overage adj : too old to be useful; "He left the house...for the support of twelve superannuated wool carders"- Anthony Trollope [syn: overaged, superannuated, over-the-hill]

English

Etymology 1

Noun

1. A surplus; especially an amount of cash that is greater than the amount in the record of an account

Etymology 2

Adjective

1. Having an age that is greater than a stipulated minimum
2. Too old to be of use in a particular situation

Overage is a term used in the wireless telephone industry to describe billed charges for when a wireless consumer uses a larger number of minutes than their agreed upon price plan allows. In order to maintain high availability, most wireless carriers only allow a certain number of minutes of usage per subscriber per month -- especially during "peak hours": the time when historically the largest number of mobile phone users attempt to use the network. The minutes included with a user's price plan are normally relatively inexpensive (compare with prepaid minutes for example). If a user exceeds the minutes provided by their price plan, extra minutes are made available at a more expensive rate (in this case usually exceeding the rate for comparable prepaid minutes). Such charges for minutes are referred to as "overage" and are considered an undesirable outcome save in emergency situations. The other well tested alternative to using more minutes than agreed upon would be to disable the subscriber at that point, which some prepaid and hybrid service plans deploy. This has the alternate drawback of making the phone potentially unavailable in case it is suddenly needed.

Overage (also called “claw back”) is a term to describe a sum of money in addition to the original sale price which a seller of land may be entitled to receive following completion if and when the buyer complies with agreed conditions.

A typical scenario would be : On completion a Buyer pays £x for a piece of land and the Seller is aware of the Buyer’s intention to develop the land. Overage provisions are negotiated into the contract of sale to ensure that once planning is obtained, the Seller receives a proportion of the increase in the value of the land.

balance, bonus, dividend, excess, extra, gratuity, lagniappe, leftover, margin, overmeasure, overplus, overrun, overset, overstock, oversupply, plus, pourboire, redundancy, remainder, something extra, spare, superfluity, surplus, surplusage, tip