Tired of paying $.40/per minute or more for using more minutes that your plan allows per month? There’s a little known tip to help avoid paying the ridiculous price for overages. You have to be alert and plan ahead to get the savings, but it’s well worth it. For instance if you used 200 minutes over your plan in any given month, you would have to pay $80 in overage – with the tip below, those same 200 minutes only cost you $10 ! It does pay to plan ahead, or at least to know what day your bill cycle ends and how to check your MOU (minutes of use).
Here’s how it works! Sprint offers ‘Overage Relief Minutes’ to customers who have used more minutes than allotted in their plan. The purpose was originally intended to help customers in ‘one-time’ situations or to use as part of an offer to entice you to upgrade your plan starting with your next bill cycle while providing the overage for the current month at a discounted amount.
- You MUST call in before your bill cycle ends. Overage Relief Minutes can only be added before your bill generates. Nor care or account services or anyone can change this. If you waited too late, you’ll just have to pay for your usage and mark your calendar next month for your cycle end date.
- Overage Relief Minutes come in ‘buckets’. There are several available for consumer accounts, with one restriction: You may only ever purchase a 500 minute bucket 1 time during the entire life of your account. This is enforced by the system and cannot be overridden (though there is a trick, read on!).
| Buckets of Minutes |
Cost |
| 100 Overage Minutes |
$5 |
| 200 Overage Minutes |
$10 |
| 300 Overage Minutes |
$15 |
| 400 Overage Minutes |
$20 |
| 500 Overage Minutes |
$25 |
So, how do you get them? It’s simple. Just dial *2 and ask! Tell the agent that you’d like to purchase “Overage Relief Minutes” and if you can feel the blank stare on their face (hopefully most of those have been weeded out by now) insist they look in their knowledgebase for the information, or in a super nice way suggest to them that they ask their team lead or supervisor about it. While every agent is trained on these, most have forgotten the 5 minutes they spent on it during six weeks of training, and it’s not a common call driver, so some may not be familiar.
- Overage Relief Minutes don’t roll over, no matter what expiration date is put on them, again this is systematically enforced. If you want them next month, you’ll have to call in again. They aren’t intended to be an easy way to get extra minutes, but rather for help for occasional overage.
- The agent MUST backdate the SOC to the start of your current billing cycle, or you will only get a prorated portion of the minutes. If this happens, call in after your bill posts to get it corrected, and be clear about what happened and insist on proper credit to your account.
- You can change your mind and purchase more minutes! If you call in on the 20th day of your bill cycle to add a bucket of 100 minutes, and realize on the 30th day that you really needed 400, you can always add more.
- You can only purchase the bucket of 500 minutes one time, however you can ‘stack’ the other buckets all you want. Need 500 again? purchase a 300 and a 200. Need 600? stack a 400 and a 200.Officially there is no limit on the upper amount, however you’d be able to get 1,500 once and 1,000 any month thereafter, as the same code cannot be ‘stacked’ twice during the same month (assuming you get a rep willing to add that many – as most would probably have the good sense to require a plan change, and I can’t say I’d blame them on this, though there’s no official policy).
- Lastly – in case you have a plan that doesn’t include it – Overage Relief Minutes DO NOT apply to roaming minute charges. These would be billed as normal.
If you find yourself using Overage Relief Minutes more than once or twice, then you probably should listen when the agent offers to tell you about a different plan that would save you money – because most likely they’re right, and you’re hanging on to that ancient plan for sentimental reasons – and if that’s the case, then you may actually want to consider our newer offerings that really do include everything. While there’s no formal policy on requiring a plan change commitment when using these minutes, do the math yourself and see what’s right for you, because in almost every case you will save money if you find yourself using these more than a couple of months in a row.
It’s really that simple – so know what day your billing cycle ends, and check your minutes of use each month (that’s 12 times a year – surely you can find the time!). You can find your MOU on sprint.com, by dialing *4 from your handset, and by speaking with someone at Care (*2).
Have you used Overage Relief Minutes before? Did you know they existed? Comment Away!
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