Or sometimes, a friend will ask to borrow my iPhone to make a call, and will get very confused when I say that I don't have enough phone credits to make a call.
The reason for all this confusion and amusement is because I'm on prepaid (aka pay-as-you-go).
This wasn't always the case. In fact, I used to always be on a postpaid line, even back when I was in college and my father got me my very first mobile phone. (Yes, I'm in that age bracket. I still had a pager when I was a freshman.) I had a postpaid line when I was working and my previous employers were paying for it, and there was a time when I had two postpaid lines -- one for work, and one for my personal use. I gave these all up when I moved to Sydney to pursue postgrad studies, and when I came back to Manila, I sat down to mindfully assess my telecomunications situation instead of automatically signing myself up for a new two-year mobile service contract.
I have two very good reasons for shifting from postpaid to prepaid.
1. I've had a traumatic experience with my postpaid plan in the past. Once, I was charged about Php 20,000 (US$ 400) for exceeding my data cap. In the first place, I was on an unlimited data plan. In the second place, since I had worked at that particular telco and had actually led the launch of that unlimited data plan, and reviewed and edited the FAQs myself, I knew that data plan inside and out, and had made sure I had the correct settings in place so as never to find myself in this situation.
It took a branch visit, long moments spent on hold during several phone calls to customer service, asking industry friends for help, and finally, just emailing my old boss to for the love of God help me correct the erroneous bill, to finally get the bogus charges "forgiven". I was thankful for the help, of course, but as far as I was concerned, what was there to forgive? I wasn't the one who made a billing error. And yet, I was the one being harassed over and over again by bill collectors who didn't know or care that I had already filed a complaint to dispute my bill, and I was the one whose phone service would periodically stop working because they claimed I hadn't paid my bill.
Since I hate dealing with customer service, getting myself on a pay-as-you-go service has freed me up from the trauma and the heartache of calling the customer service hotline: keying in my account number and a few other buttons to ostensibly connect me to the right person, enduring piped in music and recorded promos for half-an-hour, finally getting a live person on the line who will ask me to dictate the account number I keyed in half-an-hour ago, having that person tell me that I still owe them money and no progress has been made on my complaint, having the phone call cut before she can give me any additional useful information, and spending more of my precious time calling them again. Rinse and repeat.
The truth is, half of the reason I'm on prepaid is as a form of protest against telcos by not giving them any more of my money than I absolutely have to. There are only two major telecom companies in the Philippines, and they hold a duopoly. This means people have no choice but to settle for one or the other, enduring slow internet and crappy customer service. This is why competition is so important in the functioning of a market economy.
But I digress.
2. The second and just as important reason I'm on prepaid is for the savings. Instead of getting a "free" phone in exchange for 24 months of paying the telco Php 2,599 monthly, which comes to this much:
Php 2,599 x 24 months = Php 62,736 (US$ 1,260)
I instead asked my sister to buy me an unlocked iPhone 6S back when it launched in Hong Kong, and I spend Php 300 a month on a 1.2 gigabyte data promo. This is more than enough for my needs since I'm on wifi at home and at the office, which is where I spend a huge chunck of my time when I'm in the country. My monthly purchase of Php 300 of phone credits also comes with more free text messages than I can ever use up. Lastly, I almost never need call minutes because 99% of the people I know are reachable through FaceTime, Viber, WhatsApp, Skype, or Facebook Messenger voice calls, all of which require only a data plan. For the rest, which are always work calls, I use the landline at the office.
When I'm overseas, I just buy a prepaid SIM card, since wayward roaming charges are another kind of traumatic experience that I never want to undergo again.
All in all, my actual expense is...
Php 300 x 24 months + Php 35,000 for the phone = Php 42,200 (US$ 848)
That's almost Php 20,000 (US$ 412) in savings as a result of my decision to think carefully if I really needed a postpaid line just because it's what I'm used to.
More importantly, I haven't had to waste any more of my valuable time on the phone with an automated answering service, waiting for customer service to listen to my issues. :)
I'm not suggesting this works for everyone, of course. Each person has his or her own phone service requirements. The important thing, I think, is to be mindful of the monthly services we sign up with, making sure that it matches our needs. What are some other services we subscribe to, but might not actually need, or which we might be able to pare down to simplify our lives? I'd love to hear your suggestions!
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