The Hidden Cost of Cheap Tech & the Truth About Budget Cell Plans

[00:00:11] Good to have you along, my fellow tech enthusiasts. I'm Sam Bushman, Jay Harrison with me and we keep an eye on tech so you don't have to. Check out our podcast, Spread the Word, Share the Love. They come out on Saturdays when we do the live radio show and then on Wednesdays. So this radio show is every weekend on LovingLiberty.net, LibertyNewsRadio.com and other places, other radio stations every Saturday. But then we chop the show in half and put up two different podcasts, one on Saturday.

[00:00:44] One usually on Wednesdays they come out. This broadcast is brought to you by NetworkProvidersInc.com and the podcast site is NPITechGuys.com. Hi Jay. Hey Sam, how's your tech day going? Hurricane season kicked in and the first storm as far as I understand kicked up in the, what do they call it, the Atlantic and then it went away from the United States. That's good news.

[00:01:06] Yeah, we don't mind that at all. You know, they also say the dust from the Sahara Desert is keeping things down right now. So we're happy about that. We like it just fine. Amen to that. By the way, NetworkProvidersInc.com is your partner for security and IT as you all know. But they have an interesting article on their website, NetworkProvidersInc.com. And I thought I'd bring this to the discussion today. Headline says,

[00:01:32] The Hidden Cost of Cheap IT. You know the saying, Jay, you get what you pay for. That's right. Nowhere is that more obvious than an IT, sir. Absolutely. I mean, that's obvious almost in every area, market, whatever. I mean, you kind of get what you pay for. There's lots of things, you know, luxury items or things that are super overpriced. But, you know, the general thing is don't buy the cheapest and don't buy the most expensive and you're probably somewhere safe in the middle.

[00:01:59] In the old days, Jay, before you were born. No, I'm just kidding. I don't know. Back in the day, though, the Sears and Roebuck catalog, believe it or not. I remember that. It was an old version of kind of Amazon. I mean, nowadays you order it and you get it instantly and all that. But back in the day, what you'd do is you get this big old catalog of the snail mail, big as a phone book, and you'd look through that dude and you'd find something you like. And it's like, man, I want that. So you'd have to cut out the little thing in the back of the book and fill it out and send it in, buddy.

[00:02:28] In a month or six weeks or some odd deal later, you'd end up with whatever was very cool. You could order a house. Yeah. Back in the day, they sold houses and everything else. My uncle has a Sears and Roebuck house, believe it or not, still. They're very famous. I mean, there's some that are still out and they're worth a lot more than they ever were in Sears and Roebuck. That's for sure. Hey, man, I wish they still did houses like that. I think we've kind of gone backwards in that regard. But nevertheless, they used to have a term in Sears.

[00:02:54] And why I'm spending time on this is because they used to have a thing and you could buy shoes or whatever. And there was always a good, a better and a best choice. Right. And they would clearly tell you, here's the cost and here's how long it will last or here's what. And it was very clear. I wish they'd do that now. But in IT, it's interesting because they say on the surface, the cheaper managed IT service agreements might seem like a win.

[00:03:19] You got lower monthly costs, basic support, maybe even a couple of cybersecurity tools thrown in. But dig a little deeper and you'll often find hidden costs. They have all kinds of sneaky exclusions. Doesn't cover on the weekends. You'll find that it doesn't pay off in the long run. In fact, after years of reviewing IT contracts for small business, we see the same problems over and over and over, Jay. They crop up over and over again.

[00:03:47] They say below there's five of the most common ways that IT companies to save you money, supposedly cut corners. And they create headaches for business owners in the long run. One, weak or non-existent cybersecurity protections. Basic antivirus is not cybersecurity, folks. Yet that's what most low-cost IT providers install. Then they call it a day. You got to have 2FA. You got to have endpoint protection.

[00:04:16] Sometimes they don't have training or backups. And, hey, if something slips through, what do you do? It matters because cyber insurance, believe it or not, nowadays, Jay, if you get cyber insurance, they have all kinds of small print that if the IT company or whoever's doing your IT doesn't take note of and pay attention to, at the end of the day, your policy will be breached if they find that you don't have the advanced cybersecurity measures in place, Jay. You mean an insurance company that doesn't want to pay on a claim? An insurance company that doesn't want to pay on a claim. That's amazing.

[00:04:46] We've never heard of that. But the whole point here is if you get a good IT company, they can watch those I's and dot those T's and all that stuff. And so we've seen businesses suffer tens of thousands of dollars in damages when that, hey, because it was never set up right. In the first place. Anyway, the next one is backups that leave out half your business. This is like critical, too. They don't back up your website or they don't back up your this or your that or whatever.

