There's a reason your phone bills make you want to scream.

Phone service is a classic example of the "gotcha" contract. You think you're signing up for one price, but when the bill comes it's much higher, larded with overage fees, unexpected charges and services you didn't authorize.

Fortunately, you can do something about all this. Here's your game plan:

First consider your home phone service. Unless reception in your home is poor, you typically can save money by using your cell for your long-distance calls, said Jody Rohlena, editor of ShopSmart magazine, a sister publication of Consumer Reports.

You might save even more by dropping your land line entirely, but Rohlena worries you may regret that decision if you ever need to call 911. Emergency operators can find land-line addresses easily if you can't talk, because those are wired into the system. Not so cell numbers.

You should at least weigh the risk before you terminate your land-line service. MSNBC columnist Bob Sullivan, the author of "Stop Getting Ripped Off: Why Consumers Get Screwed, and How You Can Always Get a Fair Deal," uses only a cell and isn't worried about the 911 issue "because I'm young and able. If I were my parents' age, I'd think twice about it."

Some options:

• An easy solution for people who want the wired-in 911 service is to downgrade their landline to basic phone service with no long-distance privileges, which typically costs about $15 a month, Sullivan said. The phone companies don't advertise basic service, he said, but most offer it.


• If it's just the convenience of the home handset you'd miss, you can find Bluetooth-enabled cordless phones that allow you to use your cell service with a home handset. The handsets can also help you make calls in any cell "dead zones" of your house.


• Internet phone service can offer significant savings for those who want or need a land line. MagicJack, which connects your phone to your computer for unlimited calling, costs $40 a year (but the software you download allows MagicJack to display ads on your computer). Vonage plugs into your high-speed modem and allows you to use your existing phone system for about $25 a month. To use Skype, you can use either a computer microphone and speakers or purchase a Skype-enabled phone. Unlimited calls to U.S. and Canadian land lines costs $2.95 a month; for $12.95 a month, you can get unlimited calls to land lines in more than 40 countries worldwide.


• Digital phone service, offered by cable companies and other providers over broadband connections, usually includes unlimited local and domestic long distance calling, as well as features such as call forwarding and caller ID, all for around $40 a month. You typically can register your number with your carrier to get 911 address location service.

But these services have another downside: If the Internet goes out or the power goes off, you have no phone. With old-fashioned land-line service, you can plug a nonelectric handset into the wall and still have service.

If you're intrigued by digital phone service, check into whether you can save by bundling it with your high-speed Internet and/or television service, Rohlena recommended.

Re-evaluate your cell plan. An informal Consumer Reports poll found two-thirds of respondents failed to use all their cell plan minutes each month. So "the A-No. 1 way to save on your cell phone is to get the right plan for your calling pattern," said Elisabeth Leamy, ABC News consumer correspondent and the author of "Save Big: Cut Your Top 5 Costs and Save Thousands." The variables include:

• How many anytime minutes you use.


• Whom you call frequently.


• How many lines you need.


• How much data you need (for e-mail and Web browsing).


• How much you text.

The problem, Leamy said, is that cell-phone companies "offer a zillion different plans that are all just slightly different, making it almost impossible to compare plans at one carrier, not to mention at multiple carriers."

Impossible, that is, unless you have help.

ShopSmart recommends two Web sites, BillShrink and MyValidas.com (also known as FixMyCellBill.com), to aid you in figuring out how to save. BillShrink is free but requires you to input some data from your bills. For $5, Validas will download your latest cell-phone bill and do a detailed analysis.

Leamy used FixMyCellBill.com (Validas) to find a better phone plan for a Virginia family of nine (two parents and seven kids) as part of a savings makeover series for ABC's "Good Morning America." The family had so many lines that they qualified for a small business plan and will save nearly $1,300 a year.

When I tested the sites, I was impressed with the results. Validas recommended a plan that saved us $10 a month with our current carrier. BillShrink suggested a variety of options at other carriers that could save us as much as $1,346 annually when our contract is up.

Validas also notes which numbers you call the most. This can help you take maximum advantage of "friends and family" plans that allow you to talk free to five or 10 other people. If you use this option, don't include people who have the same carrier you do, Rohlena said, because those "in network" calls are free.

Consider prepaid options. Neither BillShrink nor Validas will mention prepaid phones, but they can be a great solution if you're not a big talker, Rohlena said. Anyone who uses fewer than 200 minutes a month and many people who talk less than 300 minutes a month should consider prepaid, Sullivan said.

Prepaid service doesn't require a contract and usually costs $30 a month or less, with unlimited talk and text plans topping out at $50 a month. Instead of paying a monthly bill, you can:

• pay as you go (minutes usually cost 5 to 25 cents each, often with a per-day access fee of $1 to $2).


• buy blocks of minutes.


• buy a monthly plan with a set number of minutes for a fee.

Prepaid carriers include MetroPCS, TracFone and Virgin Mobile. The big four carriers, AT&T, Sprint-Nextel, T-Mobile and Verizon, also offer prepaid service.

Parents often use prepaid services when buying phone service for their kids so they can limit the bill -- but more on that in a bit.

Adjust on the fly. Carriers will typically let you switch plans to one that better suits your needs even if the change is only temporary. Going to Canada? Ask if they have a North American plan, Sullivan recommended. For $20 extra, you could avoid hundreds of dollars in roaming fees. Family crisis? You can bump up your plan to one that offers more anytime minutes, then bump it down again once the crisis has passed.

You can even ask for these accommodations after the fact. Many times, carriers are willing to retroactively change your plan. Even if your carrier won't accommodate you that way, it may be willing to knock down the cost of your mistake — requiring you to pay only half the bill for all those extra texts your daughter sent, for example.

Just make sure the carrier doesn't extend your contract in exchange for making these changes, Sullivan warned. Consider asking twice: When the phone rep you're talking to agrees to the change, and again before you hang up. You might say, "This doesn't extend my contract, right?" and then at the end of the call ask, "When does my current contract expire?" just to make sure.

Scrutinize the add-ons. Don't pay for what you're unlikely to use. Some carriers offer roadside assistance, for example, but you don't need it if you have auto club coverage.

You may not even need a national long-distance plan if most of your calls are local, Leamy said. Ditto for international plans if you rarely call out of the country. You can add additional coverage should you need it, but you shouldn't pay monthly for a feature you don't typically use.

Also, cell-phone insurance is a waste of money, Leamy declared.

"Most people never use this insurance, and there are lots of exclusions that make it hard to exercise. In most cases you can get a new handset or parts easily and cheaply just by searching Craigslist or eBay."

Dealing with kids and phones. Most kids will be agitating for a phone by middle school, if not before. For the youngest kids, limited-access phones like the Firefly allow parents to decide which numbers can be called. Older kids will want more freedom and the ability to text. (A Nielsen study published way back in 2008 found that most mobile users use more texts than calls, and the typical teenager sends 1,742 monthly texts. Any parent of an adolescent today will assure you the total's much higher now.)

There are two main philosophies:

• Give them limits. Sullivan is a big believer in limiting the minutes and texts you provide. That means monitoring your kids' cell usage pretty closely to avoid overage charges if you use a family plan, or opting for prepaid service. Virgin Mobile's Pay As You Go option, for example, allows you to buy 200 texts for $5 or 1,000 texts for $10 when you add them to a prepaid phone plan, which start at $20 for 200 minutes.


• Kids will talk. Teenagers will find a way to communicate with each other, which means if they run out of texts they'll spend all their time on the computer instant-messaging each other, Rohlena said. Families may be better off buying large blocks of texts or unlimited texting as part of their service.

Other ways to cut the texting bill:

Turn it off. Your children may report you to Child Protective Services, of course, but it's one way to ensure you don't get slaughtered with texting charges. If you don't have kids and don't use texting, shutting it off will keep you from paying for unwanted incoming texts, Leamy said.

Turn off premium texting. Some texts are way more expensive than others, because they actually sign you up for subscriptions and other services (weather alerts, sports alerts, jokes, coupons, interactive radio) that trigger a fee. The carriers will allow you to turn off premium texting, but the services are imperfect, and some may slip through. So, make sure your kids know not to sign up for these services, which are typically initiated through special four-, five- or six-digit numbers called "short codes."

Use your computer. You can send a text via e-mail or instant message to a cell phone and avoid texting charges (although the receiver will still pay). Most instant-messaging services allow you to send a text to a cell simply by entering "1" plus the person's 10 digit number as the contact's username. To send via e-mail, you have to know the recipient's carrier and put his or her number in front of the carrier's suffix. An AT&T user's suffix is txt.att.net, so someone with the 555-123-4567 phone number would have the address 5551234567@txt.att.net. Other carriers' suffixes include:

T-Mobile: @tmomail.net

Virgin Mobile: @vmobl.com

Sprint: @messaging.sprintpcs.com

Verizon: @vtext.com

Some of the carriers also provide the ability to send a text message via their Web sites, Leamy said. For example, Nextel (now part of Sprint) has long provided this service for others to easily contact their subscribers.

Use an iPhone app. TextPlus offers free, unlimited texting between iPhone users who have the app. The app's creators, GOGII, claim millions of users — "including a huge teen fan base."

Finally, make sure to review your cell service at least once a year to see if you can get a better deal. Plans change frequently, as may your calling patterns. A little vigilance can pay off in a lot of savings.

Related Links:

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