Moving to Meteor and new Phone Q's

seamus

Right, as I say, I'm considering moving to Meteor. My better half is moving to the UK for two years, and has a landline there, so it just makes sense to avail of Meteor's great costs in that area.

But I can't make sense of their postpay options

http://www.meteor.ie/makethemove/minutes.html

It says "No line rental", but then says "Monthly Commitments". So is this just a fancy way of saying, "You don't pay line rental, but if you don't make €25 worth of calls in the month, we'll charge you €25"?

Also, what is there online service like? I'm used to My Vodafone, which despite its frequent downtime, is very useful.

And if I move, I get a new phone. I have a 3200, but I'm not mad about it. I like the look of the 6820, but I had a go of one, and it seems that given a year, the flip pad will become loose and irritating. Anyone any recommendations?

ferryman

Seamus,
Depending on how you look at it, line rental may (or may not) be free. For example, the Meteor 200 option gives you 200 anytime minutes to any numbers in the UK or Ireland for €40, meaning that it works out at €0.20 per minute (free line rental). However, as you say, if you don't use the full 200 minutes, you still get charged for them, so in effect, you are indeed getting charged for line rental.

They're on-line service is reasonable (although their website doesn't seem to get updated that often). I'm pre-pay with Meteor, so MyMeteor allows me to top-up (given that I have already registered a creditcard), send 30 free text messages a month, send WAP/GPRS/MMS settings directly to my phone, view my call/top-up history, as well as manage my Text/MMS alerts. Extra services may be available for post-pay customers, maybe someone could tell us?

Regarding the phones, you might want to have a look in the stores, I think the phone-list on the web is a little out-dated, I heard of someone getting the Siemens CF62 there at the weekend, and it doesn't seem to be on the website yet.

Hope some of this helps.
Ciaran

yak

o2 might suit you as well...
with o2.ie you have 250 sms messages to anywhere in the world for free...
also with o2 you can have an international 'add on' where you get 25minutes to most countries outside of ireland per month, and if you buy one you get one free.. therefore you could have a 100 free text messages and 25 minutes of international calls for 7.50 (which aint bad!). after ur 25minutes you get the rest of your international calls for half the normal price... so either way your best off moving from vodafone to one of the other networks...

okonski

But watch out for possible overcharging....! <g>

Genghis

Do an analysis of your phone costs before you move, and weigh up any 'add-on' that O2 offer carefully. Remember, in order to get the add-on you have to commit to line rental (starting at €15), and to pay for the options (€7.50). That is €22.50 before you make any calls. Okay they give you back €5 in call credit, but €17.50 would buy you a lot of time / texts with Meteor, even on their PAYG options.

My personal recommendation would be:
a) Move your landline / the landline where you live to UTV. Then all off-peak calls to UK landlines are free.
b) Get a Speakeasy PIN and get registered for myO2 - 300 free texts to the UK online, so long as you keep the SIM active (put it in every few weeks and make the occassional call)
c) Take out a meteor subscription for all other calls.

FYI, I did the following comparison for my own particular situation. I make approx 25 min calls peak, 90 min calls off-peak and send approx 100 texts per month. My bills with O2 were in the €50-60 range, and I was on the best plan for my usage.

Having looked at all the plans on the market, I decided to move to Meteor. Here are the costs:

Meteor PAYG - €30
Vodafone PAYG - €38
O2 Speakeasy - €37

Meteor PostPay - €41
Vodafone PostPay - €51
O2 Postpay - €47

I did look at all price plans in all categories above, but have just listed the cheapest available.

Meteor are also offering €10 free per month for 10 months if you move your old phone to them and you top-up by €20 per month. I would also get €1 in free credit for doing so. In essence for the next 10 months my calls will cost me €19 with Meteor, rising to €29 after the free credit offer expires.

yak

i'm just wondering how did you do the comparison? did you use a spread sheet? or did you just calculate them yourself?

seamus

Thanks for that guys, and that loads of feedback Genghis.

I won't be going for o2, since the cheapest line rental and the international call add-on would set me back €22.50 before calls, and my Vodafone bill for last month, after calls was €25. So that wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.

