staying connected

So my wife has asked me in the past why I bother to maintain my TracFone account when I have a cell phone so conveniently provided by my employer. Why do I keep paying for a year's service every year, at a shade over $100? I responded that I keep it against the day that my benevolent employer takes away the cell phone and leaves me incommunicado.

A few years ago they gave us Nextel phones. "Use them!" they said. "Use them for all your personal calls, long distance calls, anything and everything. We have virtually unlimited connect time! You'll never use it up!" A year or so later our dept. got a bill from IT (our cell phone supplier) for $3000. Why? "You went over your time allotment." When challenged, they admitted they had changed the college's cell phone contract. The old one was too expensive. They'd apparently neglected to mention it to us, our dept.-- for three months. We now owed IT $1000/month for going over our minutes.

Then we ditched Nextel and changed to Alltel.

So after a couple more years of no complaints, we're now being told our cell phone usage is out of control, we need to cut back. No more personal use. No more calling cell to desk, no more accepting desk to cell. Cell to cell (within our service contract) is OK. Otherwise, hang up and call them back on a desk phone.

Now do we see why I kept my TracFone all these years?

--M