Have EE cottoned on to MSE?

Teamjarjar

My husband has done loads of research on here and tonight called EE to negotiate his contract. Charged his phone, got a cup of tea, and got ready to negotiate.

He was on the phone for about 5 mins - they said they couldn’t do anything for him and gave him his PAC code, just like that. No attempt to negotiate, no offers other than what was on the website (which aren’t that great). He’s not after anything crazy, just a SIM-only for about 8GB.

Have they cottoned on to the MSE tactics to try to negotiate a better deal?

Atasas

Teamjarjar wrote: »

My husband has done loads of research on here and tonight called EE to negotiate his contract. Charged his phone, got a cup of tea, and got ready to negotiate.

He was on the phone for about 5 mins - they said they couldn’t do anything for him and gave him his PAC code, just like that. No attempt to negotiate, no offers other than what was on the website (which aren’t that great). He’s not after anything crazy, just a SIM-only for about 8GB.

Have they cottoned on to the MSE tactics to try to negotiate a better deal?

Seems like it!
personally off to alternative network

AndyPK

If they don't want to talk nice to virgin or plusnet.

Same Signal

zagubov

Every mobile call centre will have somebody who doesn't get that it's easier to retain a customer than find a new one.

Had a similar time with Tesco mobile. Knew they had a better deal on my offer than my current long-expired one with them, but when I rang them, they said I'd have to close my contract and start a new one. I figured that would involve a credit check and a twelve-month tie-in and which is about as essential to me as a catflap on a space station, so I got a deal with SMARTY as easy as pie, cheaper and better than my tesco contract.

Phoned them back for the PAC code.They seemed baffled I wanted to leave and tried to offer me a better deal. I assumed they wanted me to jump through all their hoops again to get trapped in another 12 month contract so I just swapped over to SMARTY and never looked back.

PHK

Networks got wise a while back and it's rare now to be offered anything other than a slightly better deal (which is likely to be a promotional offer or a cheaper tariff without "extras").

For the networks, they had reached the point where two things had happened:
The market is saturated.
They were increasingly needing to offer "suicide deals" to stop people leaving. That is big discounts that removed any profit. That was unsustainable.

So now they are more concerned about increasing average revenue per customer and accept that people will leave. But they are soon replaced by people leaving other providers or the people leaving end up at MVNOs of the original network so they still make money.

I think the money saving thing to do is look at the logs on your phone. This will show you what you actually use in terms of calls, texts and data. Try to avoid generic labels like low user or average user, look at what you actually need. You can then find the tariff that's best value. Now you need to check out coverage, customer service etc (it's pointless having a cheap deal if you waste lots of time sorting out mistakes, technical problems - Ofcom publish complaints tables)

AndyPK

I guess the signs were there when most networks went to 12 month contracts for sim only. Shame.

System

AndyPK wrote: »

I guess the signs were there when most networks went to 12 month contracts for sim only. Shame.

Once stuff arrives on MSE, it can get ruined to an extent.

I recall the same thing with nuts in the Supermarket baking section, they were much cheaper than those in the snack/ health section.

MSE highlighted this and now the costs are roughly the same.

Possibly coincidence but i don't think so.

mobilejunkie

Actually, wasn't it the powers that be who insisted networks offer 12 months contracts and stop offering 36 month contracts to non-business users? It is quite normal for them to end up making things worse for many in order to "protect" the few who can't be bothered to work things out for themselves, quite often.

Atasas

mobilejunkie wrote: »

Actually, wasn't it the powers that be who insisted networks offer 12 months contracts and stop offering 36 month contracts to non-business users? It is quite normal for them to end up making things worse for many in order to "protect" the few who can't be bothered to work things out for themselves, quite often.

Disagree on that one!

all and every single one of "contract for product" is just blurb almost irrelevant to the actual service costs.

Networks do get "overcrowded" etc, but by no means it does have any relevance to the money customer aught to pay for...

weather I have 1 SIM or 5 and use calls data rarely or heavily it is down to personal mentality of committing to pay for over the odds or just a fair share, but let's say I still have another 5 SIM's that have some credit, that would work and they would take over some of the bandwidth.

Example of txt usage (be it on 2g or 3g or 4g) average up to 96 symbols is up 160bytes in size !!!! yes, that's UP TO 2400 txt's of data, (roughly) converted in to one colour pixel, that on smallest average 1mb= 2400 x1000 to send or receive one picture...
networks still charge for the txt's! :eek:

Same again voice, vs data stream etc.

all of them charges/prices is just the way to get money of peeps, actual, real product relevance is minimal.;)

sully1311

AndyPK wrote: »

If they don't want to talk nice to virgin or plusnet.

Same Signal

That's actually not true. MVNOs don't get access to EE 800mhz band.

AndyPK

most Sim only contracts used to be 30 DAY contracts.
Plusnet are one of the few that still do 30 day contracts.


Ok, nearly the same signal.
Similar reception anyway