Mobile Operator Rip-Offs

rogue-entity

Take a stand people. I would have suggested that we all jump ship and move to Meteor, currantly the cheapest irish mobile operator, with cheap calls to irish and UK numbers being charged the same rate which is around 20c for bill-pay. But with them being bought by Eircom the future is dark because eircom will most likly up the prices, a lot. Vodafone and O2 however are well estabilished rip-off operators with extortionate pre-pay charges. O2 peak to non-o2 number 63c/min; peak o2-o2 call 50c. Need I say more.

If you feel that you have been ripped off, name and shame them by voting for them here. NB: I am not including 3 in this because they have not launched yet.

airetam_storm

Eircom cannot raise prices in meteor, this will be thier selling point according to them, low price. But 3 are coming and aiming at young people so calls will prob be just as expensive as all the rest :mad:

Chalk

3 launched on wednesday/thursday last week.

nobodythere

Meteor is class for texts, but if you're making calls, forget it.

DonkeyStyle \o/

We live in a time where people will pay stupid money for the latest crappy ringtone... 5 euro for some rubbish Java game that they'll play once for a few seconds before realising how crap it is.
When you're burning money like this, it's no wonder mobile operators can charge whatever they like.

BuffyBot

But with them being bought by Eircom the future is dark because eircom will most likly up the prices, a lot

Unlikely. Meteor's recent success and gain in market share has been because of their price-driven offering. eircom will not spend 420 million euro on Meteor, and then kill it's growth stone dead. Even they aren't so foolish as that. eircom are banking of Meteor growing it's market share even more than it is currently, cutting deeply into Vodafone and O2's market.

With no 3G licence and little or no huge corporate accounts, eircom/Meteor will continute to chase after the people who want a relatively no frills offering - those who talk and text and want good value while doing it.

alleepally

The head of O2 Ireland, Danuta Gray, made over £2m sterling selling shares earlier this week.

She was one of 9 senior exec's in O2 that between them netted a cool STG£21.3 million.

So at least someone is making a few bob out of all those ringtones and such like!

littlejukka

tony o'reilly in the sunday times has said he wants to make meteor the ryanair of the mobile industry. not a good thing.

CCOVICH

littlejukka wrote:

tony o'reilly in the sunday times has said he wants to make meteor the ryanair of the mobile industry. not a good thing.

How is this going to work? If you live in Cork, and want to make a call to someone in Dublin, your call will actually end up going to Drogheda, where you will have to find a phonebox and pay €20 to complete the call ?

rogue-entity

Actualy since three had actualy launced less then a week before I started this poll, it is a little inaccurate, but three are cheaper then meteor with 25EUR giving you either 300texts, 100 texts/mins or 200mins all this verses meteors 20EUR which gives you only 60mins and the free meteor-meteor texts.

3 also sells 3G phones cheaper then vodafone with the cheapest fone at the highest tariff only 19Eur (69Eur on the cheapest tariff).

Bearing in mind that there PAYG service has not launched yet. I will still be switching over asap.

gurramok

rogue-entity wrote:

Actualy since three had actualy launced less then a week before I started this poll, it is a little inaccurate, but three are cheaper then meteor with 25EUR giving you either 300texts, 100 texts/mins or 200mins all this verses meteors 20EUR which gives you only 60mins and the free meteor-meteor texts.

3 also sells 3G phones cheaper then vodafone with the cheapest fone at the highest tariff only 19Eur (69Eur on the cheapest tariff).

Bearing in mind that there PAYG service has not launched yet. I will still be switching over asap.

Most of us are on 2G phones, we are hardly gonna migrate en masse to expensive 3G phones and services from either 3G or Vodafone yet, it will take alot of time before prices are acceptable.(despite the 19E handset on highest tariff!)

Meteor have been a few years in the market,yet despite them being cheaper, the 90% of subscribers still choose the rip-off Voda/O2 so 3 will have an uphill battle like Meteor has had in attracting customers.
What will it take to get some sense into people to move to cheaper operators though?

netwhizkid

I found Meteor to be a rip-off for roaming in the USA, i roamed there from the 5th to the 21st of Aug on the t-mobile network and for like about 20mins to half an hours of calls made and recieved plus about a dozen or so texts cost me €55 in credit. Then again Meteor were the only company that would allow me roam in the USA on Pre-pay. I switched from Vodafone ready to go to Meteor specifically for to Roam in the USA i also got a tri-band phone (a sagem my xv-5) for €99 with €80 call credit included. If ind their calls here to be for pennies rather than euros with vodafone. My advise is regardless of the company watch out for rip-off roaming. For my €55 i could have got a t-mobile simcard and $25 call credits all for $50 which would have saved me about €15 or €20.

Guy:Incognito

Going on the cheapest is best line of thinking, why arnt we all driving round in Fiat Chinqechentos?(sp?). We'd get from a-b. so bar the people who need to carry more than 4 people, everyone should buy the fiat.

paconnors

netwhizkid wrote:

I found Meteor to be a rip-off for roaming in the USA, i roamed there from the 5th to the 21st of Aug on the t-mobile network and for like about 20mins to half an hours of calls made and recieved plus about a dozen or so texts cost me €55 in credit. Then again Meteor were the only company that would allow me roam in the USA on Pre-pay. I switched from Vodafone ready to go to Meteor specifically for to Roam in the USA i also got a tri-band phone (a sagem my xv-5) for €99 with €80 call credit included. If ind their calls here to be for pennies rather than euros with vodafone. My advise is regardless of the company watch out for rip-off roaming. For my €55 i could have got a t-mobile simcard and $25 call credits all for $50 which would have saved me about €15 or €20.

