18866 connection charge to 4p (merged)

ginger_nuts

18866 probably knew in September that they would have to increase its connection fee to 4p .But they probably also knew doubling the price overnight wouldnt be good marketing . My guess is 1899 will increase there charge in a few months .

vinylmusic

The creeps.
I've been using 18866 for ages and had no word from them about price increases
All along I thought I was paying 3p connection fee.
They shoud have informed all customers by email first
Thats just wrong

Edinburghlass_2

vinylmusic wrote:

The creeps.
I've been using 18866 for ages and had no word from them about price increases
All along I thought I was paying 3p connection fee.
They shoud have informed all customers by email first
Thats just wrong

The increase doesn't start until tomorrow

Website changed yesterday, emails going out today.

digital

redux wrote:

There is no deception.

I beg to differ.

redux wrote:

The increase is clearly shown on the website, and is also featured in an email, in which attention is drawn to a footnote by use of an asterisk *

The email is carefully worded to make the * reference appear to refer to the international call rates and there is further obfuscation when they include a reminder about national calls at 0p per minute...

'Call the following countries for only 0.5 pence per minute*!
Argentina
Denmark
Italy
Netherlands
Norway [snip]

*From the 30th of November 18866 will apply a connection fee of 4p per
call.
Please note that calls to landlines within the U.K. will remain 0.0 p
per minute.'

utilitybroker

Their will come a point soon if they carry on at this rate,that it will be cheaper to use another carrier with proper customer service, and no weekend dialling out problems,and a full choice of ways to pay your bill.

EdCov

Everyone knows that 18866 and 1899 are the same company, but aren't 18185 also from the same stable, and they charge a 4p connection charge.

I read an article a while ago stating that they were charging well below what BT charge them for the access number, so they must have been making a loss.

I expect to see them trying to market VOIP harder shortly.

ginger_nuts

digital wrote:

I beg to differ.

The email is carefully worded to make the * reference appear to refer to the international call rates and there is further obfuscation when they include a reminder about national calls at 0p per minute...

'Call the following countries for only 0.5 pence per minute*!
Argentina
Denmark
Italy
Netherlands
Norway [snip]

*From the 30th of November 18866 will apply a connection fee of 4p per
call.
Please note that calls to landlines within the U.K. will remain 0.0 p
per minute.'

So how do you think your email should have been worded . They just did what everyone else do .Good news first bad news last .Would you prefer "we are pleased to announce our connection charge will increase to 4p ."

digital

ginger_nuts wrote:

So how do you think your email should have been worded . They just did what everyone else do .Good news first bad news last .Would you prefer "we are pleased to announce our connection charge will increase to 4p ."

'*From the 30th of November 18866 will apply a connection fee of 4p on all national and international calls.'?

mobilegossip

I agree with digital.The Increase could have been made much clearer in their e-mail.But at least they sent an e-mail out this time.Which is more then they did last time.

santana-mx3

digital wrote:

I beg to differ.

The email is carefully worded to make the * reference appear to refer to the international call rates and there is further obfuscation when they include a reminder about national calls at 0p per minute...

'Call the following countries for only 0.5 pence per minute*!
Argentina
Denmark
Italy
Netherlands
Norway [snip]

*From the 30th of November 18866 will apply a connection fee of 4p per
call.
Please note that calls to landlines within the U.K. will remain 0.0 p
per minute.'

I agree with Digital here. They should have made this more obvious which would improve their customers' goodwill towards them. A colleague of mine got the email and actually noticed the asterisk and the bit at the bottom but was fooled into thinking that the increased connection charge only applied to the destinations in the international 'sale' (admittedly I had not read it that way myself). When I explained it to him and he re-read it, he could see that it didn't actually say it was only for the destinations in the list and that he could have been more careful how he read/interpretted it but was nevertheless very annoyed that it had not been made clearer.

BTW Digital, thanks for teaching me the word "obfuscation" which I shall have to try and slip into everyday conversation

However, I also agree with the comments made by others that

1) This is an improvement on certain previous occasions when we were not informed in advance at all.
2) They are no worse than many other companies in this respect. Remember when Sky was analogue? They used to write to subscribers promoting the new channels they were introducing. Further down the page, they would mention that there would be a "small" increase. Then in the small print below the printed signature, was the killer line that they were scrapping an equal number of existing channels ie. we were no better off really.
3) I certainly would not boycott Finerea telecom companies just because of this sort of action. I have saved a large amount of money by using these companies for the past year and a half or so and intend to continue to do so. Thanks to MSE we have the advantage of hearing about price increases and knowing when to switch (and where to).