Madasafish

neil40

This service is no good for calling International numbers although they claim to be.I checked for calling Bulgaria and was shocked that it costs 31p per minute!.If you are with BT, you can call through 0844 calls for 2p per minute or even Primus for 14p per minute......Neil

mobilegossip

Moving your line rental from BT can turn out to be an expensive business if something goes wrong.

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=281953

mobilegossip

neil40 wrote:

This service is no good for calling International numbers although they claim to be.I checked for calling Bulgaria and was shocked that it costs 31p per minute!.If you are with BT, you can call through 0844 calls for 2p per minute or even Primus for 14p per minute......Neil

None of their Intl Call Prices are Competitive.

Bulgaria is 1p a minute via 18185.;)

Quentin

MAAF are not completely transparent over line faults either.

They say this in their FAQs:

What happens in the event of a telephone line problem?

While you are with Madasafish Talk in the event of a telephone line problem, your non-cable line provider (e.g. BT) continues to provide maintenance back-up as your line is still with them.

This gives the impression you just need to dial 151 as now if a fault develops and BT will fix it.

In fact you have to report faults to MAAF in the first instance and it is up to them to get them fixed - presumably by passing the problem to BT.

Which customers will BT respond to first, their own or MAAF's?

Madasafish_Customer_Care

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.

This was my mistake - I had in my mind that BT line rental was 11.99 a month.

My fault for posting before my morning coffee.

I not deliberately trying to be misleading and I should have double checked the BT website before posting that!

They say this in their FAQs:

Quote:
What happens in the event of a telephone line problem?

While you are with Madasafish Talk in the event of a telephone line problem, your non-cable line provider (e.g. BT) continues to provide maintenance back-up as your line is still with them.

This gives the impression you just need to dial 151 as now if a fault develops and BT will fix it.

In fact you have to report faults to MAAF in the first instance and it is up to them to get them fixed - presumably by passing the problem to BT.

Which customers will BT respond to first, their own or MAAF's?

BT Retail and Madasafish both have to use BT Openreach in the same way. If BT Openreach showed preferential treatment to BT Retail there are huge legal implications as they're not meant to operate in this way to help competition within the market as opposed to a monopoly.

Competition between phone providers is crucial for the consumer - this is what pushes prices down.

I've always maintained that Madasafish Talk package is not for everyone. We're not advertising that we are the cheapest phone provider. You will find cheaper rates to Bulgeria through the landline....we're not making those types of claims!

The thing that I find really disheartening about this thread is that I feel it's becoming more of a personal attack on me - I'm more than happy to be here to help out and answer questions regarding our services or even if you want advice on your broadband setup in general. I maintain that we're not the solution for everyone and I apologise for putting the incorrect pricing on the line rental.

Good luck everyone with the way you go with your phone services and I hope that you all find solutions that work for you and save you money!

Kind regards,
Samara

Quentin

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

This was my mistake - I had in my mind that BT line rental was 11.99 a month. ...................................

The thing that I find really disheartening about this thread is that I feel it's becoming more of a personal attack on me

Anyone can make mistakes - though you did compound this mistake by adding "There is a £2 monthly saving" (it would be expected that MAAF do know their product and its comparative advantages over the competition) - and throughout the discussion we have been referring to the £1 saving maximum that money savers can make - if they fall into the bracket who won't ever use their phone to make calls outside of the included allowance - hence people are bound to "pull you up" on what did appear a manipulation of the two prices. (BT's normal price v MAAF direct debit discounted price).

The point I made regarding the maintenance of the line was intended to correct the impression given on your website that the repair procedure would be the same as previously, and this is not the case - your customers cannot contact BT to get faults fixed, they must contact you!

But my main point in replying is to say you are wrong - no-one is attacking Samara personally.

When a commercial operation takes advantage of a free community forum to push its products, then they must expect some scrutiny.

This website is for moneysavers, and this discussion took off after you posted that it was your company's "firm belief" that some customers would save money by joining up for the package.

This firm belief has eventually been shown to only apply if you don't want to use the phone for making any calls (outside the inclusive allowance), when the maximum saving will be £1 a month.

You also posted that in exchange for MAAF giving customers 500 mins a month for free off peak calls, you couldn't allow the use of 1899, etc., and the obvious money saving answer to this was posted (that staying with BT and using primus would allow customers to continue using indirect services like 1899) - not as an attack, but balancing your (understood) bias.

No-one can fault you defending your company's product, but there are some aspects to the product which have been aired here which are concerning (from a money saving point of view).

Certainly nothing personal!

bbb_uk

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

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.

They are not the greatest company for informing customers of price increases but very few companies go to great lengths to inform their customers that they're increasing prices as its bad for business. Besides, Call1899, etc have a free call cost announcement which can be turned on or off so all customers are able to know the cost of each and every call. No other call provider offers a service like that and instead generally hide their most expensive calls or in some cases not even display them at all.

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?

Call1899, etc must make money from certain other types of calls and they must have secured some cheap carriers to carry their calls. This, along with having no call centre means they can do calls at that price.

..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?

Once or twice I found the quality isn't ok but majority of time I find them ok and even on our calls to spain last week, I thought the call quality was ok.

bbb_uk

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

The thing that I find really disheartening about this thread is that I feel it's becoming more of a personal attack on me - I'm more than happy to be here to help out and answer questions regarding our services or even if you want advice on your broadband setup in general. I maintain that we're not the solution for everyone and I apologise for putting the incorrect pricing on the line rental.

I don't think any of this was meant as a personal attack on you.

Your job is to try and sell your MAAF phone (with regards to this thread anyhow), whilst the rest of us are trying to point out that if you make very few calls and don't go over your monthly call limit (which you have to admit is low when you work it out over how many mins each day you are limited to) then yes, your product would be ok.

In all other circumstances however then I believe your product is no good compared to the many other competitors out there simply because I firmly believe that it is your monthly call limit which is likely to put potential customers off especially if they work over the month just how many minutes each day they get (ie your 500minute limit equates to just 16mins each day).

As I said I don't believe any remarks were personal at all and I for one believe you have a good customer services (albeit an expensive customer services number) as you take the time to answer our queries which most providers don't (of course they may not be aware of this site)!

Basically, if you didn't have such (in my opinion and everyone I know) restrictions like a monthly call limit then I believe you would get more customers and your package would be more attractable.

To be honest, I'm surprised really that MAAF would have such restrictions as very, very few companies have a monthly restriction.

dave49

Its precisely that reason i left Madas last year - the extras from their 'limited download' exceeded the monthly fee - they are out to squeeze you for those extras. Most other providers offer unlimited downloads and a more generous number of calls / minutes. A very poor offering.

vinylmusic

Madasafish_Customer_Care wrote:

Hi bbb_uk,

I can appreciate that if you've got a lot of teenagers or a very talkative type in your house that we may not be the best solution for you.

Just like broadband providers there isn't one telephone company that is going to tick the boxes for everyone.......

Some time ago I switched from BT to onetel.
I was never keen on onetel but they assured me that all their service would be the equivalent to BT in every way. I asked if there were any restrictions on prefix numbers and I was told there wasn't.

I've been with onetel for about a year now and until I get a better offer I'm staying with Onetel

I pay £9.99 pm line rental and I get free wekend calls to landlines, free voicemail

No Restrictions on prefix providers so I happily go on using 18185 as a prefix

It only falls down on caller display which I can live without

http://www.onetel.co.uk/index.php?node=landline-line-rental&ref=hf-def-hp

I may go with Madasafish for broadband but unless they start to allow prefix providers I'm sticking with onetel