I roamed in the usa with speakeasy last march no problems at all

KELTICKNIGHTT

USED TO BE WITH METEOR ON BILL
left them because the bill came 3 days before it was debited out of my account,currently with vodafone as l get 14 days before debit out of my account,this is good for me because ,my bill is not always the same every month.when l asked meteor,wa told you can call cumstomer service on go online to check it,so l said good bye meteor
3 looks good,also alot cheaper,might give them a try next year when my contract up with vodafone

billstraighten

the only reason i stay with vodafone is coz the 300 webtexts a month

roykeane16

they are all creaming it in greedy *****

JTMan

billstraighten wrote:

the only reason i stay with vodafone is coz the 300 webtexts a month

You get the same on Meteor . Switch and ditch rip off Vodafone Ireland.

Sam Vimes

Fungus wrote:

You get the same on Meteor . Switch and ditch rip off Vodafone Ireland.

and you get 250 on o2. only o2's can be sent abroad

bounty_hunter

rogue-entity wrote:

Take a stand people. I would have suggested that we all jump ship and move to Meteor, currantly the cheapest irish mobile operator, with cheap calls to irish and UK numbers being charged the same rate which is around 20c for bill-pay. But with them being bought by Eircom the future is dark because eircom will most likly up the prices, a lot.

Aside from that, they have ****e coverage. "National Coverage" my arse.
I actually do own a Meteor sim card, but I can't use it at home. Which is a bit annoying.

roykeane16

yes o2 do let u send webtrxts 2any country only 1snag you have2 have a emaill address with o2

bounty_hunter

roykeane16 wrote:

yes o2 do let u send webtrxts 2any country only 1snag you have2 have a emaill address with o2

One is automatically set up for you when you register an account as far as I can remember. And you never actually have to use it after it's been validated.

dundalk cailin

my friend switched over to meteor, she was lookin to get the free meteor to meteor texts but think she reg'd too late. seems to b v reasonable tho. im still on voda prepay have been since day 1, but now im in france its v annoyin that i cant send webtexts to foreign numbers, only irish

roykeane16

with o2 u can dc

o2 have a super offer at the moment. buy 400 texts in one go for €20.

that's 5cent text! At any time to any irish number. Also 250 webtexts a month.

I'm very happy with o2, cheap (650 texts for €20) and very good coverage at all times.

I don't use my phone for ringing much so i cant judge them on that.

o2s 400 text messages for 20euro isnt bad!

Saruman

Actually i dont think our prices are that bad... could be better but compared to the US it seems to be pretty good.

For service i think O2 is the best. Meteor does not have the best coverage (im with them myself) My company mobile however was O2 and it was fine. recently we changed to Vodafone for the mobile office thing which is a great idea.. however while the signal is usually the best... the service itself SUCKS!!! We send texts that arrive the next day, most of the time we call we get either nothing (no noise) or beeping. We loose signal, loose service, drop calls etc etc.. in other words O2 were great, Vodafone sucks ass.

Alkers

Deleted User wrote:

o2 have a super offer at the moment. buy 400 texts in one go for €20.

that's 5cent text! At any time to any irish number. Also 250 webtexts a month.

I'm very happy with o2, cheap (650 texts for €20) and very good coverage at all times.

I don't use my phone for ringing much so i cant judge them on that.

Can you buy this in any newasgent or do you need to go to an 02 store? Do the texts have a date limit?

SoBe

Saruman wrote:

Actually i dont think our prices are that bad... could be better but compared to the US it seems to be pretty good.

how do you come to that conclusion?im just back from there and i had a prepaid alltell phone

1,000 txts (that can be sent world wide) only cost $9.99
the package i had cost me $59 pm and i had 750 weekday mins and 3,000 nite time mins

so how can you say our prices are better than the us prices?

HelterSkelter

rogue-entity wrote:

Take a stand people. I would have suggested that we all jump ship and move to Meteor, currantly the cheapest irish mobile operator, with cheap calls to irish and UK numbers being charged the same rate which is around 20c for bill-pay.

Not anymore, Meteor no longer include calls to the UK in their bill pay plans. They charge 29c to UK landline and 42c to UK mobile (http://www.meteor.ie/makethemove/talk.html). If you want to make UK calls O2 are the cheapest (but still a rip-off) with their 50% off International calls add-on. Works out about 35c a minute.

I am ok as I am an existing Meteor customer and they haven't started charging me for UK calls so I presume I will get away with it until my contract runs out or I change call plans.

dudara

I recently switched to Meteor after 6 years as a bill-pay customer with Vodafone. When I said I was leaving, all they offered me was one month's free line rental.

With Meteor, I've cut my phone bill by 1/2 to 1/3. Not shabby at all. I'm pleased with their coverage, so far the only place it's let me down has been in the hallyway of my bf's home in Waterford. Can't complain.