Really? The same thing annoyed me with my own cheap pre-pay 'phone, a pretty basic model, but after a bit of getting furious 'cos it would ring for perhaps 4 rings at most then go to the damned voicemail, I messed about with it will I managed to kill of the voicemail thing entirely, which suited me fine. I’d be surprised if many phones were more basic than mine, so it might be worth your while to give that a try. That’s IF you are willing just to ditch voicemail completely, admittedly. My attempts to teach it to ring for a bit longer before going to voicemail failed, so it seemed to be an “all or nothing” thing.
As for the insurance thing, well, I certainly don’t but I think the insurance idea comes into play particuarly if you take a 'phone on a contract, in that if you drop the thing over a cliff a week after getting it, you would still be stuck with the horrible contract - but now with no 'phone. Ithink that’s where the usefulness of insurance comes into it.
Mine probably IS more basic than yours. I got it for free, with no contract, after trading in an old phone I found in my apartment. Good idea about the voicemail, but I’m not sure whether it’s better to have the voicemail so people can at least leave a message, or eliminate it entirely, since voicemail is free, but caller ID isn’t.
Hmm, yes, I didn’t think the insurance might have been for the contract. Although it wouldn’t really make much difference since around here, the way “free phone with a contract” deals usually work is that you pay for the phone up front but receive a credit equal(mostly) to the price you paid for the phone on your phone bill as part of your sign on bonus. So whether you have the phone or not doesn’t make any difference to the phone co.
I’m with BubbaDog on this one. The way cellphones and plans are priced is designed to force people into an auto-renewing contract and hide the actual costs of what they’re agreeing to, in order to maximize revenue and reduce risk to the company, at the expense of providing customers with the product they want.
Being pissed at people because they want products and services that meet their current need after you hard-sold them into a four-page microprint contract that restricts them for the next 12-24 months is unreasonable. You’ll get no sympathy from me for the ill will directed at policies inspired by corporate greed.
In general, I agree with the OP, but that often doesn’t stop the cell company from not upholding their end. My example:
I was with AT&T when they were acquired by Cingular. This would be all well and good, but in my market, the feds didn’t allow that, so I was passed off to ALLTEL, which is a perfect cell phone company for old people who never leave rural areas. I didn’t even live in that market anymore, but my number was still there, so I was still their customer. ALLTEL does not have a GSM network, which is what I was using, as I travel a lot, I can just pop in another SIM card abroad. Furthermore, I had a Nokia 9500, which I bought on my own dime. So my $600 phone is now worthless. But ALLTEL, in their generosity, would give me a free shitty TDMA phone that works no where but the U.S. Not a problem, they say. I can rent a “global phone” from ALLTEL when I leave the country. They would not let me out. So, I told them to piss up a rope, and took my business and my phone to T-Mobile. I still get calls from a collection agency 2+ years later, saying I owe $300 bucks in cancellation fees. My piss up a rope policy still stands.
I contracted for GSM phone service with service across the country and functionality across the world, not a hillbilly phone plan. They broke the deal.
I just want to say, I love my cell phone. Why? Because it is new, shiny, and best of all, the bill doesn’t go to me.
The boss bought into a five year commerical plan. He will end up regretting it in two years, I’m certain. For the moment, however, I have a cell phone for personal and business use which I don’t pay for. Life is grand.
I don’t know about shopping for cell phones in the states, but up here all the brochures I’ve looked at have been explicit about their monthly charges. Sorry - I clearly have a markedly different attitude than you do. People in general need to learn to pay attention to and think about contracts before they agree to them, whether they are for cell phones, natural gas, Internet service, or whatever.
I don’t have an issue with people asking nicely if there is a way that contract conditions can be varied under unusual circumstances, but I do have an issue with people getting huffy because they are being forced to abide by what they agreed to.
I will admit that my attitude is probably partially related to the fact that I HATE pushy salesmen with a passion, but still - as long as the terms are spelled out, an agreement is an agreement. If you realize you’ve made a foolish decision (which I have many times, although not with cellphones), then live and learn, and remember to pay better attention next time!
I just noticed this after entering my last message. ROTFL! Talk about a perfect example of skewed pricing :D! (Printers and ink cartridges are another good example)
Woah! I’m no stranger to people not fully understanding a situation, when all they’ve got to go on is a quick internet post, but this is a fantastic example of someone pulling assumptions out of their ass.
Overpriced monthly service? The UK has one of the most mature Mobile phone markets in the world with customer expectations way above other larger markets. Pay for Caller ID? I’d get punched for suggesting it! Pay for a mobile phone? They’d laugh in my face.
The business model you’re so quick to criticise is the model used accross the entire Country. I’m hardly gonna be a great commercial success by charging hundreds of pounds for equipment customers can get for free 100 yards down the street.
SKY TV gives away the dish and receiver in exchange for a 12 month contract to use their services. 95% of ISPs give you a free wireless router in exchange for signing up for a minumum time period.
