phone bill will overshadow any small cost required in order to find that ideal plan.
It is advisable, therefore, to take advantage of this free service while it lasts. After all, there is nothing we need more than cheaper deals on our cell phones.
Comments
By Ethel Pickle on October 15th, 2009 at 11:56 pm
Thank you, Melanie Tutino, for introducing me to the Cell Plan Expert website. Although the questionnaire is time-consuming, the “payoff” is worth it! Tomorrow morning I will give my current provider a dingle and demand a better plan; thanks to Cell Plan Expert, my threats of switching to a competitor will not be empty! I’ll rattle off the more economical plans of competitors and I will surely have my way.
Once my new, cost-effective cell phone plan is set up, I will call Ontario-Native David Lemstra to thank him for the wonderful service he has provided us all with, and I will spare no words in thanking him – I won’t have to mind my minutes with these (projected) savings!
I do take issue with your concluding statement, Ms.Tutino. I can think of several things we need more than cheaper deals on our cell phones – food for the hungry springs to mind.
For shame.