Pricewatch »

• Cutting the cord

  April 20, 2009 @ 9:41 am | by Conor Pope

  Are telephone lines really necessary in an age when there are substantially more mobile phones than people in the country and a range of broadband services which deliver high speed internet access for a lot less than traditional providers can offer?

  A fixed telephone will cost even the most casual user around €500 a year, over half of which goes on line rental alone. Add a fairly run-of-the-mill broadband package and the cost will jump to closer to €1,000 a year.

  It is hardly any surprise that a growing number, particularly those in their 20s and 30s, with hundreds of bundled minutes and free calls from their mobile providers, have decided to disconnect their landlines.

  Despite deregulation of the telecom sector and the presence of dozens of telephone providers here, Eircom remains the dominant player in the sector, not least because it still owns the infrastructure which the other operators must piggy-back on, with very few exceptions.
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• O2 upgrade update

  October 1, 2008 @ 12:45 pm | by Conor Pope

  O2 have just been on to me to say they’ve just modified their upgrade policy again and while I have yet to get the full details, I’ve been assured that the new policy is much closer to the old one and customers are less likely to be negatively affected.

  Hurray for pepple power!

• O2 changes upgrade policy – people very unhappy

  September 29, 2008 @ 1:21 pm | by Conor Pope

  A listener to the Ray Darcy show got in touch with me after being offered an upgrade by O2 in May which was subsequently withdrawn. After the first offer he was told that seeing as how there were no phones he particularly fancied he could hold off. But when he called them last week he was told his entitlement had disappeared. Turns out he is not alone in being very, very unhappy with O2 right now. Not long after I got his mail I started to get others from other equally annoyed customers.

  Another person who was entitled to a Gold upgrade – O2 offer silver, gold and platinum upgrades depending on what class of customer you are – but wen he went online last week to choose a new phone he found his upgrade had disappeared.

  And online discussion forums are hopping with people who have effectively lost their upgrades. What 02 have done is just a little sneaky. They have changed their policy significantly and it has become much more difficult to qualify for an upgrade.
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• Shock as O2 secures Irish iPhone deal

  February 28, 2008 @ 11:53 am | by Conor Pope

  In news which will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody at all, O2 has just announced it is to be the sole partner for the Apple iPhone in the Republic of Ireland. The phones will go on sale here on March 14th. The handsets are going to cost €399 for the 8 gigabyte version and €499 for the 16 gigabyte one – that seems a bit steep to me but maybe I’m just bitter because I’m tied to the Vodafone network and won’t be able to get one. Three new iPhone tariffs will be available from O2, starting at €45, all of which will include anytime minutes, texts and a 1GB data bundle (Data use in excess of the 1GB allowance will be charged at 2c per MB excluding roaming, thanks to Justin for correcting my earlier mistake). People signing up will also have to commit to an 18-month contract.

  Here are the price plans from the 02 presser

  Monthly charge
  €45
  Anytime minutes included
  175
  Texts included
  100
  Data
  1GB
  Additional calls
  20c
  Additional texts
  10c

  Monthly charge
  €65
  Anytime minutes included
  350
  Texts included
  150
  Data
  1GB
  Additional calls
  20c
  Additional texts
  10c

  Monthly charge
  €100
  Anytime minutes included
  700
  Texts included
  250
  Data
  1GB
  Additional calls
  20c
  Additional texts
  10c

• Eircom’s price hike

  June 15, 2007 @ 11:57 am | by Conor Pope

  Eircom is to increase its prices for telephone customers from the end of July the company annouced yesterday evening at the exact time that every national newspaoer and TV station was entirely focussed on make up Bertie Ahern’s new cabinet. Line rental is to go up by €1.18 euro while local and national calls, the minimum call charge and directory inquiries calls are also set to rise. Eircom defended the price hikes and said that they weren’t nearly as high as gas and electricty price increases we have had to endure in recent months. That may well be true but it seems like a ridiculous defence to put forward.

• Phoney Business

  June 1, 2007 @ 12:56 pm | by Conor Pope

  I knew there’s be more!!! Eircom has confirmed that 100,000 customers who rang premium rate competitions phone lines in April and May were overcharged as a result of what they are calling “a software fault” . An internal investigation by the station was prompted when callers to a Late Late Show premium-rate competition line found they’d been charged for attempted but uncompleted calls. It now appears that it wasn’t just the Late Late that was affected. About 500,000 calls made to 30,000 lines between April 24th and May 17th last were involved. Eircom has not said by how much people have been overcharged but promoese to refund those affected next month at the latest.