Still don’t like the business model? Still think you know better? Then go off and make yourself a fortune and stop wasting my time.
To clarify, I work for an independant company, we provide the equipment and advise the customer which service to sign up for. I have five differant providers to pick from. The reason to do generally enjoy my job is because I don’t need to be a “salesman” to make money. I can just be an advisor, make the customers happy and screw the network providors for every penny we can sqeeze out of them. We’re the ones the customers come and see when they can’t get through to a call centre. We make the long annoying calls to sort the shit out. We translate the customers problems into the terminology the call centre might acutally understand.
Your mental image of my as some scheming money bags laughing at my customers poor old devices (not faulty) is insulting to everything I try and do every day.
Oh puleeze. Your “time” is wasted being pissed at the people who get hooked by your marketing method. I never said that your business model wasn’t successful. I just pointed out the obvious results of the model included many dissatisfied customers and laughed at your stupidity in whining about an enevitable outcome.
Next time you’re so carefully explaining the terms and monthly charges to a young customer, casually move the “new shiny gadget phone” around and watch their eys follow it. Take the phone out of their vision and continue explaining the monthly costs and watch their eyes gloss over.
I got to view this first hand with my daughter and her new phone contract. She just had to have the same shiny phone her friends had. The contract talk went in one ear and out the other. I even calculated a “total contract lifetime cost” for her (Do you tell the customer the total cost that they will pay over the life of the contract?) but the “low monthly payments” and “shiny new phone” made a bigger impression on her.
Now, I know that she will learn a lesson from this. I know that she will gain a healthier respect for contracts and service commitments. I also know that the cellular phone companies are very successful because they get to “teach” this lesson to our young and careless.
And don’t hand us that bullshit about your helping the customer with the mean old service providers. You put cash in your pocket when your “sell” the contract.
Your business model ensnares the unwary into costly contracts. A wise salesman wpould except that fact and just deal with the inevitable results. An asshole would whine about it.
So you’re blaming the companies for their customers being idiots with the attention span of a hummingbird? Without things like contract terms and cancellation fees, by your own admission people would be running between providers every few months to get the shiniest new phone for free, abuse the hell out of it, then run off to the next provider to take the next newest phone. Meanwhile the last providers lose a customer, might have to port a number over to their next competitor (dunno if the UK/Europe has portability but they would in the US), and lose the money they spent on the new hardware and would have absorbed in the cost of a contract.
I don’t think cell phone companies are paragons of customer care or anything, though. Our last company promised us no roaming, no long distance up through Madison, WI (even with a handy little map showing us the region), but when we went there we couldn’t even receive calls in major population areas, and got socked with long-distance charges. The people we spoke to at the company basically said “yes that shouldn’t have happened, but since it did, you have to pay.” We were in the contract term so threats to cancel wouldn’t have done any good. These days we’re with a new provider, where we get no roaming, no long-distance across the whole country pretty much, and that’s been true. We bought more minutes than we’ll need because that way there won’t be any unpleasant surprises if there’s overage. Too many people just think about the omgkewl phone and don’t use their goddamned brains - if they tried to treat a new car purchase the same way people would laugh at them, but with a cell phone company all of a sudden it’s not the short-attention-span consumer’s fault.
No I’m recognizing the fact that those companies’ market plans exploit “idiots with the attention span of hummingbirds”. So the dumbfuck salesman shouldn’t be surprised or pissed when one of those “idiots” shows up and hands him some shit.
Go back and re-read this thread carefully and you will see this. It reads a lot easier than a typical cell phone terms of agreement .
Way to put words in my mouth. Did you see the part where I said “fair market price” for the phone? It’s not on page nine, paragraph 3 of the sales contract. It’s right there in my first post.
That’d be a good change but unless every single provider there changed overnight, that’s not the reality of the situation. Unless that happens, we have to stick with the gimme-the-latest-shiny-thing consumers and their horror at actually being expected to stick to a contract.
For the record, we do have portability. It’s reqired by government bodies.
I really can’t be assed to go into detail to explain the relationship between the providers in the country and the independant retailers, then explain where my company sits within those independant retailers, then explain where I sit within that company. Considering I was just using the boards to vent something that dozens of salesman / managers / customer service people have known for years.
“All buyers are liars”
Today was a fantastic day, with my store out selling the other three stores in town combined. (I’m friends with one or more of the people working in them so we share info)
Almost all of it was down to customer’s coming back for repeat business and people sending in their friends and family to buy from us. We have the reputation of looking after our customers because we do. I’ve been a store manager in this town for six years and earned this reputation. Just because it’s profitable for me does not mean it’s not what’s best for my customers.
I do not claim to be altruistic, it’s just the best way to be a success in this area, and it fits with my personal morals. (Yes, I might be described as a salesman but I do have morals!)
My wife is reading this thread, so no comment.
But I will say this: Once I have an expectation, I would say it’s as good as an obligation. Else I’m gonna be disapointed.