Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus) Discussion

Quentin

Ignite wrote: »

Looking at their packages on their website, the £19.99 package is for limited broadband with a 40 GB per month data allowance. The £24.99 package is for unlimited. They don't give you a wireless router on any of their packages, only a fixed wired router unless you pay them extra each month - £1 per month on the £24.99 package and £2 per month on the £19.99 package. Having not seen that earlier, it makes their package even more expensive!

On top of their published charges, they also have hidden charges - you must also either join the "club" (minimum £1.50/month) or pay an extra £1/month extra instead. Either way, paper bills cost an extra £1.50 a time.

MillicentBystander

Ignite wrote: »

Looking at their packages on their website, the £19.99 package is for limited broadband with a 40 GB per month data allowance. The £24.99 package is for unlimited. They don't give you a wireless router on any of their packages, only a fixed wired router unless you pay them extra each month - £1 per month on the £24.99 package and £2 per month on the £19.99 package. Having not seen that earlier, it makes their package even more expensive!

It's swings and roundabouts, really. For instance, UW don't charge you extra for having no minimum contract, not something your supplier (Sky) would let you do for love nor money. Not forgetting the lack of an included inclusive international call plan with your Sky package. You're stuck for 12 months in other words. For instance, Be broadband give a 3 month contract option on their unlimited BB option (which is still longer than UWs) and even over the course of 12 months charge over £4.50/mth more than the 12 month contract option for the privilege. Leave after the min 3 months and it works out at over £10.50/mth extra!). Of course, none of them as far as I can tell offer you the chance to get your phone/BB monthly bill down to zero (or even less than zero) like UW does but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

PS And don't get me started on Sky's Indian call centre. Or is it Manila? Either way, yuk.

Ignite

MillicentBystander wrote: »

It's swings and roundabouts, really. For instance, UW don't charge you extra for having no minimum contract, not something your supplier (Sky) would let you do for love nor money. Not forgetting the lack of an included inclusive international call plan with your Sky package. You're stuck for 12 months in other words. For instance, Be broadband give a 3 month contract option on their unlimited BB option (which is still longer than UWs) and even over the course of 12 months charge over £4.50/mth more than the 12 month contract option for the privilege. Leave after the min 3 months and it works out at over £10.50/mth extra!). Of course, none of them as far as I can tell offer you the chance to get your phone/BB monthly bill down to zero (or even less than zero) like UW does but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Is there an issue with a 12 month contract? Is this all that UW reps can come up with? It makes it sound like there is such an issue with their product that you wouldn't want to be using them for 12 months but would want to leave after 1 month. So what.

At the end of the day, using Sky as an example (available to 10 million customers), having been told of all of the UW hidden extras (wireless and the club fee), you would still be £44.88 better off with Sky in a year and if you add in caller display and voicemail (free with Sky) £80.88 better off. Even paying the £2.50 per month non Sky TV fee it still works out that you will have just over £50 in the pocket at the end of 12 months that you wouldn't have if you went with UW.

As for included international calls, well UW doesn't include these - From the UW website

Discount Plans are additional options that can save you even more on your Home Phone service. We have 3 different Discount Plans available:

Economy International Saver (£1.50 per month) offers calls to 50 international destinations from just 1p per minute

Mobile Saver (£1.50 per month) offers savings of over 40% on the cost of calling mobiles at peak times

More Talk Anytime (£7.75 per month) offers free local and national calls at anytime (you'll only need this if you take less that four services from us).

However Sky does - From the Sky Website

Talk Unlimited (£5 per month) - Enjoy unlimited calls to UK landlines & 20 popular international destinations

It might be worth getting your facts right before posting.

btw, as a Sky customer, you can earn M&S vouchers for introducing friends - £50 a time. BE do this as well http://spreadthelove.bethere.co.uk/

MillicentBystander

Apologies regarding the International calls. What's up with a 12 month contract? Nothing if the company you are with provide a consistently good service and keep the price competitive but 12 months minimum is just that - a 12 month commitment or pay to get out. Which could cost you a fortune. I've already demonstrated that other companies (that give you the option, unlike Sky) believe it's something that should be charged extra for, but it's included already with UW. Plus you are NOT getting a foreign call centre with UW. The companies that employ foreign call centres should charge less then those that don't! (I note you have cleverly left my last line regarding Sky's foreign call centres out of your reply. Not interested in discussing this, I suppose?).