[00:05:13] So a holistic backup approach is vitally important. Yep. They say surprise fees for site visits that are outside of their normal support or even charging for site visits if it's necessary in the first place. For no hope with vendors or third-party devices. So they're like, hmm, we didn't install that or we didn't, you know, whatever. We're not going to take care of that for you. Inexperienced techs and no one managing your account. Bottom line, folks, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Jay, anything else you've noticed in the IT business that's critical?

[00:05:43] You know, there's so many things that you have to get done in the IT business. And it's hard for a group to get its hands on that. I mean, you really need somebody that's really experienced and has a long track record of getting things done to really get their hands around everything. And there's got to be audits and there's got to be back and forth with both ownership and management and the IT to make sure that everything's covered. IT is a journey, folks. It's not something that you just set and forget.

[00:06:13] It's not something you hire somebody to get a job done and then they walk away. You do that and you're just setting yourself up for trouble. So think of IT as part of your business. Think of IT as a necessary expense. Sure, those expenses need to be managed properly. But don't think it's the place to cut corners and the place to just skimp. It's not the place to waste money either. But the right people can create that good, better, best. I kind of want to live between the better and best world, Jay.

[00:06:37] Yeah, I think that is the place to target is, you know, there's no limit to what you can spend on IT because, you know, you can just go on and on and cover every ground. You've got to have somebody that knows what they're doing, knows how to balance it, not give you just minimum coverage or just cover your legal basis, but make sure that you're really good. Yeah, exactly. You need it to be good. It can't be the minimal approach. And like I said, there's no end to how much you can spend if you want to on that. And that's why I'm more of the better.

[00:07:07] Between the better and best because I want it to be better. But when you say the best, now you're talking about big, expensive stuff that oftentimes is more than you need. So there's kind of a balance there. And I think even when you get to that point where it's more than you need, it's not the best anymore. It actually, you know, that charge falls off on the other end as you start to get too expensive. It falls off because of the expense. It also falls off because at some point you have people maybe buying you hardware that's more than you need or maybe they're providing service or support more than you need. Like you need a help desk.

[00:07:38] But, you know, you don't need somebody hovering over your shoulder in IT either. So there's kind of a balance. One place I think that they, you know, they always say you get, you know, whatever you spend, you get, you get what you're, you pay for kind of a thing. One of the areas that I'm debating on how true that is, though, Jay, is in the cell phone world. You know, you get T-Mobile or Verizon and you do postpaid whatever service. And it's the top of the line, they say. You're at the top of the priority tree.

[00:08:03] You've got, you know, unlimited data, which means that it throttles at 120 gig or something like this. You're paying 70 bucks a month per user or something like that or per line. To me, you can really reduce those expenses by going to some of the prepaid plans. I know that you do that, right? Yeah. I use Visible personally myself and a lot of companies that I know. And Visible is nothing but prepaid Verizon, correct? Yeah. That's exactly what it is. It's Verizon's version of prepaid.

[00:08:29] And they have even a Visible Plus, which is like $35 or $45, depending on how you get on it, whether or not you have a watch and some other stuff on there. But I think I'm at like $40 a month at their most premium plan, kind of grandfathered in with a good price. But I think even their top end is like $45. And you can actually save a lot of money because there's – I see guys, people with plans, and they've got two, three, maybe four lines. And they're paying $200 or $300 a month for them.

[00:08:58] And they're locked in with contracts and all this kind of stuff. And I don't think that's the way for the future. And people are seeing it. And Verizon, I think, now has more people – I could be wrong about this, but I think they have more people invisible than they do on Verizon now. But, you know, I'd have to research that. Well, and they have several different resellers and everything else. You know, you hear about Peer Talk, and you hear about Patriot Mobile or whatever. And you hear about all these different plans. And most of them – I can't remember what the term is, but it's basically they have an agreement. Yeah.

[00:09:29] They don't have their own towers, but they have contracts or whatever. And the best one I've found so far runs on the T-Mobile network. So if you're out in the country, it may not be as good. But if you're in the cities, it's incredible. And it's called Tello, T-E-L-O, Tello.com. And they've got plans. The cheapest plan they have is $5, Jay, a month. And for $5, basically, you get unlimited talk and text. No, I'm sorry. Unlimited text, no data, and 100 minutes of talk.

[00:09:58] And you would say, why would I use that? Well, because if you have a kid, for instance, and you say to your kid, you know, I don't want you on the Internet, so I don't want you to have data. And I don't want you to talk on the phone a ton to people. But if you have 100 minutes, if there's an emergency, you need to be called to be picked up or whatever. We need to get a hold of you. We can call you really quick. Just quick, small phone calls, 100 minutes a month. And then it's unlimited text, so you can text your family and friends and everything else. $5 a month, Jay. That's pretty good. That's really good, actually.

