Possibly getting stuck with very high long distance charges

[123champ1]

Hi,

As a new Verizon customer, I signed up for a 500 minutes World plan on my home phone. I was told that if I exceeded the minutes, I could change the plan anytime ... I assumed this meant that the changes would backdate to beginning of the current month.

Today, I found that I had significantly exceeded my minutes. (Yes, I do a lot of international calling ... and see my other post about Verizon's poor call management capabilties.) I called a rep today, and changed the plan to 'Unlimited minutes'. But the rep said that the plan would be 'effective today', and could not be backdated to the beginning of the month. This came as a nasty surprise, because my overages till date are almost $200.

Does anyone know how the billing works? Does the plan that is effective at the end of the month, apply to the whole month? Or will the 500 minutes plan still apply to the first part of the month? The reps couldn't tell me what the final bill would be ...

Any thoughts on what I could do right now, so that the overages never hit the bill?

The current billing cycle ends on 2/12.

[bevross]

Yes, there have been quite a few posts about the inability to accurately monitor long distance international calls!  If it were me I'd certainly use that argument with billing -- if they don't provide a way to monitor then how they should give a break on the overages!  Wonder if we'll ever see a way to monitor this?