22 March 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Does the mobile phone industry in the UK need a top-down shakeup?: Part 2

Welcome to the second part of our new series on the UK mobile phone industry. Today we’re looking at terminating bad contracts and unlocking handsets. As ever, please let us know your thoughts and experiences in the comments below 🙂 And also, do have a look at all the articles in the series:

What happens if it all goes wrong?

Sometimes when you buy a new handset on PAYG or take out a contract with a handset it can go wrong. If you have a TV or any other electrical appliance which develops a fault, they send it away for repair. If they can’t repair it or it’s beyond economical repair, they will replace it like for like with a brand new appliance or one of a similar specification.

With mobile phones this is not always the case. The phone will be sent in for repair and networks will not supply you with a loan handset unless you have some sort of insurance, or you’ve paid a deposit. If they can’t repair it (I’ve heard tales of repair centres charging to send the phone back unrepaired) then they will replace the handset with – wait for it – not a brand new one but a refurbished one. But my problem is – and it’s a big problem – as you’ve been supplied with a refurbished handset, (of course they don’t tell you it’s a refurbished one), really you should have the right to reject the handset or at least ask the network provider to reduce the your tariff as you no longer have the same handset you started your contract with. Most networks do refurbished handsets on contracts for a lot less than their brand new counterparts. It could actually be claimed that breach of their stated terms and you should have the right to terminate your contract unless they supply you with a brand new unopened handset.

Terminating your contract early

It is actually possible to terminate your contract if you believe the network has breached their Terms and Conditions. We have heard that people have managed to do this on a number of occasions with contracts. A contract is a two-way street; they have to keep their end of the bargain just as much as you have to pay the monthly fee. This means they have to make sure the infrastructure is maintained and you can make and receive calls, send and receive texts and be able to use the internet services. If they breach it in any way you are entitled to compensation for the loss of your services. This usually means free line rental for the days you’ve been without your services. If you are on a contract and a service you subscribe to gets discontinued during your contract in some instances you may be able to cancel your contract. Another example may be that the price of your monthly plan goes up by a certain level which is to your detriment. This can also be a reason to leave your contract early without having to pay a penalty or termination fee.

Locked and branded handsets

This is a major bone of contention. Most networks lock their handsets to their home network regardless of whether the handset is on contract or PAYG. Not only do they lock their handsets they also fill the handset with bloatware which can’t be deleted and slows down the phone. Bloatware is network branding within the phone and trial software such as as demo games you can play a few times before being forced to buy it. To say it can’t be deleted isn’t strictly true – with some phones it is possible if you know how but this usually involved complicated procedures such as flashing the handset with a generic version of the firmware which takes out all the demo stuff and gets rid of the network’s splash screens when the handset is switched on. Some handsets only have a limited amount of internal memory and the bloatware takes most of it up. Of course not every handset can have their bloatware removed. We firmly believe that bloatware is unnecessary and should be easily removable.

And don’t even get us started on network-locked handsets. Again, it’s unnecessary to lock handsets to their home networks. Consumer rights dictate that you should be able to put any SIM card in any handset. As long as you’re paying for your contract does it really matter what SIM card you use in what phone? You pay a considerable amount for the phone on PAYG or even SIM free which the latter is unlocked and unbranded. This is known in the industry as a vanilla handset.

Another problem with bloatware is that it can stop the handset functioning correctly. What happens is; when a network takes a handset onto their network, the handset is sent from the factory to the network’s handset development team who then lock the handset to the network and put their network bloatware onto the handset. Also the handset may have some features disabled, for example the :2g:/3G toggle. What this means is the handset can only receive a 3G signal. If it can’t find a strong enough signal, and it attempts (and fails) to perform a network search to find a signal, the handset will crash or freeze. In essence the software in the handset is unstable.

Getting a handset unlocked

This can be another expensive unnecessary rip-off. If networks didn’t lock their handsets in the first place we wouldn’t have to fork out anything from £15 upwards. The networks are too greedy and there’s plenty of that in the mobile phone industry. Unlocking handsets is a very lucrative cash cow, cashing in on customers who bought a phone on their network at vastly inflated prices who may have a loyalty to that network. Yes, that’s how the network repay you for your loyalty. Even if you pay to get an unlock code the chances are you will have to wait up to a week to receive the code. All of this is totally unnecessary. In some countries (such as Singapore and Israel) it’s actually illegal for the networks to lock their handsets.

You can, of course, get your handset unlocked more cheaply if you go to a market stall or use download special software. Of course not all handsets can be unlocked; it depends if they have access to the codes, and how new the handset is. For example if the handset has just been released, the likelihood of the person on the market stall getting an unlock code is extremely remote, unless he or she knows somebody who works for the manufacturer.