[00:10:28] And the only time I've seen things near that is when people have those little watch phones that you can only call certain numbers. So this gives your kid a real phone. Even those are more expensive than that. Those plans are $10, $12, $15, $20 a month. Anyway, so $5 a month. Now, here's the next thing. If you want just a limited amount of data but unlimited talk and text, it's like $10 a month. Anyway, they have all kinds of plans where you can decide whether you want talk. Now, do you have to buy an annual plan to get those kind of prices or is that month to month? Month to month. There's no annual plans of any kind. Wow.

[00:10:58] Pretty interesting. Anyway, their most expensive plan is they have two plans. One's $25 and one's $24. And you say, well, what the heck? Well, you've got to pick your poison a little bit because the $25 plan only has 5 gig of hotspot. But it has 35 gig available on that plan. Unlimited talk and text. That's $25. The $24 plan only has 15 gig of data. But any of it can be used as phone or hotspot. It doesn't matter which you pick.

[00:11:28] If you go over, they just throttle you. If you want and you go over, you can pay for little data packs and get more by the gig. Very interesting plans. It all depends on what you need. But basically, $25 a month gets you unlimited talk and text. And 35 gig of data use, 5 gig of that can be hotspot use. What happens if you go over? Do they charge you by the gig or do they just shut you down or do they throttle you to really low speed? They throttle you. But if you want to go on and pay for more, then they'll extend that.

[00:11:55] I almost think that when people say unlimited for these cell phone carriers. It's a lie. I know. I know. We all know that now that it's a lie. But it should be unlimited at a certain speed. And if you want more, raise the speed. But it really should be unlimited, I think. So here's what they have. They have unlimited. So if you're on the $25 plan, just say it's unlimited. You get 35 gig at the speed they promise, their fastest speed or whatever. And you get 5 gig of hot spot. Which they won't promise any speed, but I know what you're saying.

[00:12:26] It's their fastest that they have available at the time or whatever. Yeah. Anyway, so it's 5 gig of hot spot, 35 gig total. So if you go over, they don't shut you down. They just throttle you. So it's less speed. But if you find that you go over and you're having less speed and it's like, man, I have 10 days until the end of the month. I'm on a trip. I want to do something. You can buy a pack by the gig and they will increase your speed then because you bought more time. I get that.

[00:12:53] But when they throttle you, is it less speed? Like, oh, you're down to 1.5 megabit or something like that? Or is it less speed like you're at a 56K modem where you can't even check them out? I haven't really researched the less speeds and the throttles and the how much they throttle and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Some people do that. Well, I think almost everybody does that at some point. The question becomes how much do they throttle you when and all that kind of stuff. And now you're debating prioritization.

[00:13:20] What T-Mobile and Verizon would say is if you buy our postpaid services, we give you top-of-the-line service. And otherwise, you're on this piggyback thing and you're throttled and you're less. But I've discovered some unique things about this, Jay. Think about this for a second. Let's say that I get the fastest speeds that I'm on 5G, but there's a ton of people in the big city on that 5G. Okay. And I'm on Verizon. And there's a ton of people on it. But then let's say I use one of these other carriers, like I'm telling you, Tello.

[00:13:47] And let's say that because I'm not throttled, but I'm not as high priority, they put me on 4G, LTE. Yeah. But there's nobody hardly there, right? Sometimes that's the case, yeah. Am I better off? Probably. Maybe. So it's not always how it sounds. Here's my whole point. I think that for anywhere from $5 to $25 on Tello, you can get a pretty dang killer phone plan that will meet your needs and give you plenty of data, plenty of talk, plenty of text on T-Mobile.

[00:14:17] And yes, you may not have the best priority, but you know what? My research shows that the military, the government, big business, all those people get priority ahead of you even if you're on a postpaid plan anyway. That's right. And if there's ever an emergency, then yeah, you might be able to get better service if you're on Verizon than I am if I'm on whatever. Don't count on it. I don't know. I'm not – that's so once in a while that it doesn't matter.

[00:14:46] Yeah, but in a real emergency, like you're saying, it's going to be prioritized to government, emergency services, things like that. I don't care what plan you're on. I don't think you're going to get priority. That's right. And if I'm at a football game and everybody and their dog is trying to get a hold of an Uber or whatever else because at the end of the game, I don't know that I'm going to be jacked and you're going to be great. Right. It just depends on when you call. Well, right. But it might be to where you try to call and you can't make a call, but five minutes later there's a little more bandwidth and so I can.

