Madasafish

Quentin

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

.............................For people who are making loads of long daytime calls to mobile phones, we're probably not a good solution!

Hi Samara

You don't need to make "loads" of daytime calls to mobiles find your service a poor solution - your price advantage over BT is just £1/month.

You only need to make around 15 minutes worth of daytime calls to mobiles in a month to have again used up the price advantage over BT with 18185.

Or if you make an average of just 1 three minute daytime calls to an ordinary landline (not a mobile) a day you lose your price advantage (you would charge 9p for that call, 1899 only charge 4p - and you could have had a 15 hour call - or longer!)

Or your advantage is lost if you use caller display (when your line rental then becomes more than BTs).

It can't be seen as a good deal for moneysavers!

Madasafish_Customer_Care

It can't be seen as a good deal for moneysavers!

That statement depends entirely on how you use your phone.

I don't think that you can make a blanket statement to assume that everyone who uses their phone does so in the same way - because like I said, I'm saving money.

Kind regards,
Samara

Quentin

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

That statement depends entirely on how you use your phone.

Of course.

I posted to correct the impression you gave that only people who made "loads" of calls to mobiles wouldn't have a good solution if they took up your service.

In fact you only have to be a very light mobile phone caller (around 30 seconds a day) to be out of pocket using Madasafish compared with BT and 18185.

Apart from the other examples I gave (using caller display, making daytime calls), you cannot save if you make international calls (instead of using an overide system with BT).

You only have the £1 saving on line rental to make a saving with, so only customers who never make any other calls outside their included 500 mins to normal geographic numbers in off peak hours can make that saving.

Everyone else will have cheaper bills by staying with BT, using primus for their unlimited free calls in the evening and weekends, and MSE call checker for all other calls - especially 1899/18185.

You say you are saving money, so you musn't be making any calls outside of your "free" 500 minutes, and don't have caller display. Or maybe you have the special staff rate??

Or maybe you previously weren't a moneysaver and didn't make use of services like primus/1899/18185 which you are now not allowed to as you have given your line rental to Madasafish?

Madasafish_Customer_Care

You say you are saving money, so you musn't be making any calls outside of your "free" 500 minutes, and don't have caller display. Or maybe you have the special staff rate??

Or maybe you previously weren't a moneysaver and didn't make use of services like primus/1899/18185 which you are now not allowed to as you have given your line rental to Madasafish?

Here are my phone habits:

I use VOIP for my really long International calls - I spend probably about 3-5 hours a week calling America for free using Skype.

I work during the day and I'm not home during that time to make calls so most of my calls fall into the evening and weekend category anyway.

Mobile to mobile phone calls are much cheaper especially if they're within the same network - I don't use my landline to make these. Why would I pay a monthly subscription for a mobile phone and then not use inclusive minutes to make calls?

I don't get a discount for my Talk services.

Caller ID isn't important to me - I didn't have/use it even when my line was with BT. Why? I'm registered with the TPS to not receive unsolicited phone calls. I only give my number out to people that I want to talk to. If I don't want to talk, I don't pick up the phone.

As far as primus/1899/18185, I never used them because I sorted out my own system using VOIP and my mobile - dialling a CPS number on top of that isn't really of interest to me, I think it's just another layer of complication and another bill I've got to keep on top of. The savings to me for using this type of service is negliable and personally I'd rather have the time it takes to register for this type of service and maintain it to do other things - like work on my home business which actually makes me money;).

Again, it's all about how you use your phone and your attitude towards making and receiving calls. For me this works because it fits my needs. For other people it may not.

Kind regards,
Samara

Quentin

Hi

So as I said:

You only have the £1 saving on line rental to make a saving with, so only customers who never make any other calls outside their included 500 mins to normal geographic numbers in off peak hours can make that saving.

You clearly fall into that group.

So this plan's maximum £1 monthly saving over BT can only be achieved by never making any calls during the day, never calling mobiles, never calling 0845/0870 numbers and never calling international numbers - and not wanting caller display.

It view of this it was slightly misleading of you to suggest it wasn't a saver for anyone making "loads of long daytime mobile calls" - in fact anyone making any calls outside the free off peak allowance can't even save £1 a month! (And my example showed just an average 30 seconds worth of mobile calls a day more than uses up the saving, before you make any other use of the phone.)

Madasafish_Customer_Care

It view of this it was slightly misleading of you to suggest it wasn't a saver for anyone making "loads of long daytime mobile calls"

Sorry, it wasn't meant to be misleading.

It's more of a reflection of my skepticism that there are a lot of people out there making long phone calls to mobile phones from their landline.

Data shows that there are quite a few people in the UK who use their mobile phones more than they use their landlines - why would they choose to make these types of calls from their landline in the first place if they've got a mobile phone package that they're paying for?

My feeling is that if you have broadband you don't really need a calls package because you should be using VOIP to make free calls using Skype. The catch is, you need broadband to do this and you need landline rental in order to have broadband.

Certainly this is how the majority of my friends and colleagues operate; we probably wouldn't even have landlines in the first place if we didn't rely so heavily on broadband for all of our communication.

Even my mother in law has got Skype - I didn't have any hand in this, she found out about VOIP through word of mouth and set up the account herself. She uses Skype to talk to her sister in New Zealand and does all of her calls with her inclusive minutes on her mobile phone.

I think that we're going to have to accept that we're not going to see eye-to-eye on this.

Kind regards,
Samara

Quentin

No - I think from these exchanges we do see eye to eye.

Your phone package is a £1 a month saving for anyone who doesn't need a phone to make calls on during the day anywhere or off peak to anywhere but normal 01 and 02 numbers (with a 500 min per month cap), and hasn't the need for caller id.

