Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for July 9th, 2009

That has been a question that Mrs. C8j has been asking me for a while, and I have been too chicken to go to the Bell Mobility store near us to find out (the service there is, um, not up to my expectations). I continued to mull around how exactly to figure this out, as we are sure we will be changing to a “pay per play” model once the contract is over (I am currently paying anywhere from $90 to $120 a month for two phones), and I finally stumbled upon how to solve this riddle.

When Do I get a Phone Upgrade?

Yes, this seems to be the magical information that is directly tied to when my account can be renewed.

How do I find this information out? Follow these steps:

1. Log into your MyBell account (if you haven’t done this, do so, it is free)
2. Go to the My Services Section and select See or Change Rates for your wireless account
3. In my case since I have two phones it then asks for which phone number you want to look at thus you select the phone number you are interested in (or you may not see this screen at all).
4. A page entitle My Wireless will come up on your screen.  In there is a section which is titled My Phone, and you should have a link to Upgrade My Phone (click on it).
5. Here is where the information you search lies.

On my page, there is a line that says:

If you wait until 2009/09/02 to upgrade you’ll be eligible for a credit of up to $200.00.

The only reason that Bell would give me that kind of credit is to retain my account, thus I have found when my contract expires with Bell. I get $200 if I renew for 3 years, how nice.

Caveat: Be careful with this methodology that you do not go too far and accidentally end up either “renewing” your contract -or- upgrading your phone!