Utility Warehouse (Telecom Plus) Discussion

Ypaymore

penrhyn wrote: »

The consensus seems to be that the telephone and broadband service supplied by Carphone Warehouse is quite competitive.

Their basic unbundled broadband/phone service including calls to other UW Customers and weekend uk calls only would cost you £19.99 plus £1.76 membership fee ,plus caller display £1.25 a month = £23 a month .You cant add additional call bundles on their broadcall service unless you take other services ,eg their expensive energy/mobile products.

https://www.utilitywarehouse.co.uk/home/broadcall/

Talk Talk charge £18.68 a month for much the same thing including inclusive evening and weekend calls and caller display.

http://broadband.talktalk.co.uk/products/broadband

NigeWick

missterryshopper wrote: »

Whilst the prepaid mastercard might seem like a good idea surely you would have to do a lot of shopping to get a discount to offset the higher energy and phone/broadband costs.Or am i missing something ?

You're not missing anything except that many people use the associated shops on a daily basis and can use the "savings" against their utility bills which is what I choose to do. I did not have to change my shopping habits in order to pay less for my utilities. Yes, I could search round for the deal of the moment every few months but I just can't be bothered.

I am an independent distributor with Utility Warehouse and the views I express may not be shared by the company.

Quentin

NigeWick wrote: »

You're not missing anything except that many people use the associated shops on a daily basis and can use the "savings" against their utility bills which is what I choose to do.

As you are a rep for uw, you would say that.

But why be a busy fool, using your cashback to pay your expensive energy bills?

It's much more moneysaving to get your energy much cheaper elsewhere, then keep any shopping cashback and discounts you get for yourself!

Quentin

Retford_Red wrote: »

I've taken a back seat interest in this thread for a while now, ever since a "friend" of my wife approached her about Utility Warehouse, apparently she wanted to practice her technique on her.

We discovered this is a standard technique uw reps are taught - we have seen this training video, where the reps are cynically shown how to pretend to a friend they need their help, when they really are intent on signing them up (the quotes around 'practice appointment' are from the uw intro to the video):

Here's another video that demonstrates Group Director, Shannon Griffin booking a 'practice appointment', no doubt with a view to signing up a multi-service customer for at least four services, because that's what the top distributors do.

http://www.networkerplus.co.uk/videos/practice-appointment-shannon-griffin.html

As further evidence that they are encouraged to take advantage of their friends this way, here's another video from a uw rep bemoaning that shortly after buying his way in to uw, and following the training to hit his "warm" market his friends and family took to going the other way when they saw him coming towards them in the street:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBCRZ0eZ-D4

lemma1968

For those poor people that are coming to this thread for the first time and are feeling a little overwhelmed with the "he said, she said" element of this and where the truth lies - I can give you one piece of advice - when reading the thread look out for the views of the actual customers of UW who post here.

They will be the best informed on the thread.

BUT - customers who are also UW distributors have their own agenda are a further category that MAY, I'm not saying WILL, offer misleading advice because they have their own financial agenda.

In reality this thread does not contain many actual customers who are not also distributors. Many of those who are against UW are also not actual customers.

Sieve out the actual customers and then you will have a better idea.

BUT ALWAYS research before swapping to UW.

Quentin

lemma1968 wrote: »

Sieve out the actual customers and then you will have a better idea.

A similar argument is used to say only women who have had a baby should be allowed to be midwives!

lemma1968

Quentin wrote: »

A similar argument is used to say only women who have had a baby should be allowed to be midwives!

I understand the point you are making, in fact i have come across a couple of very good male midwives.

The point I am making is that this thread is full of argy bargy between 2 distinct groups of people. Some way of getting to the bottom of it (although I accept its far from perfect) is to try and find the real customers of the provider.

There will clearly be those who say that not many UW customers will read this because they are happy with the service and only those who have had a problem will want to whine about it. Is this true? I know not. But UW does provoke severe reactions.

The best advice is to ensure that each potential customer researches well before swapping between providers.

Quentin

Each rep has an average of 9 customers.

The reps are encouraged to make use of friends and relatives to become customers.

No-one expects their friend/relative to mislead them, so will trust what is said in relation to "guaranteed" savings, corrupt comparison sites, etc!

Until the scales fall from their eyes!

ThrobsBlackHat

I can't quite believe this thread is still going!

When is someone going to write the book?

When UW first came out it had a decent offer. This has eroded with time.

I personally don't like the "community development" stuff from UW in the same way I don't like charity credit cards. No point paying 30% more to give 10% back.

If you want to make money for a school / project / charity use a service like http://www.buy.at/fundraising / and get a full range of online shops / various energy providers.

I cannot believe the same people are having the same arguments years later!

missterryshopper

NigeWick wrote: »

You're not missing anything except that many people use the associated shops on a daily basis and can use the "savings" against their utility bills

Thats all very well but this site is about money saving is it not.
Not about buying expensive products and reducing the cost by shopping at certain shops.Cant you use the card to get cashback and buy your energy etc elsewhere and save more money.