Ah yes, now I remember why I like going 'pay-as-you-go'

I don't know if this is an isolated incident or not. Maybe there's lots of horror stories out there (from a UK perspective) about Orange, Argos, DHL, BT and PCWorld, but what I can say from personal experience is that Vodafone Business really is very impressive. We only have 17 phones through our business serviced by Vodafone but they treat me like King Pele himself whenever I call and bend over backwards to do anything I ask (short of printing fivers!) without a hitch. Maybe Vodafone are giving me a higher level of service at the expense of 'personal' customers but the difference shouldn't be that great should it as we are only a very small outfit here?

Tim

its amazing. I live in india and i thought that these are typical problems faced by us, lesser mortals, whose telecom boom is yet to happen. (most of us have got 3g phones but we do not have 3g services, so no joiku for me.!) this is a perennial problem we face. Bills are irregular, we are charged with something we never subscribed for. Heights.

Seems like, you guys are feeling the same pinch! Pre paids are much better.

Get your sim recharged as and when you are out of money.

Cheers to these erring telcos. Lol!

I would like to recount a positive experience that I had with Hutch (now Vodafone) here in India.

When I signed up for a post paid card, they had asked me to place a refundable deposit of Rs 499 (1 GBP = ~Rs 80). This is roughly the monthly bill for an average user without data.
Much later I had to go to the UK for a year, so I terminated the service. While doing that I didn't bother to ask for the refund, since I assumed that it was never going to happen (based on some other bad experiences that I had had in the past). Sounds silly I know, and it is not something that would be worth talking about in an ideal world.
But in the world we live in, many of these MNCs (Citibank, StanChart, GM/Chevrolet, HSBC etc etc), they come here and they behave in ways that they would never dare to in the west. They do it because they know that the overwhelming odds are that they are not going to face any reprisals (Culturally Indians are not big on sueing and litigation, and the judicial process is slow and expensive anyway).
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised when my wife called me in London 2 months later and told me that I had received a cheque from Hutch for Rs 499. They had done it without my even mentioning it once. In context, it is a big deal.
Well, Vodafone certainly has one customer in India who is not going anywhere else in a hurry.

P.S. There is a new player in the market called Virgin Mobile. Waiting to see how they turn out.....

@ashu, IMHO, telecom is booming big time.
The fact that we don't have 3G yet doesn't have anything to do with the telecom boom. As I understand, the government has not approved it yet (I keep seeing technical stuff in the papers about spectrum etc which I dont really understand). Well, the government moves in mysterious ways...

I had a contract for years but recently switched for two reasons. I don't use many talk minutes (my device is mainly used as a PDA) and data charges on PAYG have now become reasonable. For �5 a month I get all the data I need and then use about �2-3 in calls/texts. I can add bolt-ons for cheaper roaming if I'm abroad (although I tend to by a local SIM) and I save a fortune. I've always bought my devices SIM Free anyway. I keep them in good condition and sell them on eBay to fund the next one so it usually costs me about �150/year for the device plus, say, �90 in PAYG topups, makes �240 a year.

Try and get a contract for �20 a month that offers you that lot and a free top-of-the-range smartphone!

Yep. PAYG all the way, any contract for me would just be throwing money away for nothing. In conversation I often compare how much I spend on my phone with friends contracts and I am always better off. I can't imagine spending �15 or �20 a month so knowing that people are doing �30 or �35 contracts just shocks me.

Unregistered wrote:Yep. PAYG all the way, any contract for me would just be throwing money away for nothing. In conversation I often compare how much I spend on my phone with friends contracts and I am always better off. I can't imagine spending �15 or �20 a month so knowing that people are doing �30 or �35 contracts just shocks me.

It depends how much you look at it.

One on payg you pay for a phone up front. Unless you buy a pretty piss poor phone your going to be parting with at least �100-�179 and if your wise and you do choose a decent phone its free ( or around say �30-�60 for a �6-700 handset ).

Deduct this from your line rental (T.C.O ) and you take away ( for arguments sake an 18 month contract because all the 12 month ones now are piss poor )

�100 / 18 = �5.50
�479 / 18 = �26.60

I will point out that �15 a month contracts are generally VERY piss poor and designed for low use. But take your �100 phone and knock �5 a month of the line rental and its only �10 a month ( � 2.50 per week ) and if you use less than that in credit a week then no contract is not for you. Bearing in mind that's only 25 texts or around a few mins on the phone. The bonus is however is you will normally get a couple of hundred texts and minutes. If you take a ballpark figure of 10p per text and 10pm in call ( although you get raped for phoning off network ) you work this out as being �20 worth of texts and �20 of minutes. Bearing in mind these nearlly always include cross network calls then it's a very sensible idea.

