I hate phone bills!
Discussion
And I haven't even received the first one yet.
I am in the fortunate position that my employer provided a phone and number that could also be used for personal calls, and that's been true for many years. Unfortunately, such things come to an end, so I got a Tesco sim on Thursday 28th August. But it appears that my previous situation has made me rather naive about what these "inclusive" deals really mean.
Until today, I've been fairly impressed. The monthly charge isn't too high and for £12.50 I get 1000 minutes, 5000 texts and 1GB data - all of which are far more than I will ever use. I downloaded the tesco mobile app, so can track my useage and all is great. Except that - when I checked it today, I discovered I already have an "extra" charge of £5.95 - and for some reason, my payment period ends on 22nd next month not 27th.
So I called customer service.
Apparently, the long call I made to my credit card company today was not included in my minutes - and cost me £5.75 (most of which was on hold!). And the long text I sent to somebody went as MMS - also not included, and hence cost me 25p. Slightly ironic really considering MMS is essentially packet data and I have a data allowance.....
Oh, and the nice lady informed me that Tesco have fixed billing periods so the date I took the contract out isn't really relevant. Funny how the nice man in the shop didn't tell me that.
I have now read the T&Cs (which I wasn't given when I bought the SIM, despite the lady at customer service telling me I must have been), and will have to take more care. What annoys me is that I could have got away with the £10 deal fairly easily but I wanted "lots of spare" capacity thinking that way I would never go over it. As it turns out, it's very easy to add costs so I should have just stuck with the cheaper deal. I am still in the 14 day cooling off period so I may say I want to reduce it. I could of course go elsewhere, but I guess the same kind of charges apply.
Not happy!
I am in the fortunate position that my employer provided a phone and number that could also be used for personal calls, and that's been true for many years. Unfortunately, such things come to an end, so I got a Tesco sim on Thursday 28th August. But it appears that my previous situation has made me rather naive about what these "inclusive" deals really mean.
Until today, I've been fairly impressed. The monthly charge isn't too high and for £12.50 I get 1000 minutes, 5000 texts and 1GB data - all of which are far more than I will ever use. I downloaded the tesco mobile app, so can track my useage and all is great. Except that - when I checked it today, I discovered I already have an "extra" charge of £5.95 - and for some reason, my payment period ends on 22nd next month not 27th.
So I called customer service.
Apparently, the long call I made to my credit card company today was not included in my minutes - and cost me £5.75 (most of which was on hold!). And the long text I sent to somebody went as MMS - also not included, and hence cost me 25p. Slightly ironic really considering MMS is essentially packet data and I have a data allowance.....
Oh, and the nice lady informed me that Tesco have fixed billing periods so the date I took the contract out isn't really relevant. Funny how the nice man in the shop didn't tell me that.
I have now read the T&Cs (which I wasn't given when I bought the SIM, despite the lady at customer service telling me I must have been), and will have to take more care. What annoys me is that I could have got away with the £10 deal fairly easily but I wanted "lots of spare" capacity thinking that way I would never go over it. As it turns out, it's very easy to add costs so I should have just stuck with the cheaper deal. I am still in the 14 day cooling off period so I may say I want to reduce it. I could of course go elsewhere, but I guess the same kind of charges apply.
Not happy!
kowalski655 said:
I think every provider nails you for some non geographic numbers. Some are included in your allowance. www.saynoto0870.com will give you free to call inclusive numbers for a lot of places
Thanks - just installed an app that uses that site, which should help in future.Gassing Station | Computers, Gadgets & Stuff | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff