Do Meteor care about their customer base?

crazy chester

Hi all, I know its been posted before about meteors customer care (or lack there of) but im in a similar situation as some of the previous posts! Long story short got E15k worth of as bill which was basically all data charges, they capped it at E150. I pled my case to say i couldnt physically use that much data in a month and also my previous bills would reflect this ( im 3 months into a contract and as with all new things i felt i used my phone a good bit the first month but at this stage the novelty has worn off and i dont use it as much as i did when i got it) Anyway im not here to rant about my situation, just giving you a brief backround on my story.
What i would like to know is after an hour long conversation last night ( 5th call to customer care in the last 2weeks!:eek:) i made the statment, "I will move at the end of my contract if its not sorted out" what gets me is that this didnt matter to them!
In my head (correct me if im wrong here!!) if i hassle a customer for a small fee chances are they will get pissed off and go somewhere else, where as if i wave the fee and apologise chances are i have that customer come back again!
My bill is worth approx E1000 a year to Meteor and they seem to be stedfast in their pursuit of E150 extra from me this month (which i dont think i have to pay)

Can anyone explain the logic of this to me??

chrislad

Data is capped at 60e. Are you sure you are reading it right?

crazy chester

Yes I had a LENGHTY discussion with them and according to them, it seems E150 is the data cap. To look at my bill, its 34 pages front and back of data charges and the funny thing is that (for most of it) every 2 sec's 417k is exactly downloaded, now i mean pages of just 417k every 2 sec's over hours costing E6.68 a pop!
This is exactly the same as a friends bill (which amounted to over E5500)
He has now put the wheels in motion to move to another provider, and because he has changed his wife, mother, father, his other friend and his wife, who are all Meteor customers, are changing too! Thats 6 customers Meteor are going to lose in the coming week! Now im all for a business making money, thats what they have to do, but a little common sense goes a long way! If my friend felt he was a valued customer he would not be moving!

Which brings me back to my original question, Do modern businesses care about their customer base?

PS MODS- Im not sure if this discussion is appropiate for mobiles and pda's? I'll leave it to your discression to move it if you see fit!

ninjasurfer1

crazy chester wrote: »

To look at my bill, its 34 pages front and back of data charges and the funny thing is that (for most of it) every 2 sec's 417k is exactly downloaded, now i mean pages of just 417k every 2 sec's over hours costing E6.68 a pop!
This is exactly the same as a friends bill (which amounted to over E5500)

Are you sure this isn't down to your phones?
A lot of modern (smart)phones connect automatically in the background, which is why a data plan is recommended. Still, 417k every 2 sec's seems phenomenal to say the least!!!!!!!

Be aware, if it is the phone connecting automatically, changing providers probably won't help matters as your phone will still run up data charges on the new network as it connects in the background.

crazy chester

Thats the thing i was using it more when i got it, i set up facebook email etc at that time and i had 3 months worth of bills before this one, surely it was connecting the same amount as when i got it? But can anyone tell me if an application or even a few applications can download 417k every 2 seconds!?
With regards to switching providers, i agree it doesnt really matter which one you go to they all will take your money, its just it doesnt seem they want my money! Ye fair enough they want an extra E150 this month but its a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face cause if i change provider next july thats a loss of revenue to the tune of nearly E1000 P/A for them, and they dont seem to care! Im am completly gobsmacked, especially in these reccessionary times, that this loss of revenue does not matter to them!

Can anybody shed some light on why most big companys dont think of the big picture anymore??

ninjasurfer1

crazy chester wrote: »

Ye fair enough they want an extra E150 this month but its a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face cause if i change provider next july thats a loss of revenue to the tune of nearly E1000 P/A for them, and they dont seem to care.

But if they let you off for the €150 data bill every month for 12 months, it works out to be €1800 they've lost on data charges!! :p

Post up your phone so we can see what type of OS your phone is running on.
e.g. If you're on Android, try apndroid which can block data connections on your phone. If it's your phone, apps like this should help you curb the data usage.

crazy chester

Apologies if i was not clear but im not intending running up E150 worth of data every month, my point was that i had the phone 3 months (normal bills for those 3 months!) and in my opinion i used my phone less this month with regard to logging on to the internet and got charged E150 for it. In no way am i suggesting I want E15k worth of data a month for free all im saying is I dont believe I used that much data and no one cares in customer care!