Anyone not fitting that profile will be better off staying with BT and making use of primus and the MSE call checker to get the lowest phone bills.

If like you customers do not need to make any calls at all but need a BT line then they should save themselves £1 by signing up for a cut price line rental such as yours or any of the other similar deals on the go.

Anyone following the thread also now knows the disadvantages to signing up with you with regard to losing the 1899/primus/free caller display facilities they get with BT for the extra £1 a month.

Madasafish_Customer_Care

Anyone following the thread also now knows the disadvantages to signing up with you with regard to losing the 1899/primus/free caller display facilities they get with BT for the extra £1 a month.

Just to clarify a few points:

1. BT charge £11.99 a month for line rental, we charge £9.99. There is a £2 monthly savings. BT comes with evening and weekend calls for 5p an hour and MAAF comes with 500 minutes of free evening and weekend calls to numbers starting in 01 and 02.

2. With BT you have to make 2 calls a month on their network in order to get Caller ID for "FREE". they charge per minute, not per second AND they have a connection cost (not to be confused with a minimum call cost) on all their calls - that doesn't sound very free to me. Knowing the wholesale cost of Caller ID, if people take advantage of the 'free' caller ID by only making two calls on their network and doing the rest over CPS, I doubt they'll continue offering this. If you've read "Freakonomics" the chapter about incentives and their intended use and the actual misuse is pretty applicable here.

Back to the point if you're not getting BT caller ID for "Free" then it's £1.75 a month, £.25 more than us.

Because I'm not familiar with personally using these types of services I've done some reading this morning in this section of MSE. Here are the things that I found interesting:

The price of the connection cost for 1899 have gone up and they haven't gone to great lengths to inform all their customers about it. That doesn't sound like a good company policy - increasing pricing and not clearly communicating the increase to your customers. Again, not relevant really to the debate but I was surprised to see this after seeing first hand the loyalty of their customers.

In this thread regarding the price increase it was stated:

I've been expecting this for a while as all they are losing money on their current pricing arrangements.

Are these types of providers loosing money? If so, do you think that they'll continue to offer the services at the prices they do?

This thread talks about the deteriorating quality of calls using 1899/18185, have you found this to be true? Is it the minority of customers who experience this and happen to post in forums or is it the majority?

Kind regards,
Samara

Heinz

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

Just to clarify a few points:

1. BT charge £11.99 a month for line rental, we charge £9.99. There is a £2 monthly savings. BT comes with evening and weekend calls for 5p an hour

£11 per month if paid by DD (to be £10.75 from January for customers opting for online only billing) so there is a £1 monthly saving (which could be down to £0.75 from January).

BT's evening and weekend calls cost 5.5p each for an unlimited number of UK 01/02 calls of up to an hour (but opting for Primus Saver Option 2 CPS brings the cost of an unlimited number of those - of up to 90 minutes each - down to nothing).

Quentin

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

Just to clarify a few points:

1. BT charge £11.99 a month for line rental, we charge £9.99. There is a £2 monthly savings. BT comes with evening and weekend calls for 5p an hour and MAAF comes with 500 minutes of free evening and weekend calls to numbers starting in 01 and 02.

2. With BT you have to make 2 calls a month on their network in order to get Caller ID for "FREE". they charge per minute, not per second AND they have a connection cost (not to be confused with a minimum call cost) on all their calls - that doesn't sound very free to me. Knowing the wholesale cost of Caller ID, if people take advantage of the 'free' caller ID by only making two calls on their network and doing the rest over CPS, I doubt they'll continue offering this. If you've read "Freakonomics" the chapter about incentives and their intended use and the actual misuse is pretty applicable here.

Back to the point if you're not getting BT caller ID for "Free" then it's £1.75 a month, £.25 more than us. .................

This all seems deliberately misleading.

On your website it actually says:

Line rental at just £9.99 a month, £1 a month cheaper than BT

To get the "£2 monthly saving" you now have pulled out of the air you have compared BT's non direct debit rate with Madasafish's direct debit rate.

In fact BT charge £11/month for direct debit customers, MAAF charge their dd customers £9.99. So the correct like for like saving is £1.01. Unlike BT, with MAAF you can only pay by either dd or credit card (And like BT, MAAF also surcharge on their line rental if you don't pay by dd - it is actually £10.99 if you pay by continuous credit card, though BT will allow you to pay by cheque/cash/quarterly bill etc with the extra £1 month rate)

The advice of this forum is to get free evening and weekend calls by using primus (there is no 5p per call to pay) - so your point about the 5p BT charge per call is irrelevant. Primus provides unlimited free calls made evenings and weekends (ie no 500 minutes capping as you will get with MAAF).

I have always pointed out you need to make 2 calls a month for the "free" caller ID.

They have been offering this service for a long time now, and BT are well aware that many customer use cps to avoid paying any call charges to BT. Many of us here have been doing this for years.

Your comments about the 1899 price increase is again irrelevant, as I used the correct current rates in my comparisons with the MAAF "saving".

Visitors to this forum were made aware of the price increase before it was introduced.

To reiterate, using 1899 your daytime calls cost 4p each no matter how long they are - MAAF charge 3p per minute with a minimum charge of 5p per call. What would a moneysaver rather pay?

I have not experienced any deterioration, but deterioration does happen from time to time with all types of connection for all sorts of reasons, often nothing to do with the telco involved (this includes the MAAF internet connections as I know you will agree!).

If MAAF use these forums to promote their service, then they cannot resort to attempting to mislead without a moneysaver pointing this out, and the attempt to extend the saving to £2 a month by manipulating the comparison (direct debit versus non direct debit) is a disappointment.