I've already stated my package with UW is standard broadcall (I get wireless with this as I use my own wireless router, btw. UW don't have a problem with this) and £10 mobile SIM. That gives us:

Up to 24mb Broadband
40GB monthly download allowance ( we use on average 25-30gb/mth so no reason to pay extra for unlimited downloads)
Phone Line rental
Free (inclusive probably more appropriate) calls evenings and weekends to 01, 02, 03, 0870 and 10 iternational destinations. (we very rarely use the phone during the day and they wouldn't cost any more than £1 for the month)
24/7 free calls to other UW phone line users.
500 X-net mobile minutes.
Unlimited mobile texts.
UK-based call centre.
NO minimum contract* (UW know that we can !!!!!! off when we want so surely an incentive to keep the service as good as possible?).

Cost of this (including club fee and £1/mth minimum spend on calls) is £32.49/mth. A brilliant deal in itself. By using the cash back card we will get this down to approx £15-£17 per month. I don't believe it can be beaten (Quentin had a pathetic try a while ago which consisted of interminable links to MSE articles on phone line and broadband that was as much use as a one legged bloke at an arris kicking party). Of course, if you don't wish to explore the maximising of your money saving, stick with your Sky package (well you have to for the moment, of course).


* 30 day rolling contract on mobile SIM.

Edit: Just caught your edit. UW give you an ONGOING discount off your bill for introducing people to their service - 0.5% discount per month off your bill for each service they take).

Quentin

MillicentBystander wrote: »

NO minimum contract* (UW know that we can !!!!!! off when we want so surely an incentive to keep the service as good as possible?).

You forget to mention that uw always charge a £10 exit fee whenever you do leave!

(And no welcome cashback on offer at all from uw - eg £50 is currently on offer from o2)

MillicentBystander

Quentin wrote: »

You forget to mention that uw always charge a £10 exit fee whenever you do leave!

(And no welcome cashback on offer at all from uw - eg £50 is currently on offer from o2)

A small price to pay? Say you left UW after 1 month. £10 to get out. How much would Ignite have to pay Sky to get out after 1 month?

Do o2 have a cash back card? I get ongoing cash back just by shopping where I've always shopped. Certainly much more than £50 per year.

Of course, if you are happy to buy your discount supermarket vouchers and have them delivered by 'risky' standard post then keep doing it.

TwittersPVFC

MillicentBystander wrote: »

A small price to pay? Say you left UW after 1 month. £10 to get out. How much would Ignite have to pay Sky to get out after 1 month?

Do o2 have a cash back card? I get ongoing cash back just by shopping where I've always shopped. Certainly much more than £50 per year.

Many credit cards do cashback and aren't picky about where you shop. I shop at Tesco and Asda and the Tesco Clubcard Credit Card is perfect for me, whereas the UW Cashback Card is pointless because I never shop at many places that support UW.

Quentin

MillicentBystander wrote: »

Do o2 have a cash back card? I get ongoing cash back just by shopping where I've always shopped. Certainly much more than £50 per year.

Users have to buy the card, pay ongoing monthly fees plus loading fees, shop at uw nominated stores, (eg to get £50 off your bb bill uw's gullible busy fools now have to spend in excess of £2000 at Sainsburys!)

Ignite

Why oh why do you keep on about this 1 month vs 12 month business? Is that all that you can sell the products on? Why would I want to drop Sky and pay another £174 per year to UW? (£24.99 + £3 for 1571 and caller display + £1 for wireless + £7.75 for anytime as I wouldn't have 4 or more products + £1.50 membership). Not to mention all of the extra cost for fuel if I went with UW for this.

At the end of the day, you might be getting a good limited deal, but what about the unlimited packages with anytime talk? This is where UW fall down big time. I probably get through about 80 to 100 GB a month with iPlayer, 4OD, internet radio and such like and when you start to look at it like this, you begin to see that the high fuel costs subsidise the £7.75 per month for anytime etc.

MillicentBystander

Quentin wrote: »

Users have to buy the card, pay ongoing monthly fees plus loading fees, shop at uw nominated stores, (eg to get £50 off your bb bill uw's gullible busy fools now have to spend in excess of £2000 at Sainsburys!)

Sooooooo....give me a viable alternative. And none of the previous silly links, please. A viable alternative for me. From you. With full details. Babee card?