[00:15:14] And I'm just telling you, I think that this idea that, oh, you've got greater priority than everybody else and you've got more data than everybody else and you've got – I'm convinced through all my research and all my testing that it's pretty much a farce. Yeah. I mean there's facts to it, but not worth the dollar difference that they're conning you into. So anyway, my whole point is that I think – what are those agreements called? The cellular operators? Yeah. The MBNOs, Mobile Virtual Network Operators. All right.

[00:15:44] Anyway, and so now Trump came out with his own. Yeah, the Trump phone. You can get a Trump phone for $499. It runs on Android and you can get a Trump line that's $47.45. Why? Because he was Trump 47 and he's Trump 45. No, it should have been 45.47, but that makes Trump less money, so it's got to be 47.45, don't you know? Anyway, to me that's a very expensive plan and I don't think you're getting hardly anything better than my $25 plan, Jay. I don't think so. No, there is a bunch of stuff that they throw in.

[00:16:10] I don't have the details right in front of me, but there's some, I don't know, concierge kind of services and some other stuff that they throw in there. But it's really like a support Trump kind of thing. It is kind of a brilliant marketing plan. It is a brilliant marketing plan. But do I want those concierge services? So Verizon does this and T-Mobile. Hey, if you get this expensive postpaid line. Yeah, but if you are on T-Mobile or if you're on Verizon, they'll give you TV coverage or music coverage. Yeah, bundles and stuff.

[00:16:39] You can get Amazon or you can get, oh, what's that TV service that's? Anyway, it's live TV like. It's not Pluto because that's not really paid for. I'm trying to think. No, anyway, it's basically live TV. They give you, anyway, they give you all these different perks. Yeah, one of them is Sling, but there's another one too. I can't remember what it's called. Anyway, there's too many out there now. Yeah, you got YouTube TV. You got a bunch of them. But the whole point is that I don't know that I want all those bundles.

[00:17:07] Just make my cell phone cheaper. I'll go find what I want for my TV, okay? Exactly. It should have been the 2025 plan. Well, that would have been nice, but see, that wouldn't have been, you know, near as profitable or whatever. I think they should have just taken 45 and 47 and said, hey, man, it's the $92 plan. But, buddy, you get everything. Right. Anyway, I just find that I have moved from T-Mobile Postpaid,

[00:17:33] and I was paying approximately 40, I don't know, 45 bucks a line with all the taxes and everything else. And I find with this new service, I'm at about 26, 50, or 27 bucks a line. And I have unlimited talk, unlimited text. And I have 35 gig of data usage. Five of that, five gig can be hotspot stuff. And if I want more hotspot, I can spend a dollar less and get more hotspot and less data overall. And how long have you been making that?

[00:18:02] For about a month, several weeks. And it's very good. It's not perfect. But I even compare with my wife's phone that's still on T-Mobile, and nine times out of ten, it's almost the same. Once in a while, she has a little better service than me or more bars than I have, or sometimes I'll have more bars that she has. It's a little bit of a trick, but it's not perfect. Sometimes hers will say 5G, and mine says 4G LTE. And then mine will say 5G, and hers will say 5G or whatever. It's not. I don't think it's perfect or quite as good. I'll be the first to tell you. But I'm telling you, for the difference in dollars. It's half the cost, right?

[00:18:32] Right. And you might say, well, for me, Sam, I'm a business guy, and I run my own business. And I can't do that. I've got to have the best. Fine. Put yourself on the best line. But if you've got three or four children or kids that are trying to pay for their own phone, see, now my daughter doesn't have to pay $46. She can get the $20 plan. That makes a big difference. Or the $15 plan. And the $20 and the $15 plan gets her, you know, maybe it's, I'd have to look it up, but it's, you know, maybe she gets 5G of data instead of, or whatever, or 2G or whatever. And, you know, she can use it for driving directions.

[00:19:02] She can use it for almost anything she needs, texting and everything else. What she can't do really is just watch movies all day. Right. Which should be good. But other than that, you know, it's fine. And so now her bill, though, is $20, not $45. And hey, man, for a teenager or a young adult, that's a big deal. Yeah, it is. If I'm paying for three or four kids to have a phone, it's a big deal. So anyway, I just thought I'd spend time on that because I'm convinced that a lot of people don't know those differences. The company that I'm telling you about is Tello, T-E-L-L-O. And I switched to it. It's very easy.

[00:19:30] They can do digital or a virtual SIM if you've got that phone capability. Or they'll send you a SIM. The SIM, I think, costs, what is it, $3? And they'll send you a SIM if you need to put it in an older phone or whatever else. That's nice. They don't have any contracts. It's just monthly. They don't have any, you know, one of the things about Visible that they always want you to gang your lines together. This has none of that. It's every line is separate. Visible doesn't do that. It doesn't gang lines together. In fact, what's weird about Visible is every single line is...

