We’ve been a long-time verizon wireless customer. While we like their service, we as Americans pay way more for our wireless service than much of the world. This really bugs our family! We’ve always been a 2 -year contract family for VZW and on average, our mobile bill is about $100/mo (that’s $1200/yr for all you peeps who struggle with math).

We’ve known people who used TracPhones, and pre-paid service for cell phones and have heard that they’ve managed to also have cellular service for far less monthly and yearly cost. At the moment, we’re considering dumping our contract plan and going with something like Trac Phone or pre-paid from Verizon.

We called today to see when my contract expired – 3/2011! That means, if we cancel, we’d have to pay $170 per phone (we have two lines on our plan) – $340 just to get out of the arrangement. We looked online for some ways to get out of the contract, but most of them seem unethical – not something we want to do.

So we explained to the customer service rep at Verizon why we wanted to know our contract end date – so we could lower our expenses. She was sympathetic and tried to offer alternatives. Unfortunately, we already had the cheapest plan, so there was no lowering the plan cost. We did decide to remove the text messaging package saving $60/yr.

Turns out though, that about three weeks ago, they had called and offered to move us to a different, newer plan for no extra fees. It included some extras, etc. By agreeing, we renewed our contract and that’s why it wasn’t up for renewal for 2 years. The CSR informed us that we could still go back to our old plan which had en ending date of August of this year.

So, we should only have to pay $170, minus $5/month that we’ve had the contract open, so more like $50 if we cancel. Considering that’s only half of one month’s phone bill, that’s acceptable. Most likely, we’ll wait til August then dump the whole thing in favor of pre-paid.

At the same time, we did signup for CellTradeUSA which provides a service of matching up people who want to get out of contracts with those who want to get into contracts (but don’t want to pay the setup fees, etc.). This way, we can have the financially responsible party changed to someone else thereby having them assume the remainder of the contract. This might end up working which would also get us free and clear.

Anyone else have experience doing the above? How have you lowered your cell phone expenses?