Promotion for Upgrade Fee, I don’t know what it is, but it costs $18.00. Here’s the story. I have cellular service through Cingular, and for the last year I had a Family Talk plan with 2 lines with minutes that my wife and I shared. Two months ago, I finally got a cell phone through work. Since I was out of contract I decided we could save money every month by dumping the FT plan and going with a standard plan with one line just for my wife. With the FT plan our monthly service fee was $69.98, and with all the other fee’s, taxes and whatever else they can dream up our usual bill was around $80.

The new plan I went with has a monthly service fee of $39.99, so I would be expecting a bill in the upper $40′s. Well the first bill under the new plan has showed up and it is a whopping $63.85. Whah?? First thing I checked was what they were charging for the monthly service, and it was $39.99. So that extra money must be hidden in the bill somewhere. After dissecting the bill to see how they came up with that figure I found in the Other Services section a line called Promotion for Upgrade Fee (Expires on 5/11/2007) with a charge of $18.00. What the heck is that about? Well, I don’t know yet, but I will be calling tomorrow to find out. Once I find out I will report back.