"But if they let you off for the €150 data bill every month for 12 months, it works out to be €1800 they've lost on data charges!!"

Thats not true, obviously im gonna get them to cap my data at the 1G im paying for until my contract is up.(and if they wont do that 3G is going off perminantly!) That E150 is only gonna be a once off and in no way is gonna be another sourse of revenue for them! Their only loss is gonna be my monthly bills as of next July if I dont get it sorted!

Please dont think im trying to pull a fast one here and trying to blag unlimited data per month as im not. Ive been a customer of theirs for about 5 years and about 3 of those are bill pay and ive never had a problem! What gets me is they can see my history (no missed bills etc)with them and they care more about getting an extra E150 out of me than they do about keeping me as a customer!

My phone is a sony xperia x10.

crazy chester

Also with regard to what you said in your first post

"........which is why a data plan is recommended".

I asked the guy in the phone shop when i signed the contract if the 1G on my plan was enough and he said "1G is huge, you'd never use that in a year"! :eek:

dr ro

i don't know about se phones, i'm using a nokia and in the log you can see how much packet data has been used in the last month. Can you check this out?

crazy chester

thanks for your reply dr ro, as far as ive been told there is no feature on the xperia to log data exchange. Unless there is someone else here that might know how?

chrislad

It's an Android phone so there are hundreds of ways!!!

Best one I know is a program called 3G Watchdog. Allows you to set a monthly allowance that automatically resets on a given date, and warns you when you've reached a certain allowance. Can download other programs, listed within, to cut you off when you reach that point too.

crazy chester

Thanks for your reply chrislad, i understand there are apps you can download to track and cut off your service but if you download these apps do they start from when you download the app or will they give an overview of all data used from when the phone was first used?
What im saying is im not aware of a function on the xperia itself that will show you a total of how much data was exchanged on the phone, does anyone know how to do this?

TeaServer

I read these forums quite often, and it never ceases to amaze me how many people are on here complaining about data charges.

OP, you received a bill for 15K. I assume you have at least 1GB included in your monthly plan (you should have using a smartphone), so at out-of-bundle rates (of 2c per Kb) you used an additional 732MB, a total of 1,756MB. Its actually very easy to use 1,756MB of data in a month with a smartphone, so your argument of it being impossible is null and void.

crazy chester wrote: »

[...] Long story short got E15k worth of as bill which was basically all data charges, they capped it at E150. I pled my case to say i couldnt physically use that much data in a month
[...]
My bill is worth approx E1000 a year to Meteor and they seem to be stedfast in their pursuit of E150 extra from me this month (which i dont think i have to pay)

Why do you think you don't have to pay? When your a post pay customer (of any service), you yourself are expected to monitor you own usage, if you will have trouble paying a large bill.

Think of a similar scenario with the ESB. If your were to turn on the oven, immersion and all the lights and leave them on all the time for the month, do you think the ESB should not bill you for the extra usage? Of course not.

The problem with out-of-bundle usage with data is that operators actively try to discourage you from using more than your agreed bundle for the simple reason they want to be able to offer a decent quality of service to all users. If everyone is suddenly streaming youtube/rte player etc on their mobiles 24/7 the speeds will suffer for the normal users and then you will have a much larger customer base up in arms about the service. (It won't take long to find the mega threads over in the midband forums where people complain about poor speeds - The root of the speed issues is quite simply that the mobile infrastructure is not in place to allow all users unlimited data)

It is arguably easier to monitor your data usage (compared to my example above of ESB) on a modern smartphone with the above named 3G Watchdog or similar. There really is no excuse for not knowing how much data (approximately) your using. (Actually I just remembered on Meteor you can send an SMS to 50104 with 'data balance' in the message to get your approximate remaining data balance - download 3G watchdog and set the counter to the correct value based on the reply to the SMS. Then on your next bill day set the counters to zero and then get 3G watchdog to count your usage for you.)

chrislad wrote: »

Data is capped at 60e. Are you sure you are reading it right?