I actually hadn't considered getting a separate Meteor PAYG or even Pay monthly phone on top of my Vodafone one. It sounds like a good avenue I could go down. The other thing being that most of my calls are to Vodafone customers, and are included in my monthly minutes, so some months I actually don't pay anything for calls (and with a text add-on, I get cheaper texts). If I moved to Meteor, I may start having to pay over the odds.

I'll get my last bill and do some sums, see what I come up with.

Slice

If you think about it the meteor package plans are far better than O2 or Vodafone. I'm moving to Meteor Minutes 350 for €55 per month in line rental. Compare this to Vodafone Business 400 and that will cost you €96.80 per month for just 50 minutes more. Meteor's minutes can also be used to call UK numbers whereas Vodafone cannot. The only downside is that their minutes can't be carried over whereas Vodafone can

seamus

Right guys, sorry to drag this up, but I'm almost definitely moving to meteor unless one of the people I ask in the next day tells me their coverage isn't worth crap. My "discount" is gone, so I'm paying full whack now to use Vodafone's network, and my rental costs more than my calls and texts combined, which isn't on.

Just one decision - 7250i or 6820? Both the same price on Meteor, and the 6820 is a better phone on paper, but the flip bit seems a bit fragile, especially considering it doesn't click together like it probably should.

yak

i'm not sure i would go with either!!! 7250i isnt worth even considering... its too old and about to be taken off the market (if its not already gone, which it def is with o2 anyway!), as for the 6820... i'm not sure what exactly you would gain from this phone... flip can be iffy, but the camera is down right terrible. and by the sounds of your previous posts i'm not sure you would gain much from the blackberry technology incorporated in it... if you have money to spend the 6230 is a lovely phone. if you want to budget the 6610i (not 6610, which is also gone!) is more or less the replacement for the 7250i... if you willing to change manufacturers sony ericsson T630 is a feature packed phone with a lot of good points... while the motorolas offer something different. i'm not sure of any of the above phones availability on meteor tho....

seamus

Actually, 6230 was a typo, but yeah it is a very nice phone. It doesn't seem to be on Meteor yet, but the older 6220 is.

I'll go in and have a look in one of the stores. I used to like Motorola, sso I may have a look at the V300.

yak

i wouldnt go with the 6220 is a street behind the 6230 imho. as for motorola V300 thats not a bad phone, excellent camera, excellent screen, allows you email/games/mms etc, very personalisable and should be reasonably priced at same time...

samo

w wouldnt be sure about the V300, had one on meteor and they issued me with 4 replacements in 3 months as different things were wrong with each one. the camera and zoom were great but I was told by the store that they got a let of returns on V300.

There was an issue a few months back,on 7250i that wouldnt connect to GPRS properly due to software issue but this may have been resolved but camera isnt great at all, dont really know very much about other handsets mentioned but thats my opnion on those 2. The stores seem to push 6820 and I guess they would see amount of returns so wont push anything to unreliable as otherwise more hassle for them.

the other half is on meteor and has noticed a marked imrpovement in coverage, very rarely any dropped calls and hasnt been any network issues in ages so seems to be big improvement there.

Only thing is dont expect same kind of level of customer care as you would from 1907, they have a very small base of bill customers in comparison to Pay as you go so you will be holding along with the rest of Joe public and also dont have facility to check your minutes, you will have to ring them if not keeping count. They have spruced up the My Meteor website so a lot better now though


But you cant have everything!

Last thing I would say is they are incredibly sticky about what ID etc you must have and seems to chg weekly. You must have a landline or current vodafone bill with you, so OK there must be no arrears on it and photo ID. Also bank or credit statement with no minus figures. When I tried to set up a bill it showed -3.00 on an agreed overdraft after mortgage payment and they wouldnt accept it! Also a utility bill but they may take vodafone bill but have all your forms straight as like I say Very very fussy

Mr-X

AFAIK 6230 is on Meteor 4??e Pay as you Go and 199e Bill Pay

flywheel

yup - 6230 is out on meteor noticed it in one of their stores yesterday

BrianG