This post brought to you by Net10. All opinions are 100% mine.
As you all know, we mainly just talk about movies, but since many of us at Best Movies Ever News & Reviews are filmmakers, we’ve learned some lessons the hard way on how to save some money. One big cost that can surprise a filmmaker is with cell phone usage plans.
I worked on three film projects where we had signed a plan, but missed some of the really really small fine print that wound up costing us a couple thousand dollars extra. These were large companies that our Line Producer thought would be good to deal with, but after three films in a row with different large wireless service providers, a buddy of mine and very famous producer told me about Net10 Unlimited Plan.
As we all know, when you give the film crew their phones and tell them to keep their usage to only movie related calls, a few (mainly all) will crank up the personal calls along with business calls. Those minutes will add up in a hurry when you’ve got a crew of 10, 20 or more. One one film, after we had paid everything off a bill from the wireless carrier came in six months later for over $4K. We were all in shock as with any indie film, $4K can cover some of your music or special effects in post-production. I called the company myself assuming there was an error, but the customer service rep was quick to have me go to page 23b of our plan in section 56K (the tiny print area) that stated if we exceeded a certain amount of minutes, a per minute surcharge kicked in even if it was just for a 2 second call! Even though that plan was considered ‘unlimited’, there were so many limitations in the contract that rendered that word useless.
So after having to dig into my own pocket to cover it, I asked around, and a very good friend who’s been like a Godfather to me with movies (and he’s made several blockbusters) told me about Net10 Unlimited and that there weren’t any catches. Since this guy has seen and heard everything, I knew he would have gone through the plan extremely carefully since most contracts (especially studio ones) have major catches. Since he recommended Net10 so hightly, I tried it out on my last film.
He was right, and even though this plan looks almost too good to be true, it actually lives up to its word. Net10 Unlimited is a great deal since you get nationwide coverage and unlimited talk, text, and data, for $50 a month. When you’re working on a movie, this is incredibly important since you can burn through 4-5,000 minutes in a hurry.
Unlike some plans that require you to use certain phones, Net10 only uses trusted phone manufacturers like LG, Motorola, Kyocera, Nokia and Samsung. Best of all for you indie filmmakers that have had to go through a high down payment for less than stellar credit, there are no contracts, no surprise bills and no credit checks. We were shooting in some pretty remote towns, but we never had any dropped calls or no connectivity issues. That was a major plus.
I was so impressed with this one that I dropped my Verizon service and went on a monthly plan just for these benefits alone:
• The Easy Minutes Plus plan is an automatic minutes plan that starts at $15.00 for 200 minutes.
• With Pay-As-You-Go Plans, your minutes carry over with active service.
• Unlimited Minutes, Text and Web for $50.00/month.
• Switch between plans each month to suit your budget and airtime needs, without penalties or fees.
• Airtime can be purchased online, at a nearby store, or directly from your phone.
Since my next film will be over in Europe, I checked to make sure Net10 had an international plan and thankfully they do so no having to get another phone and plan. Net10 covers 75 countries which is very very sweet! Also, they have full QWERTY keyboard phones, slider phones, and touch screen phones, with all the basics plus great app capabilities, camera and video recorder, web access, etc., available for under $60.00.
For more on Net10 Unlimited, check out them out on Twitter
http://twitter.com/#!/Net10_Wireless
Or Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/NET10Wireless
To check out and learn more about how to save money on your next film with a wireless carrier, just go to their site: http://www.net10.com
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Curt Johnson
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