08-30-2019 12:30 PM - edited 01-05-2022 06:45 AM
So far, all I've been able to do is look at my usage day by day. It would take forever to copy/paste this data into an Excel sheet, and even if I did, I'm not even sure Excel would know how to add up "Duration" cells with entries like 0:24:33. Is there some way I can summarize useage over the past 30 or 90 days or something? thx.
08-30-2019 01:32 PM
Have you looked to see if there is an app that will calculate call usage?
Unless you are constantly on your phone, and don't use data You probably could get away with the 10 or 15 $ plans with the 500 min addons.
I did it for my dad. Moved him from $20 provincial calling to 10$ and 2 @ 500 mins I think he has uses1 addon and a bit a month. So saving about $4 /month. I just login and buy 2@500 mins every other month. He doesn't know the difference, a little extra work on my part, but really no big deal.
Going to do a similar thing with my mom moving her from $25plan to 10$. She uses little data so the free gig pm provided will last her 6 months. And I estimate will save 10$/month on her account.
08-30-2019 01:20 PM - edited 08-30-2019 01:25 PM
It's not that bad they will send an sms that you're low on minutes, I think when only 10 is left and you can then buy
If you go for 15 plan, just use textNow for most of the dial out, they give unlimited North America and free Canadian number. If you restrict the background data it will only use about 30 megs of data and you have 250 more than enough
PS. Sorry I just assumed it was typo and you're taking about 100 minutes, but maybe you're taking about 50 minutes. You can get 500 mins add-on just in case.
It's easy to upgrade by yourself if it's too little.
I highly suggest using credit card, not only you save 2 but if you move to 15 you get that data.
08-30-2019 12:47 PM
@PDub wrote:I'm trying to figure out whether I can get by with a 500 min plan or need an unlimited plan. It's pretty obvious PM makes it practically impossible to monitor usage in the way I want to do, in order to interfere with the ability to do comparison price shopping. Sucks.
Ah. Yeah that's what I did before I moved here. But I was on postpaid and so I just looked at my bills for a year and figured my averages and peaks. Alas.
If you're not on a promo then you can always just try the lower plan and see what happens. I'm on the $10 plan and I have those add-ons. A couple terms I run out of the 50. It just goes over to the add-on and then back to the plan at renewal.
08-30-2019 12:43 PM
I'm trying to figure out whether I can get by with a 500 min plan or need an unlimited plan. It's pretty obvious PM makes it practically impossible to monitor usage in the way I want to do, in order to interfere with the ability to do comparison price shopping. Sucks.
08-30-2019 12:38 PM - edited 08-30-2019 12:39 PM
@PDub wrote:So far, all I've been able to do is look at my usage day by day. It would take forever to copy/paste this data into an Excel sheet, and even if I did, I'm not even sure Excel would know how to add up "Duration" cells with entries like 0:24:33. Is there some way I can summarize useage over the past 30 or 90 days or something? thx.
The way I can see would be to log into your self-serve account very shortly before the renewal data and take a look at the amount of minutes remaining if you're on a $10 plan or the amount of outgoing minutes remaining on a $15 plan. On other plans, the amount of calls would be unlimited, so I'm not sure what lengths you'd to to get a total on an unlimited plan, but it would involve manually calculating things by looking at your usage history or by using your device's call timers to approximate.
08-30-2019 12:37 PM
@PDub wrote:So far, all I've been able to do is look at my usage day by day. It would take forever to copy/paste this data into an Excel sheet, and even if I did, I'm not even sure Excel would know how to add up "Duration" cells with entries like 0:24:33. Is there some way I can summarize useage over the past 30 or 90 days or something? thx.
I seem to recall that cells can be defined as time type cells (without going to look) and then doing math on them as time. Or something like that.
08-30-2019 12:35 PM - edited 08-30-2019 12:37 PM
It's so frustrating, but can't be exported to spreadsheet
And even if it did you wouldn't know which minutes were counted and which didn't because of the voicemail.
One thing though can do is request the bill in PDF format for each cycle. It takes a week to receive it after you make request (that is after about two days before the mods respond)