With the most current round of UCAN's inserts in the City of San Diego water bills, our phones have been lighting up like the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center. One thing we've noticed is that many people do not know how to read their water bill. The callers can definitely see how expensive their water bill is each month, but they don't know what each line item represents. We can help break though all the confusion, but we have to warn you that you can't unsee the horrors that are the Four Horsemen of the Water Bill.

What's worse than paying a $200 ETF with Sprint? Paying a $350 ETF with Sprint! 

Don't you just love it when companies charge you for absolutely nothing? No service provided, no goods consumed.Nada. Zip. Zilch. Well, that's what AT&T is doing to its long distance customers with something called a Minimum Usage Charge.

Here at UCAN, we get lots of calls asking for advice on the best consumer services. Sometimes it's landline service, 
other times it's an internet service provider, but lately, the most frequently recurring request is about prepaid phone 
service. Maybe it's due to the economy or maybe it's due to consumers tiring of the pain of being in the clutches of a two- year service agreement. Whatever the reason, more and more people are thinking about switching to prepaid phones.

A colleague of mine was looking for a cheap way to make international calls. While browsing the all knowing collective knowledge resource known as the Google, he stumbled across PennyTalk’s website. Some of our members have been using PennyTalk for a while and generally have good experiences with it. But what caught our eye wasn’t just its international long distance calling service, but its mobile applications.

Southern California is one of the leading areas with solar installations (see this post) and San Diego is no different. So it makes sense that the City of San Diego would want to get involved with solar--not just as a way to stick it to SDG&E--but as a potential fix to the City’s budget deficit problem.

Chrip chirp chirp. Is that the sound of spring birds stretching their wings for a morning flight? Or is it the sound of crickets in response to AT&T’s announcement of its first prepaid Android phone? Engadget posted yesterday that, along with a new prepaid data plan, the wireless behemoth is dropping the LG Thrive on prepaid customers this Sunday, April 17. I guess crickets are a bit harsh, but let’s dive into what AT&T has to offer and compare it to another prepaid carrier that has had an Android handset available for prepaid service: Cricket Wireless.

After a long day, there are few things better than sinking into a comfy chair and relaxing with some soothing music. But before you can hit play on the music player of your choice, your cell phone starts playing the theme song to Air Wolf (doesn’t everyone have that as their ring tone?) You glance at the caller ID, which is a strange number. Thinking it may be important, you answer the phone, only to discover it’s a terminator! Well, not quite. It’s a machine of another sort--a robocall.

Throughout the blogosphere, news has been circulating of AT&T offering a free month of its 2GB data plan for iPads old and new. Apparently, AT&T has been e-mailing its customers to notify them of the offer. Reluctantly, I am an AT&T customer because when I received my iPad there was only an AT&T model available. While I didn’t receive AT&T’s e-mail, I did see the story pop on various blogs and I thought I’d give it a shot.