Breakdown of Bill (Cost of Data, Voice, Text)?

[orolivia]

Hi all,

I am just wondering (for reimbursement purposes) if there is any way to see what the cost breakdown of my 90-day cycle bill is. I pay $120 every 90 days. I need to know specifically how much my data costs.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thank you.

[smp99]

The orig question was to get a split - for reimbursement purposes.

Currently PM has a $25 talk/text plan for 30 days. That leaves $15 for data. For reimbursement purposes, that's problably close enough and something concrete to show your boss or whoever is reimbursing you. Just expand that to 90 days

[Cornelia_D]

@ShawnC13 ,

On postpaid you can get a higher bill either as you said, by having overcharges ,either because you might get more days on the bill depending when you started the service and when the bill cycle has been set to start since customers can use service before their bill cycle starts , which leads to those days being placed on top of the month they are paying for in advance.

Proration on postpaid can be seen as good if you're going from a higher plan to a lesser plan. 

On prepaid , the advantage is that you don't get extra days on a bill (proration)  ; drawback would be that once you are set up on a plan , if you want to"cancel" the plan earlier ,you won't get the remaining amount for the final days.

@will13am,

a very good answer on how the postpaid works . From my past experience , there were more instances in which people were confused and displeased with the proration.

In the end , it's up to the customer to weight the pros and cons and decide what's best for them .

Thank you everybody for being involved,

Cornelia_D

[mimmo]

@orolivia  how I would do it is calculate the talk and text portion ie 25 for provincial talk and text and I  believe 30 for Canada wide.  Whatever your plan per 30 days cost above that is your data cost. 

[will13am]

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@Cornelia_D wrote:

@computergeek541,

It depends how you look at things because there are instances in which proration is the cause for additional charges ;that's why if you are on postpaid ,your bill might at one point be higher than expected.

On the other hand, we offer the possibility of changing the plan after the consumption of the 90 days plan precisely to avoid losing the money.

Cheers,

Cornelia_D

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Unless a contract is involved, post paid accounts do allow customers to make changes in the middle of a billing period.  The fees would be prorated based on the portion of the month on each of the plans.  The bottom line is that post paid does offer better options for the customer when switching plans.  It is also interesting that post paid is somewhat contradictory term.  The base portion of a plan is actually paid in advance similar to prepaid.  The overage portion is paid after the overage is incurred.  If post paid plans allowed customers to block all overages, it would convert to a prepaid plan.  To some degree Koodo post paid plans are kind of like that for data.  The shock free data function allows data to be stopped when allotted usage is consumed. 

Anyway, we are in the weeds with this discussion as the customer is referring to a totally different aspect of billing.  Honestly, there is really no perfect answer to the question.  Given that when building a plan, there are discounts involved when additional features are selected, which do we call the first feature, second feature and so on.  The first feature pricing is "penalized" with no discount.  So, it is probably best to refer to the pricing as a package price. 

[stonechucker]

When you talk about overages @ShawnC13, I don't think $30 for the 1GB addon is all the pricy here.  It's better than the equivalent at any of the postpaid carriers.

I'm fortunate though, being on the Fall Promo.  I don't need to worry about overages - I don't use that much data.  But if I were to switch to an in-market plan, I'd be paying the same price for 1/3rd the data and would cringe if I had to buy a 1GB package to get through the remainder of a 90-day plan.

[ShawnC13]

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@Cornelia_D wrote:

@computergeek541,

It depends how you look at things because there are instances in which proration is the cause for additional charges ;that's why if you are on postpaid ,your bill might at one point be higher than expected.

On the other hand, we offer the possibility of changing the plan after the consumption of the 90 days plan precisely to avoid losing the money.

Cheers,

Cornelia_D

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@Cornelia_D, I think you may be getting the terms mixed up or I am miss understanding you.  I am thinking overages on usage are the cause of higher costs on postpaid.  With PM not offering proration (like all other prepaids in Canada) can be seen as a negative if you pick a plan and 10 days in realizing that you need a plan with more features you get no credit (proration) for the plan that you have already paid 30 days for but want to switch to a bigger plan now.

[Cornelia_D]

@computergeek541 ,

It depends how you look at things because there are instances in which proration is the cause for additional charges ;that's why if you are on postpaid ,your bill might at one point be higher than expected.

On the other hand, we offer the possibility of changing the plan after the consumption of the 90 days plan precisely to avoid losing the money.

Cheers,

Cornelia_D

[srlawren]

@Cornelia_D  your reponse seems to miss the point of @orolivia's question entirely.  They want to know how much the data part of their plan is costing them, out of the $120 they pay every 90 days.  

@orolivia as noted, this is hard to determine even by looking at your transaction history, because your plan includes a "pick 3" discount applied to the overall sum of the 3 services (talk, text, data).  I'm not sure you're going to be able to get this information.  Is there a particular reason you need to know specifically the data cost?

[computergeek541]

@Cornelia_D wrote:

 , we are prepaid service so the best thing is there is no proration 

There being no proraration actually makes it so that there is less flexibility.  The customer needs to either future-date any plan changes or risk losing money on an abandoned portion of a plan.

[Cornelia_D]

Hey there @orolivia,

Glad to see you are interested in knowing more. Just as a reminder , we are prepaid service so the best thing is there is no proration ; you are the only one that decides if you reactivate or not the service.

My best advice would be to think really carefully if you plan on not using the service at one point so you can manage the plan; if you decide to maybe do some cutbacks, you can try switching to 30 day plan (right after the 90 day one).

Did my answer help you?

All the best,

Cornelia_D

[stonechucker]

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@orolivia wrote:

Hi all,

I am just wondering (for reimbursement purposes) if there is any way to see what the cost breakdown of my 90-day cycle bill is. I pay $120 every 90 days. I need to know specifically how much my data costs.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Thank you.

---

It depends on what 90-day plan you're on, and to make matters more difficult, if your plan is no longer in-market, it's harder to determine.

You can look at the payment transaction history to see what's listed there.  There is no break down available on the ready-made plans, as they're just 'bundled'.  If you have an in-market build your own, you can figure it out by selecting the plan and seeing what the price of each "portion" of the builder costs.

[Dunkman]

@orolivia 

That might be hard to determine. It is the bundle of all three services that gives you the $120 every 90 days.

You could go to the build your plan area and choose the different optionsn alone.

For examples, 

90 days for the data alone $115

                         Canada calling alone $90

                         international text alone  $55