ASDA Mobile Ditches Vodafone for EE

tyllwyd

jhp wrote: »

Have you seen this mvno runs on EE.

Good rates for calls and free voicemail.

https://www.whitemobile.com/white-mobile-rates/

Thank you - yes, that looks way better than Racoon from Orange. I'm just a bit concerned that they haven't been around for long. I might get a SIM and try them for the spare phone and see what I think.

cashbag

Some more positive news on the ASDA "use it or lose it" debacle! Radio 4's Moneybox has intervened & ASDA told them they will look at working with the individual customers affected by this loss of credit on a one-to-one basis nearer to the cut-off date.

The programme broadcast yesterday (repeated this evening at 9pm R4, or available online - the ASDA piece starts about 18 minutes into the programme) has a piece with Paul Lewis talking to a legal advisor who re-iterated the "Unfair Contact Term" scenario, as being the stick with which we can beat ASDA into submission. If a UCT is not prominently shown, or advised when you bought credit then it seems they can be challenged.

You have to write to ASDA to establish your potential claim & a right to compensation. If they fail to respond the next step is to take it to a Dispute Resolution Service like OFCOM.

So - looks like People Power might win through in the end!! A lady who had contacted the radio had over £60 credit & whilst others had smaller amounts it is the principle that is at stake here for all of us affected by this.

macman

I heard that piece and still can't fathom why some low users have such huge amounts of PAYG credit? The minimum top up is £5, so how does a low user manage to rack up £60?
I used ASDA PAYG for a couple of years, and as a medium user I never needed more than £10-20 credit. With a pre-reg'd debit card, a top up never took more than one minute to do.

NFH

cashbag wrote: »

The programme broadcast yesterday (repeated this evening at 9pm R4, or available online - the ASDA piece starts about 18 minutes into the programme)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03d7v5m - jump to 18:56

macman wrote: »

I heard that piece and still can't fathom why some low users have such huge amounts of PAYG credit? The minimum top up is £5, so how does a low user manage to rack up £60?

I totally agree. Although I fully support Lorna out of principle, I don't understand why or how she has accumulated £66 of credit. No UK network mandates periodic top-ups, only periodic usage, so why did she needlessly add all this credit when she says she's so hard up?

cashbag

People can have large amounts of credit for all sorts of reasons. I usually kept £5+ on mine until I went abroad last year on a driving holiday & knowing I would be out in the sticks if anything happened I needed to have enough credit loaded to be able to deal with an emergency in the middle of nowhere. Calls overseas are expensive. So I put an additional £20 on it, which took it up to £26 at the time. Since May 2012 I have run that credit down to £22 with occasional calls & texts. Which is why it will take me forever to use it up & I resent ASDA telling me I could lose it!! As far as I was concerned the balance would still be there when I next go on that sort of overseas trip - which will not be until after the ASDA "expiry date".

I bought my elderly parents a phone in 2003 & put them £20 on as a pressie & so they would likewise be covered for emergencies. My brother then bought them a £20 top up also as a pressie. Dad died in 2005 - I have just donated the final £2 left on that phone to charity!!

I don't think we really need to question why people have so much credit anymore than we should query why some people use a phone more than others. Someone may well have loaded up their phone at a time they had spare money available; maybe it was a pressie; maybe the credit came as a special offer when they bought the phone. People bought credit at a time & level that suited their personal needs & no-one was told it had an expiry date. If I have some spare cash I stock up on offers of toilet rolls, washing powder, rice, pasta etc on the basis that they will not self-destruct if I take several months/years to use them.

We don't all register our debit cards for top ups. Again this is a persoanl choice & we are all free to operate our finances in the way that is most comfortable to ourselves, without explanations to others.

jrawle

I don't know if ASDA have ever offered it, but some PAYG networks offer free calls to people on the same network / free texts / whatever when you top up by £10 per month. You still get the £10 credit, so if you don't make many chargeable calls during that period, taking up such an offer can soon cause credit to build up. But if you felt safe in the knowledge the credit would be there for years to come, a change such as ASDA's would come as a shock.

cashbag

And of course if you buy a PAYG bundle because you need access to the web for a short one-off period (like a holiday) when the free texts/web access expires you still have the credit to use for calls.

cashbag

Yay!! People Power wins a victory. The following has now been added to the ASDA website when you click through from the news about EE on the "Existing Customer" link.

Thank you to Moneybox!

However, if you still have credit remaining on our current service at
30th April 2014, don’t worry we will provide you a refund in either free credit
to use on the new Asda Mobile service or in Asda vouchers for you to spend on
anything you like. We will contact you nearer the 30th April 2014 with more
details on this.

John_Gray

There's been no mention of having to copy all your Contacts from the old 'Vodafone' SIM card to the new piggy-backed 'EE' SIM card* (when they eventually get delivered).

My new Nokia 206 doesn't appear to have any option to do this, so I may well have to use an old Nokia phone to copy Contacts from the old SIM card to the phone, then copy the Contacts from the phone to the new SIM card.

Does anyone have a better method?

* and by the way, if you want to order a new EE-based SIM card, do it online. This saves having to send (and pay for) a series of about five texts, each of which asks you for one piece of necessary information...

cashbag

* and by the way, if you want to order a new EE-based SIM card, do it
online. This saves having to send (and pay for) a series of about five
texts, each of which asks you for one piece of necessary information...

Thanks for that useful tip - I just picked up a message from ASDA today telling me to text them for a new SIM. I'll now do it online (or I believe from November you can pick one up instore)

Don't know about the copying contacts; I am assuming mine will copy to the phone ( a very basic Nokia) & then back to the new SIM. But I don't have more than a dozen contacts anyway so not really a big issue for me to worry about.

As I will be aiming to reclaim my unused credit in April I won't be putting the new SIM in until then anyway as I do think the wording of their reimbursement offer is still ambiguous. Wouldn't mind betting if you change over before April they will still snatch away your credit balance. Am going to contact them for confirmation on this, befor doing anything with a new SIM.