What is round-up billing?

About round-up billing

Some wireless service providers use round-up billing. If you are billed by the minute for your phone use, any call that uses even a portion of a minute is rounded up and billed for a whole minute.

For example, if you make a call that is 9 minutes and 3 seconds long, a wireless service provider using round-up billing would charge you for 10 full minutes. While that doesn’t seem noteworthy for one call, if you make a large amount of phone calls the difference in cost can be significant.

When you are looking for a wireless carrier, check to see if they use round-up billing or if you are billed for fractions of minutes. Unless you find a much cheaper option that utilizes round-up billing, it’s almost always best to go with the provider that bills you on a fraction basis.

If your current wireless service provider uses round-up billing, you can contact the company and inform them that you want to switch to a plan that doesn’t include round-up billing. Most carriers have plans that bill you essentially for the second instead of a rounded up minute.