The second calculation is say for say the N95 ( im not sure what the RRP is now and its not on PAYG so im going to assume seeing as it was about �600 a year ago and there only now starting to churn them out for free ) for arguments sake say a mid range phone and your looking at around �20 a month of your contact going as the cost of the phone ( bearing in mind you would have shelled this out in full on payg ) which takes your cost down to around �15 per month ( �4ish a week ) and for your sins you get 800 minutes and normally 800 texts. Work that out as being approx �80 in texts and �80 in calls. Thats pretty good seeing as you normally get the choice of stupid amounts of texts and calls ( your choice )

I would literally die on PAYG. Sure there are a few tarrifs that offer shed loads of texts if top up at least �10 a month but everyone I know on them cries about 2 weeks in as there paying full whack for their texts / photo messages. Either than or you only hear from them for the first 3 weeks then cant hear sight of them the last week as they don't want to waste their cash. People on say 02 get crippled Internet on PAYG and it normally costs them a fortune if they don't. Not to mention there are nearly NO payg tarrifs that dont have you paying out the nose for calls.

I used to hold the same view about contacts but when you take that 7 years ago I was paid �129.99 for a Nokia 3210 ( would prob be about �179.99 now ) and was going though �5 in credit per week ( back when you could get �5 cards lol ) add this up to a 12 month contact and it becomes...

�20 per month credit + �15 for phone = �35 per month. It was practically a no brainer and I dumped payg for a �15 a month contract with a free 3310 that was worth about �150 at the time. My bills were averging �20ish but it was a breeze compared to what I paying out before. My contract now includes pretty much everything calls/texts/internet/photos for �30 a month and I paid �30 for an N95 phone a year ago. Go figure 😉 ive NEVER rin out of allowance and the main argument for payg is people go "No I will run up a huge bill".

3 years ago I would have agreed with you but nowadays you can phone or text anytime and find out how much allowance you have left and what your unbilled balance is. It's JUST like being on PAYG except instead of phoning up and getting depressed at it saying 27p you get a warm fuzzy feeling whtn it says you have �140 left and you have only parted with �30. Its about self control and if you have no allowance left and you decide to go and make a 30 min phone call then your deserve a big bill 😉

dear unregistered.

When i said, we are awaiting telecom boom in india, i was pointing to the maturity of the telcos in handling customers. Telecom subscriptions and numbers are bound to grow here because we have not got the telephones here. Good thing is because of this our plans are attractive.

This may not excite many here as it is getting very specific to India now.

You would remember, what happened when reliance came out with that monsoon dhamaka.

3g is a case in point. We don't even know, how to auction, what price to keep, this is what i meant when i said we are waiting to come at par.

One comment from someone on hutch is very heart warning. I have never got back my deposits with these companies!

Unplugged: Ebay for the phone purchase. �5 per month to run it. Contract doesn't even get close.

Unregistered wrote:Unplugged: Ebay for the phone purchase. �5 per month to run it. Contract doesn't even get close.

As I stated earlier if your paying �5 a month in credit then no contract isn't for you.

It also depends which phone? the N95 for arguments sake still goes for around �200-�250 on ebay. You wouldn't have got one much cheaper than �400 a year ago and the chances are it was dispatched from Nigeria and required you to "send the monies first" if my usage was as low as �5 a month then yes I would prob go on PAYG and dump a decent phone cost on credit card to pay monthly but then most people with decent phones don't have low usage.

There are SOME circumstances where PAYG is ideal but when for example you break the cost down to my friend who goes though �15 in 2 weeks sometimes �20 and buys a new �70 phone every 2 weeks when she either smashes/breaks/drops in beer and they start to think. Another one of my friends has owned about 4 handsets and spent �300 in handsets in the last 6 months because there either piss poor Samsung things or she gets bored with them in 2 seconds or finds the UI hard. I have pointed out to her that If she brought a proper decent smart phone in the first place she wouldn't have that problem but then she goes "Nah wont pay like hundreds for a phone innit" and you feel like slapping her 😊

There seems to be a familiar pattern emerging here.

There is a group who send hundreds of texts and spend several hours a month talking on their phones to friends for whom contracts are essential.

Then there is another group who spend approx �5 a month on their phone. It's a convenience and nothing more.

It may be a generalisation (which, by it's very nature will not apply to everyone) but we are basically looking at younger people organising active social lives in the first category and older people with families, careers etc in the second.

I have a wife, two kids, a full-time job, volunteer work in hill search & rescue and am training for a 40 mile race walk. My free time comes down to five minutes each morning eating my breakfast in front of the news. I just don't have time to use up 600mins and 600texts a month. But I do remember (just!) when my life did revolve around friends, going out, pubs etc and a huge contract, I'm sure, would have been essential then. If mobile phones had been invented 😉

Unplugged has it dead on, often people just take into account the minutes and texts etc when comparing, but its about the phone too.

In short, if you want a highend phone and use a reasonable amount of minutes and texts consitantly, a contract will be better off.

And lets not forget - if you want data, you have to go to contracts really.

The offerings on PAYG are dire, very dire. If you want PAYG and decent data amounts, its just nowhere near as good as a contract. For the UK, anyway.

I don't think I can find anything wrong with contracts.

I did get my phone on ebay so when O2 called me about upgrading I said no so they ended up offering me �300 redemption if I stay with them. I pay �35 (incl taxes) a month which includes 150 texts 100 minutes and unlimited data. after deducting the redemption I pay �10 a month which is the price of the unlimited data bolt on so I actually get all my talk and texts for free...