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14 March 2012 ~ 0 Comments

Does the mobile phone industry in the UK need a top-down shakeup?: Part 1

This is a question we’re often asked – do we need a top-down shake up in the mobile phone industry? Many would say yes we do – here’s part one in our new series by looking at what exactly is happening right now, along with some of our opinions as to how improvements could be made in the industry.

Before you start, don’t forget to check out all the articles in the series:

Contract or Pay As You Go?

When you buy a mobile phone from a store the chances are that the sales person is just there to sell, and they won’t have any knowledge about the phones they are selling, unless they have the phone themselves. The sales person would probably be equally at home selling double glazing. They have very limited knowledge if any at all; they are supposed to go on an extensive training course which includes product knowledge when they’re recruited by the retail store they applied to work for.

There are two ways of paying for your mobile services; one is with a lock-in Contract and the other is Pay As You Go. Contract allows you to get a handset with a tariff that gives you an allowance of calls, texts and sometimes data. The handset is normally free unless it’s the very latest model in which case you may have to pay a one off upfront cost. The contract length is normally 24 months (2 years). Most networks make contracts 24 months or longer to absorb the high cost of the handset – some handsets can cost up to ÂŁ700 if they were bought outright. To get a contract you have to be over 18 and pass a standard credit check; remember that you are actually signing up to a credit agreement. You may have to pay a small fee as a deposit which is separate from the upfront payment for the handset as sometime networks ask for this if you’ve had no credit or a bad credit history. What you are signing up to is an agreement that will pay a certain amount per month for the duration of the contract. In return, you receive a given number of minutes, texts and a certain amount of data. You may sometimes get some extras thrown in, such as music downloads; again this depends on the terms and conditions of the contract.

Another type of deal is SIM only. This is where you already have the handset (you’ve bought outright, or you own it already). SIM only deals are cheaper than the contracts with phones. You can get sSIM only contracts from as little as 30 days rising to 24 months. The longer you are prepared to commit, the better the deal you are likely to get.This means you receive better allowances, such as more minutes, texts, etc. These deals are particularly useful for people with a poor credit history, or no credit history at all, as they allow you to rebuild your history, or establish a history from scratch. This may allow you to move up to a full contract, with a phone included, further down the line. You still have to pass a credit check to get SIM only deals though.

PAYG is a different deal altogether; you can get a SIM for free and just top up maybe every 30 days, or whenever you wish to do so. Sometimes you have to buy calls, text and data separately. For example, you can top up with ÂŁ10 and then buy the services (calls, text, and data bundles) from that ÂŁ10. Some people top up with ÂŁ10 per week; that equates to ÂŁ40-ÂŁ50 per month. It would actually be better value to get a contract with a pretty good handset for ÂŁ40-ÂŁ50 per month. There may be a reason why they may not be able to get a contract as they may have a bad credit history; this could be why they go down the PAYG route.

The other PAYG method is where you get a phone and SIM card where you have to typically buy an extra £10 top up voucher to buy the phone at the subsidised price; but if you have a SIM card on that network you don’t actually have to top up to get the phone at that price. For example, the phone may cost £80, plus £10 top up – making a total of £90. The handsets are often locked to the network and cost upwards of about £20 to get them unlocked, sometimes the network will unlock it for free if you’ve topped up regularly enough for a given period. The network will have recouped the cost of the handset, which they have sold to you at a subsidised price.

New phone Sir? That’ll do nicely

How many times have we signed the contract or bought a PAYG handset before bringing the phone home to put it through its paces? Quite a few times I would imagine – but how many people really know what they are actually signing up to? Do we read the small print, scrutinise the terms and conditions? Not many people do I can tell you. The worst thing you can do is get a contract over the phone; after you’ve been cold called. As we all know mobile phone networks like to sell your information to third parties. The way to tell is when the sales person calls you and says they are phoning on behalf of said network. The clue in there is “on behalf of”; if the sales person says this it’s a third party company.

I don’t really want a 24 month contract – can I cancel it?

We see this question crop up on almost a daily basis. There’s not really a straightforward “yes” or ”no” answer to this one. It all depends on the circumstances; for example you can cancel within the first 7 days if the handset was purchased in store. The timescale is 14 days if bought online or over the phone, this is called “distance selling” and is covered by the Distance Selling Act. Some networks or stores may allow you to return the handset outside of the cooling off period, but that is at their discretion. Networks have very strict criteria with regards to returns – for example if you have simply changed your mind, as long as you haven’t activated the SIM card or switched the phone on then you should be able to return it for a full refund as long as the return is done within the timescale. All items that were included with the phone would have to be returned to, including cables, accessories and any free gifts, to be eligible for a refund or a cancellation.

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