Virgin per minute billing?!!

jassi_9

Hi i have a virgin mobile phone contract where i pay £10 per month for 300 mins + 300 texts....

my bill was near £30 this month so i checked my online statement and added up the used minutes and it came way short of 300, so i thought i had been wrongly charged......

i rang up virgin c/s to be told that i am charged per minute for EVERY CALL?!!!!

This means even if i make a call of 3 seconds i get chnarged for the whole minute?! is that correct, i thought everybody did per secound billing for contract phones?!

The guy even said that ALL mobile providers (orange, 02, voda etc) now charge per minute for every call?

is this true?.......what a joke if it is!....

DCFC79

But you get 300 mins as part of your contract so surely any calls you make to landlines should be taken out of the 300 mins, i cant confirm about being charged for 1 minute when you were only on for 3 seconds but hopefully smeone will answer that part for you

philnicandamy

well as a past customer they always rounded up the call to 1 minute with me..its standard with nearly all providers

MrsBartolozzi

Did you expect a 59 second call for free?
What about a 31 second one? When would you like them to start charging? It's usually per minute(/sec whatever) or part thereof.

jassi_9

DCFC79 wrote: »

But you get 300 mins as part of your contract so surely any calls you make to landlines should be taken out of the 300 mins, i cant confirm about being charged for 1 minute when you were only on for 3 seconds but hopefully smeone will answer that part for you

exactly mate......i added up all the minutes for the month and it came to roughly 200!!!!

now they are telling me that even if i made a call for 7 seconds......1 minute comes off my allowance....surely thats wrong?!

are phone companies even allowed to charge per minute anymore?!

Seems like this is what philnicandamy is saying though....

jassi_9

MrsBartolozzi wrote: »

Did you expect a 59 second call for free?
What about a 31 second one? When would you like them to start charging? It's usually per minute(/sec whatever) or part thereof.

what are you talking about?

i expect a 7 second call to be charged for 7 seconds and not the entire minute

again: what are you talking about?!

MrsBartolozzi

With most (if not all can't be bothered checking every one) phone providers you are charged per minute or part thereof. This means that you are charged 1 minute (or in your case 1 minute comes off your inclusive amount) for a 2 sec, 30 sec or a 60 sec call. A call lasting say 100 secs is charged as 2 mins etc.
The idea being you don't get any free calls (or in your case you can never make a call that doesn't cost you at least one of your inc minutes). If you get charged per minute then the cost will always be a round minute.

To be charged just for 7 seconds your billing would need to be charged per second.

jassi_9

MrsBartolozzi wrote: »

With most (if not all can't be bothered checking every one) phone providers you are charged per minute or part thereof. This means that you are charged 1 minute (or in your case 1 minute comes off your inclusive amount) for a 2 sec, 30 sec or a 60 sec call. A call lasting say 100 secs is charged as 2 mins etc.
The idea being you don't get any free calls (or in your case you can never make a call that doesn't cost you at least one of your inc minutes). If you get charged per minute then the cost will always be a round minute.

To be charged just for 7 seconds your billing would need to be charged per second.

thank you

i find that staggering

Lets say i am on pay as you go and i top up for £10, and make 10 - 15 short calls, my entire balance would be virtually gone!...

im assuming this per minute billing is for everyone now, pay and go + contract users?!

i make loads of calls under 20 secs, so i am going to get stung if i stay with virgin....

does anybody know who is doing per second billing these days?

thanks for your help.

DarkConvict

I've got nothing against per minute billing, otherwise you could get free calls if you didnt get charged for the whole minute.

The same applies to pay as you go data bundles. You pay £2 per MB or part of used. So 2.01MB is £4.

Although contract usage on Orange Data is done in small amounts, as i often get told i have 499.234354MB left.

baldelectrician

I have had (in recent times) a contract with Orange Business and Orange (non-business)

Both charge by the second and if I make 30 x 2 second calls if costs me 1 minute, not 30 minutes

3 charge by the minute as well

jassi_9

DarkConvict wrote: »

I've got nothing against per minute billing, otherwise you could get free calls if you didnt get charged for the whole minute.

The same applies to pay as you go data bundles. You pay £2 per MB or part of used. So 2.01MB is £4.

Although contract usage on Orange Data is done in small amounts, as i often get told i have 499.234354MB left.

thanks

but, how would you get free calls if they just charged you for what you used?

baldelectrician: what you said has confused me even more, you say orange charge per second but then say 3 x 2 second calls = 1 minute....

not 6 seconds?

i still dont understand when and how they started doing this....