Angry punters slip contract shackles in T-Mobile crystal ball bill rumpus Arbitration service CISAS has decided that T-Mobile's use of precognition in setting prices was cheating - allowing some customers to escape thir contracts - though in other cases CISAS has decided just the opposite. The facts are that the mobile operator pushed up prices by 3.3 per cent, informing customers that this was …
'We've tried repeatedly to contact T-Mobile, since the CISAS ruling was published, but so far we've had no official response.'
God, this is funny isn't it? Massive multinational telecoms corporation and no-one is around to pick up the phone! It's almost as if they know they've broken the law on this one!
I am, unfortunately on T-Mobile, they are fucking awful. when my contract is up I am not going near them ever again, horrible, horrible company, they truly do exemplify a company that has got so big that they think treating their customers like shit is acceptable.
For proper consumer fairness short term consumer contracts should be fixed totally. No right to increase within a limit, only a clause that should an increase occur the contract can be ended immediately.
Since the rate of inflation is small there should be no requirement for the vendor to increase the price for the duration (12,18,24) of the deal unless costs and prices rise substantially at which point the option to end early comes into effect.
This is about fair consumer practise - who's going to be the first to provide decent service?
I don't know about the pain part. I had a two year contract with Sprint that initially specified unlimited data. About 6 months before the contract was up they killed the unlimited data part of my plan. So I killed my contract. I wasn't getting as much use out of the phone as I was paying for anyway. Out cost less than my monthly bill, plus I got a rebate for returning the phone. ('Merkin, so plan included a discount on the initial phone purchase.) Obviously YMMV.
...I'm actually reasonably happy with T-Mobile/EE. Even allowing for the price hike, which was slightly irritating but which - in the grand scheme of things - isn't all that much to get your knickers in a twist about. I've got two phones on contract with them and, while I will certainly be shopping around when renewal time comes up next year, I'm not going to get all hissy and try to get out of my current contract over a piddling price rise.
The reason that I ended up on their network was because the last time my renewals came around, they offered a far better deal than any of the other usual suspects, particularly as far as mobile data was concerned. Moreover, I have found that - compared to my previous provider - they do seem to have a network that largely works in most of the places I tend to spend my time. It even provides a reasonably good 3G service in areas where my previous network struggled just to provide a 2G signal.
Of course, what I really want is someone to provide widespread trouble-free 3G and 4G coverage for a really dirt cheap price and to give me a nice pair of shiny-shiny new phones to play with every 12 months. But that's unreasonable, so you just take what seems to be the better of the assorted options available at any given time. So far, I'm not particularly unhappy with these T-Mobile/EE chaps and am even prepared to give them brownie points for some things, but we'll see what deals are on the table next year.
the moment my contract is over. Right now I'm with Orange and well, lets just say I'm not going contract again, considering going with giffgaff actually. Basicallyt the problem is this.
Originally signed up with 3, because they had the best coverage in my area. When my contract was up I wanted to cancel and go PAYG, so I called them to cancel. Spent half an hour telling the guy on the other end of the phone "No I do not want a new contarct, I want to cancel my current one, no I'm not interested, no, no, no, no etc" eventually he relented and said he'd cancelled my contract... Later that month I got a bill for a new contract I had not signed up for. I think spent 6 months arguing with them to get that contract cancelled, which involved them calling debt collectors on me. Eventually the contract was cancelled and I moved to PAYG with o2, I have since vowed never to use 3 again. (I recently found out that they'd done this same thing to a lot of people, brought it up at work and two others at the table had a very similar story)
So a few years pass, and I decide to sign up to an orange contract. I spent the first 3 months calling up to cancel a subscription they'd signed me up to without my permission. Basically they'd installed bloatware on the phone which was not possible to uninstall, and kept signing itself up for a month subscription. Each time I got it refunded, but got more and more pissed off about it. Eventually I flashed the phone and got rid of the crapware, but it left a bad taste in my mouth.
In addition to this we're on orange broadband. (upgraded from freeserve / wanadoo / orange) they called a few months back to let us know we could get faster speed, garunteeing at least 12mb (double what we were getting at the time) if we switched our phoneline to orange, and it'd be cheaper. So we switched, our internet went up to 7mb, and our bill went up by almost £20 a month. Turns out we aren't in the 'orange phoneline area' so we had to pay an extra surcharge. Absolute bullshit.
Afte rmuch complaining we got free phone and internet for 6 months, and we plan to cancel the moment the contract is up. (I'd have rather had them cancel it then and there, and pay us to move back to BT since they mislead us. But alas my name isn't on the contract)
Either way I'm cutting all ties with orange now too. Also doesn't help that they're selling 4g contracts in the local stoer when we can't get 4g down here yet, which they fail to inform people.
Now I'm considering o2, vodaphone, or giffgaff. Any recommendations?
Ahh, Three retentions. First time I tried to leave 30 to 40 minutes I spent and they just refused to hand me over my PAC Code, tried everything to make me stay. The next day I came up with a load of lies that even they couldn't argue with. I told them I was the new Chief Executive for Vodafone Northern Ireland and because of that it would be inappropriate of me to use a Three phone and I'd get all the latest Vodafone phones to use for nowt. Still they wouldn't give up, took another 20 -30 minutes of this, escalated to their manager before I could get my PAC Code.
Currently with Co-Op Mobile on PAYG with a Data bundle, happy enough as a low user although they aren't that good if you are a heavy user. A rolling Tesco Mobile contract looks to be the best out there at the moment last time I looked.
Giffgaff I'd say if you've got good O2 reception down your way.
The £10 goodybag has just been increased to 500 minutes. This was enough to finally get the wife to give up her 3 SIM that was costing us about £24 per month. Because I'm on Giffgaff she can now call me for free. But you can't have everything I suppose (baddum-tish)
And the stories about getting a PAC code from 3 ring true with me. She was on the phone for about 30 minutes.
Aaah that sounds like Orange, I once moved my number across to them, they kept the contract going on the number it had replaced as well.
Course they didn't tell me that no apparently a major communications company has no means of working out how to contact one of their customers on their phones, it was far easier to send a bailiff round 3 yrs later.
Also major telecoms companies should not have their complaints department only reachable by PO Box.
It's the only answer as you can move around whenever YOU like. The chance of being screwed over by your service provider increases proportionally with the length of the contract, and no matter how long your contract is you're only ever likely to make minimal cost savings over a SIM-only deal (in fact, if you keep the contract going for longer than the minimum contract period it's likely to cost you more than an equivalent SIM-only deal).
Break the subsidy dependence cycle, and go SIM only. It's cheaper, gives you more freedom, and you're less likely to be shafted on a regular basis.
T Mob PAYG rate for texts rose from 10p to 12p on June 17. The companies have trouble calculating the cost of a text as it is so miniscule -- a 20% increase seems entirely out of order.
They are texting PAYG customers suggesting a switch to a £10 a month package with text, talk and internet -- not in itself a bad deal, but not what I want and much more than my current spend. Further, I've had problems with T Mob occasionally deducting the odd £1 from my balance for no reason that made sense -- so have disabled internet on my phone and am not confident about using it again with T Mobile.
The only thing that stops me leaving T Mob is the fuss/cost of having an oldish phone unlocked.
GiffGaff have a very helpful "Unlockopedia" which will give you a load of information on how to unlock your phone - and if it's old it may well be free to do. Just a couple of codes entered and bam!
I've had to pay £15 to get mine unlocked, but well worth it and I've made that money back in one and a half months after leaving T-Mobile to switch to GiffGaff. Best decision I ever made (as far as phone contracts go anyway)
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