This also pops up a lot. That cap is only for data roaming in Europe. Some operators often write off the bigger domestic bills as a courtesy to their customers and a warning that if your usage habits have changed, you should change your plan to a more suitable one. Again, there is no excuse for this 'shock'. All the modern smartphones (certainly Android ones) have a setting that automatically switches off data while roaming due to the huge bills that are likely unless you have a roaming allowance in your data plan. Bypassing this setting gives your the warning again onscreen.

ninjasurfer1 wrote: »

Are you sure this isn't down to your phones?
A lot of modern (smart)phones connect automatically in the background, which is why a data plan is recommended. Still, 417k every 2 sec's seems phenomenal to say the least!!!!!!!

Be aware, if it is the phone connecting automatically, changing providers probably won't help matters as your phone will still run up data charges on the new network as it connects in the background.

The 417k is probably to do with the way the data is charged. They most likely give the phone a 417 Kb 'bucket' to use at a time, when that 'bucket' is empty a record is written for billing purposes and then another 'bucket' is granted and this continues. If your using 417kb every 2 seconds you doing a lot of downloading or streaming (12Mb / minute, or only an hour or so to run up your 15K bill!)

crazy chester wrote: »

Also with regard to what you said in your first post

"........which is why a data plan is recommended".

I asked the guy in the phone shop when i signed the contract if the 1G on my plan was enough and he said "1G is huge, you'd never use that in a year"! :eek:

I have a Desire and have data on all the time except at night when I switch it off completely. I use between 700 and 900 MB a month. (I wouldn't watch much Youtube etc on the phone though, I have a proper fixed line broadband for that kind of usage.) I have a 10GB add-on. I still use 3G Watchdog to monitor usage. (When I switch on data in the mornings I can easily use 10MB in a minute or 2 just syncing news, emails and weather etc. At 2c / kb those 2 minutes would cost me about €20 if I was not on the correct plan)

There really should be a sticky for all the 'my huge data bill' stories...

/T

ninjasurfer1

crazy chester wrote: »

Thanks for your reply chrislad, i understand there are apps you can download to track and cut off your service but if you download these apps do they start from when you download the app or will they give an overview of all data used from when the phone was first used?
What im saying is im not aware of a function on the xperia itself that will show you a total of how much data was exchanged on the phone, does anyone know how to do this?

+1 on 3G Watchdog.
Another good app is Netcounter. It'll give you the totals for network data AND wifi. If you're using wifi at home, it'll give you the total used for this as well. Tot up the two totals and you should have an idea of your total usage.

afaik, the counters only start from when you install them though.

As mentioned earlier, I'd recommend installing APNDroid. It'll disable data on your phone (You can still use wifi though). Using this with one of the counters mentioned above should ensure you don't go over your tarrif in the future.

Try uninstalling any apps you may have installed recently as they may be the cause of the excessive network usage.


edit: I'd install a task manager as well, to allow you to see what apps are running in the background. This may help you save battery, but also kill any background apps that may be using your data. Some of them have schedulers to kill specific apps.

crazy chester

teaserver i get what exactly what your saying, as well as the esb example, the only thing is i dont believe i used that much in the month! Just to reference the "esb" thing again, if i went around this month and used the emersion, all lights and the tele and was charged lets say E100, well this month, as far as im concerned, i had just the emersion and lights on and im being charged E15k!! As i said before im not trying to pull one over on Meteor, thats not the point at all!

My original question was if Meteor care about their customers and keeping our custom?

Also if there are so many storys about huge data bills would it not be better if the operators took it on board and made their sales people take 2mins to inform you of all of this when your in the shop purchasing your phone??

jordainius

OP, did they charge you an extra €150 or €15,000? Because you keep switching between the two?


To answer your original question, of course Meteor don't care about their customers, none of the networks do! All you need to do is look at their websites, very often they offer special deals to new customers only, not allowing existing customers to avail of these deals. In particular they don't seem to care about customers who have signed a contract.

Loyalty means nothing to them! Money does. Telling them you're going to leave or threatening it means nothing to them until you actually do it. And also, when a network has a million customers they really don't give a damn about losing any particular customer! They should in general be treated with caution and cynicism!!

crazy chester

E15K was my bill but they capped it at E150..

jordainius

crazy chester wrote: »

E15K was my bill but they capped it at E150..

Jesus!!!!:eek: That can't be right! I hope you get to the bottom of it!!