Because you can't TRADE them for anything.I would love for a cellphone carrier to come up with a system by which I could exchange minutes that I have paid for and am not going to use for something equally valuable.IE:I pay $75 a month for 5000 minutes. That's $0.015/minute.I use 2500 minutes. That means I have $37.50 in unused credit left over. Why can't I:Apply that to my next bill?Retain that credit and apply it to my next phone purchase?Use it to get airline miles through some partnership?Seriously, if companies did shit like this, on the credit card company model, they'd have much better retention rates.
6/21/2009 3:24:25 PM
but would they make money?
6/21/2009 3:26:14 PM
At first I was going to troll, but that actually sounds like a good idea!
6/21/2009 3:27:23 PM
and if you try to step down to a lower plan they wont let you take your rollover mins you paid for
6/21/2009 3:27:52 PM
i suspect the reason they won't ever give a credit for unused minutes is people like me: i have 400 minutes a month and rarely use more than 100 (in-network and nights/weekends account for most of my calls). i wouldn't ever be paying anything
6/21/2009 3:28:06 PM
^ Yeah, actually I'm in the same boat. It blows that I pay so much for so little usage. I converted my "unused rollover minutes" into $$$ and I'm sitting on about $300.simonn: of course they'd make money. Mine is just a rough draft, but any real implementation would have to be weighted in favor of the carrier for it to be economically feasiblelike if they were to give airline miles, for example, they'd work out a favorable rate of exchange with whatever airline.It's just like currency trading, really. Each stop takes a cut off the top.[Edited on June 21, 2009 at 3:32 PM. Reason : .]
6/21/2009 3:30:27 PM
i've never had rollover minutes so i'm not clear on how they work. i'm assuming that at the end of the month, if you have left over minutes they just add on to your next months. do they ever go away though? can you build up rollover minutes indefinitely? after 2 years on a plan with 5000 minutes, and only using 2500 minutes a month, can you have 2500 leftover minutes x 24 months = 60000 minutes?? if so being able to cash them in would definitely be awesome. but maybe you just need a new plan...
6/21/2009 3:37:05 PM
i dont ever use my minutes. but apparently i went like 1400 texts over so it'd be cool if my rollover minutes would cover that
6/21/2009 3:38:45 PM
They do expire after a set period of time, which varies.I don't really have 5000 rollover minutes, I was just illustrating there.I actually have the lowest plan you can get for my phone, because I talk on it so infrequently. I've never once had to dip into my cache of rollover minutes in 3 years of having this carrier.And as someone said above, if you change plans, you tend to lose your rollover minutes.
6/21/2009 3:39:50 PM
6/21/2009 3:40:13 PM
i dont think my minutes roll over, i never actually read the bill
6/21/2009 3:42:25 PM
tree fiddy!!!
6/21/2009 3:43:00 PM
7228 roll over minutes for me. 828 minutes left this billing period
6/21/2009 3:43:08 PM
6/21/2009 3:45:37 PM
DAMMIT TYLERWhat about the cost of my time to coordinate all of this craiglist and extra line chicanery?I just want to trade my unused minutes for a new phoneor a plane ticket to San Juanor any other number of things
6/21/2009 3:45:43 PM
they're "minutes" not "miles"
6/21/2009 3:53:40 PM
read the original post and try again, dipshit
6/21/2009 3:54:50 PM
no incentive to change. not like you're gonna change your carrier over something like this.
6/21/2009 3:55:41 PM
Actually I would.
6/21/2009 3:57:31 PM
6/21/2009 3:59:34 PM
6/21/2009 4:03:23 PM
exactly, some people would rather waste that hour posting about it on TWW.
6/21/2009 5:03:16 PM
bitching about this seems kinda sillycell phone companies used to not offer this at all, at least you sorta get to keep 'em now also, if you never use more than 1/2 of your minutes why not just go to a smaller plan?
6/21/2009 5:32:50 PM
6/21/2009 5:39:24 PM
because you cry yourself to sleep at night
6/21/2009 6:23:12 PM
^ u mad?
6/21/2009 8:05:28 PM