The great Talk Mobile PAYG phone swindle (check your network for a similar scam)

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Say you had a PAYG deal where you paid a higher amount for the first few minutes of calls a day before reverting to a lower rate for the rest of a day, you would be forgiven for thinking that as calls are charged on a per minute basis, you would need either a call spanning the duration of your higher charging period or a number of shorter calls, those number would be the same as the number of minutes you were charged at the higher rate. Not so !

Whilst a long call spanning the higher period will charge at the lower rate after the initial higher charge period, the calls made in that period are charged per minute but accumulated per second.

Thus, if you had 3 minutes at a higher rate, if your calls were only 10 seconds long, you would be charged the higher rate for 18 calls (10 seconds each for 3 minutes) and not 3 calls as you would assume.

This is a blatant rip off and if not illegal or in breach of contract, is certainly against what I'd guess 100% of users would expect.

Watch out.

Tom_Hiscutt

[FONT=&quot]hmmm struggling to see your point here... its not really a rip off is it, they are just using per second billing?!

I would consider it more of a rip off if they were using per minute billing and rounding up to the higher minute after you finish your call surely? I think most would prefer to pay for the seconds that they use rather than what they do not???

Having done a tiny bit of looking in to what you are talking about it looks like Talkmobile have changed their products and do not use this billing anymore with their PAYG... I think Virgin might though?! Not that i'm knocking virgin, i'm struggling to see the point your trying to make here. Talkmobile actually looks pretty good with the Free top-up rewards on their products... Tom[/FONT]