Is Ovivo Mobile a Ponzi scheme?

Harald

Please don't get me wrong, I'm a big Ovivo fan, just concerned..

My main concern is rapidly growing price of Ovivo SIM card.

At the beginning it was £5 giving £5 credit (= sim was free).
Then £7.50 (sim for free) and later £10, £15 - with sim still free.

Now it is £20 which gives £15 credit, so the sim card is no longer free, but cost £5.
This means the price raised more than 400% in 18 months!!!
I still don't believe such network can live only from adverts. Especially lot of users have their SIMs in simple phones - they will never see any advert. I'm using it in a smartphone - never seen any so far.
Let's think:
if they have very cheap arrangement with parent network, £5 may be enough for 6 months. But the tariff is still free. Who will pay for next 6 months and so on? New users. They had to pay £5 + £5.
After another 6 months new users had to pay 3x £5. Now it's 4x

It's fine as long new users are coming. It will stop one day - like in every Ponzi scheme.
Then we have two options:
- better: we will loose all credit, but have PAC code to keep number
- worse: we can loose both credit and numbers.

Option 1 is not so bad - it would cost me more to keep my sim card active in another network.
Now please tell me I'm wrong and everything will be fine.

Herongull

I wouldn't worry about it. They are not a charity so they charge as much as they can and still sell the sims. In the early days not many people had heard about them and those that had were not sure, so they had to give the early people a good deal.

Time passes, they become more established, lots of people talking about them, people on forums like this recommend them, so if they charge more, they can still sell the sims. So they price of the sims keeps going up due to demand.

This is a good thing - the more money they make from selling the sims as well as the adverts, the more likely it is that they can keep going.

Any mobile company can go bust, but the fact that they are able to sell the sims for a higher price is a positive sign.

MillicentBystander

The biggest Ponzi-style scheme I can think of is the state pension scheme, if you think about it.:D

Neil49

Harald wrote: »

I still don't believe such network can live only from adverts. Especially lot of users have their SIMs in simple phones - they will never see any advert. I'm using it in a smartphone - never seen any so far.

I have an Ovivo sim in a mifi device to connect my tablet while out and about. My usage is quite irregular but when I do use it I get swamped with their adverts - every 3 or 4 screen refreshes which have a 5 second countdown. This can be quite annoying if the connection is slow (which it frequently is given the standard of Vodaphones data signal).

DCFC79

DaisyJaime wrote: »

what is Ovivo Mobile? I'v never heard it

Use the power of google

Harald

Or - better - search this forum. The answer is on second page.

Im_just_careful

I assumed in pure cash flow terms it was.


I took the view that if I had 6 months out of it before it shut I wouldn't have had a bad £15 worth. If it lasts until Christmas I will be happy.


I only use it for a data connection and have no commitment to the phone number.

DieHard

I wouldn't bother, strictly a small time company. They sent me out a dodgy sim card which got stuck in the phone and snapped the tray. I rang them up and they didn't even bother to get back to me or send out a replacement sim even though they said they would. I had to ring back two weeks later and the manager wouldn't even speak to me but said it was user error... err no I have successfully installed and removed sim cards loads of times, would not look at the photos (even though they advised me to take some) or speak to me directly so had clearly already made up their mind.

Honestly be careful with Ovivo, a significant sign of how good a companies customer service is by how the people higher up the chain treat their customers.

seaviewing

dodgy sim card? do you think they make them themselves?

Im_just_careful

It's now January so I guess I'm ahead with my Ovivo investment !


The SIMs (or at least mine) are very anonymous. Every other SIM I've ever had came with some sort of branding on the carrier and SIM.


The Ovivo SIM is "white label".


I'm happy so far.

DieHard

No, I think they sent out a dodgy sim card that was split and got stuck in the sim tray and snapped it.