• Phoney insurance

  May 28, 2007 @ 7:17 am | by Conor Pope

  Aoife Kane read our recent article on mobile phone insurance and found herself agreeing, and so cancelled her policy last week.

  “Imagine my surprise when I woke on Sunday morning to find my apartment broken into and my handbag, containing my newly uninsured mobile phone, gone,” she writes.

  She figured it wasn’t the end of the world, as she knew she was due an upgrade. She called O2 and blocked the stolen phone and Sim card but when she asked about her upgrade eligibility she was told it wasn’t due until June 1st. This date was non-negotiable, despite the fact that she had been an O2 customer for more than eight years.

  “Unfortunately mine wasn’t the only phone stolen from the apartment. My partner’s (insured) mobile was also taken,” she writes.

  They both threatened to switch providers, and O2 relented and agreed to upgrade her phone two weeks early. After the upgrade was agreed, Kane received a call from an O2 customer service manager who asked how she felt about the way she was dealt with.

  “I told him I was none too impressed and felt that two weeks wasn’t a lot to ask after so many years. By way of making amends, O2 has waived my line rental for one month, a saving of roughly €28 ex-Vat, which almost cancels out the cost of the upgrade I paid for. I’m undecided as to whether I’ll insure the new phone or not.”

• Paying for phantom texts

  @ 7:16 am | by Conor Pope

  A reader who occasionally enters a newspaper text competition contacted us to complain about the ultimate rip-off. Each time he enters a competition it costs him €1 and each time he enters he gets a confirmation text.

  “Last Friday I sent an entry but got no reply. On checking my phone I found my message was undelivered so I re-sent it.

  “Later, I checked the status again to find the second message was undelivered. I re-sent, and it was acknowledged as correct.”

  Days later his mobile service provider – which he does not name – told him he’d been charged for the non-delivered messages, and that this was their regular practice.

  “Are mobile service providers allowed to charge for services they don’t provide?” he asks. “If my local postman cannot deliver a parcel to me, he leaves a note to arrange collection or call back at a later date with it. He does not take the parcel home and keep it for himself.”

• Waste not

  May 21, 2007 @ 11:43 am | by Conor Pope

  I have always suspected that the all those bundled and supposedly free calls and text messages that mobile companies offer phone users were not as worthwhile as they might have had us believe and research published today appears to bear that out. Apparently phone owners leave on average 20 hours of their “inclusive” calls each year unused which amounts to €73.30 every year. The Uswitch.com survey also found that an average of 73 “inclusive” texts go unsent every month.

• eircom’s phone watch

  May 19, 2007 @ 1:22 pm | by Conor Pope

  Red faces all round at eircom then after the company was forced to admit it had charged people who had tried but failed to get through to a Late Late Show competition hotline. Thousands of viewers were overcharged by an average of €1 a pop after trying to connect to premium rate phone lines on the three most recent shows before last night’s programme. Some viewers dialling from mobiles could have faced even higher charges. “The problem appears to be the result of a software upgrade in Eircom’s network, implemented by one of the company’s key suppliers. This upgrade may have resulted in some customers being charged for attempted but uncompleted calls,” eircom said in a statment filled with completely unnecessary conditional words. “May have resulted in” “appears to be” – Pah! Eircom assured affected customers that they would be “fully rebated”. That’s nice of them. What about a little compensation too to teach the company a lesson. And I wonder was it only the Late Late Show that was affected by the software glitch given the increasing prevelance of premium rate phone lines across TV and radio schedules.

• Look, no hands-free

  May 14, 2007 @ 12:20 pm | by Conor Pope

  A reader from Dublin e-mailed us to complain about Vodafone’s failure to honour a promise made to her when she decided to upgrade to a new phone last October. She has been a Vodafone customer for nine years, and when she went into an outlet in Dublin city centre in search of a high-end phone that would give her access to her e-mail and enable her to surf the internet, a salesperson suggested the Nokia E61.
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• Connection Protection

  @ 12:18 pm | by Conor Pope

  What’s the story with phone insurance?: Mobile phones are stolen every couple of minutes in Ireland, the mobile phone companies like to warn us. And if they’re not being thieved, they are being lost in the pub or dropped in the toilet – which is why we should be eternally grateful for the peace of mind we get from the insurance policies we are artfully persuaded into when we buy a new model.

  Or maybe we are just being conned into buying products which have little or no value and are just another example of big business making money out of consumers while purporting to act in their best interests.
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