[00:19:59] Well, they do because they give you cheaper prices if you have more lines. On Visible? Yeah. Yeah, well, maybe you have a different version. Visible, one thing I've experienced with Visible is everybody has their own separate account. There are no multiple lines or multiple people on one account. I understand. But if you have people together in some way, don't you get different pricing? No, not on Visible. Visible is one line, one person. All right, go check it out and see what their plans are really quick. It'll be interesting to see.

[00:20:25] This plan, you can have different accounts for people if you want, or you can have all the lines under the same account, but every line is considered a separate. Choose your plan for that line. And so I find it very good, very easy to understand and use, and I've moved several phones over to it. The moving the phones was fairly slick. It's transferred fairly easy. You do it all yourself. But here's the last point. Every one of these phone plans that I know that you do it all yourself, it's hard to get a hold of a human.

[00:20:55] At Tello, it's easy to get a hold of a human if you need to as well, because I called and asked them a couple of questions and stuff like that. So anyway, I'm not telling you it's the perfect plan. Everybody needs to go out there and find what makes sense for them. My whole point is some of these people that don't own their own towers, but yet have some of these agreements, have very aggressive, affordable plans that are actually surprisingly good. So Visible does have a new plan where you can lock in $20 a month for one year if you pay all at once. So that's kind of cool. But yeah, I don't see any...

[00:21:25] They have a five-year price lock guarantee as well. But yeah... How much do you get for that? That is... Let's see. It's Visible Plus Pro, $40 a month, five-year price guarantee. And it has unlimited premium 5G Ultra, a wideband, high-risk spam robocalls blocked. It includes a watch. So if you have like an Apple Watch or whatever in there... But it's a five-year guarantee, but what do you have to pay for it? Yearly or monthly, or what do you pay? It says $40 per month.

[00:21:54] So I assume that that's... You're going to pay monthly, but you can lock it up for five. A five-year contract then? No, I don't think so. Or you can leave. They just guarantee you the price if you agree to five years? Yeah. You know. Something like that, yeah. So you're grandfathered in for five years, kind of an idea. Unlimited mobile hotspot. Use your phone as your Wi-Fi connection at three times the speed. International, so all talk and text to Canada and Mexico. Roaming along Canada and Mexico. 85-plus countries, unlimited texting to 200.

[00:22:24] And calling to 85 countries, unlimited texting to 200. And then you've got the two-day global pass. You know, they've thrown in a bunch of stuff. Free overnight shipping, like all kinds of stuff to do this plan. But yeah, Visible is one line per person. One account, one line. I thought the whole idea was you got cheaper the more phones you put on your deal. That's Verizon. And I've seen other people that do that, and maybe that's what you're thinking of another one.

[00:22:50] But yeah, there's lots of people that do have these group lines and family plans and all this kind of stuff. But I don't think Visible is one of those. Huh. All right. Anyway, there's a lot of plans out there. And I'm telling you, you've got to look. And maybe in your area, you've got to look at the coverage maps and da-da-da. It's not that simple. But I just want people to understand that it's the kind of thing where you really don't get suckered in and just believe in that, oh, man, you're postpaid and you're on the main carrier and you get all this benefit.

[00:23:18] Because I'm convinced that used to be true back in the day. But I don't think it's really that true anymore. I think you can get plenty of great service for a lot less money. I guess Chet GPT played a chess game with a human and lost, huh, Jay? Yes, it did. And the amazing thing is the hardware that this happened on. So Chet GPT was defeated at chess, at the game of chess. You know, this was with your rooks, knights, pawns, all that kind of stuff, by an Atari 2600 console from 1977.

[00:23:47] The 1979 Atari 2600 console running. So originally, I guess it came out in 77. But this one was a 1979 model. Handily defeated Chet GPT in a head-to-head game of chess. Despite recent advances in AI and evolution, the chatbot flubbed basic moves, mixed up pieces, lost track of the board, while the vintage 8-bit system calmly played on. And this, you know, it's funny and it's interesting because of how it's getting smacked.

[00:24:16] But it's because of the way Chet GPT and AIs think and predict and everything else. And where you have this dedicated software in a console like an Atari that can just beat it straight out playing. There you have it. The question is, will humans always be able to beat computers at these kind of things? I doubt it. I think it won't be long and the computer will beat all humans. Thanks so much. NPITechguys.com

[00:24:44] Make it a great tech day, will ya? Hey, thanks.