04 November 2015 ~ 13 Comments

MVNOs top customer service poll

customer service poll

A recent poll has shown that customers massively prefer smaller virtual mobile networks to the main players. The recent study asked users to rate the customer service and showed that industry veterans such as Vodafone and EE motivated the worst mobile networks in the UK while smaller organisations such as Giffgaff, Tesco Mobile and ASDA Mobile headed the pack.

The poll was carried out by moneysavingexpert.com and asked 10,620 users to rate their mobile provider’s customer service on a scale from “great” through “okay” to “poor”. The network that topped the table was Giffgaff scoring 65% “great responses” with only 5% of their users rating customer service as “poor”. Close behind in second, was Tesco Mobile with an impressive satisfaction rating of 63%. Third placed was ASDA Mobile and coming fourth was Virgin Mobile. It’s worth noting that all of these networks are MVNOs that actually run using other networks’ infrastructure.

Meanwhile, lingering down in last place was Vodafone scoring “great” in only 20% of responses. Perhaps worse was the fact that 28% of their customers rated the service as “poor”. Barely escaping the booby prize was it EE (including its Orange and T-Mobile brands) which shockingly only was scored “great” by 22% of their users.

The other two main mobile networks are Three and O2, who had to be satisfied with mid-table mediocrity being rated great by 40% and 33% of their userbase respectively. Both had relatively high numbers of “poor” verdicts with 12% of their users giving them the lowest grade.

The poll was especially surprising since MVNOs were evaluated so well. For example, ASDA Mobile actually run’s on EE’s backbone yet their “great” score was 54% vs 22% and only 14% of users decided their service was “poor” compared to 24% for EE.

Analysing the results, it should be clear that you don’t have to go with a big name to get great customer service. And just because you’re paying more with a major network, doesn’t mean you should expect to get a superior experience. ASDA Mobile has always been marketed as a budget network yet they completely outperformed their host network, EE, despite using the same infrastructure. Here’s the results in full:

Rank Network Great OK Poor
1 Giffgaff 65% 30% 5%
2 Tesco Mobile 63% 33% 4%
3 ASDA Mobile 54% 31% 14%
4 Virgin Mobile 42% 44% 14%
5 Three 40% 48% 12%
6 O2 33% 55% 12%
7 BT Mobile 36% 43% 21%
8 Talk Mobile 31% 50% 19%
9 EE 22% 54% 24%
10 Vodafone 20% 52% 28%

If you’re not satisfied by your network’s service no matter what their ranking in the table above, remember it’s really easy to switch mobile network. And you can even keep your same number too. We always recommend going for PAYG or SIM-only deals because they are better value for money and you’re not locked in to a network you hate for years at a time.

Where did your current mobile network come in this consumer satisfaction poll? Do you think it’s a fair rating or do you disagree with the judgement? And which network would you switch to if you could?

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24 January 2014 ~ 0 Comments

2014 free minutes this year on PAYG

2014 minutes

If you’re looking for a great pay-as-you-go deal, you better be quick because until the end of the month, EE is offering all pay-as-you-go customers 2014 free minutes to call any standard UK number.

The offer is valid for all new customers signing up before the end of January 2014. And it’s available for everyone regardless of whether they’re on Orange, T-Mobile or even EE’s new 4G pay-as-you-go service.

It’s really simple to get started, first of all you just need to order a free SIM from either Orange, T-Mobile or 4GEE. Of course, you also benefit from being able to use signal from all the networks as they are all owned by EE.

To qualify, there is a bit of a catch as you have to regularly top up £10 to receive your monthly allowance of 168 free minutes. However, the good thing is that the bonus minutes come on top of your existing tariff. And you can use them for any call to UK based mobile or landline number as well as calls to your voicemail service.

As an example, if you sign up to Orange’s Dolphin plan, you get 400 texts and 1 GB of data free every month. And with this year special offer, you also get 168 minutes as well as your £10 top up in airtime credit. And of course, don’t forget that if you decide the top £20 each month on the Dolphin plan, you get unlimited free text as well as 3 GB of mobile data. So while, at first glance, it might not seem at the most competitive deal you can actually get a huge amount for your money if you choose the right tariff.

T-Mobile also have attempting deal with their £10 Smart Pack. Once you’ve included the bonus minutes on offer, this gives you a total of 268 min, 400 texts and the whole gigabytes of mobile data awful £10.

Although it can’t offer as good deals, 4GEE might also a good choice as it comes tonnes of extras including 2-for-1 cinema tickets and pizza express every Wednesday, free wifi internet on the London Underground, £5 off ADSL and fibre broadband deals as well as the UK’s first and broadest 4G network.

Want to get your free 2014 minutes this year? Order your free SIM today before it’s too late.

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15 November 2013 ~ 2 Comments

Top 5 Phablets

Samsung started the whole ‘phablet’ trend with their Galaxy Note devices back in 2011. Despite the original Galaxy Note having some nice hardware at the time, it wasn’t as popular as Samsung may have hoped and instead carved a small niche of power users who wanted to make the most out of their smartphone experience.

Samsung pushed for a more mainstream appeal with the Galaxy Note 2 though, and since its release date, we’ve seen dozens of phablets hit the market in the attempt of attracting the crowds.

But which phablets really deserve our attention? Whilst there aren’t as many phablets as there are smartphones, there are still a lot out there, and if you’re looking into buying a phablet, you should definitely consider the ones on this list.

Samsung Galaxy Mega

Only £334 SIM-free | FREE on contract

more infogalaxy mega
Whilst the Samsung Galaxy Mega is mainly considered a ‘mid-range’ handset, thanks to having 2013 hardware, it’s performance only just undercuts the likes of the Galaxy Note II or other high end phablets.

At 6.3 inches, this is Samsung’s largest smartphone yet- the display is quite nice, and can be used comfortably with two hands.

Of course for its large size, using it one-handedly is practically impossible. On top of this, its 1.5GB RAM and dual core processor don’t justify the expensive price point. You’ll be able to bag yourself a 2012 phablet with more powerful hardware for cheaper, both second hand and new.

On top of this, you can grab yourself a 7 inch Nexus 7 for around £150-£200, making the Samsung Galaxy Mega only viable for those that use a lot of media and rely on calling and texting whilst out and about.

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HTC Butterfly

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htc butterfly

The HTC Butterfly was one of the first 5 inch handsets to have an HD display. With a mahoosive pixel density of 441 ppi, the display on the Butterfly is clearly the winning point.

The large 5 inch display and beautiful chassis also make the Butterfly stand out from its competitors whilst making it comfortable to hold and easy to look at.

Luckily for some, the Butterfly comes with a micro SD slot, something that is not uniform with many other HTC devices, and the handset is also run on a powerful quad core 1.5GHz Krait processor and 2GB RAM.

The HTC Butterfly only has a 0.1 inch bigger display than the S4 though, so if you’re looking for a big screen, this phone may not be for you.

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Samsung Galaxy Note 2

Only £324 SIM-free

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galaxy note ii
The Galaxy Note II took everything that wasn’t finished to perfection with the original version of the Galaxy Note and fixed it up.

This included better S-pen functionality, more native Samsung Galaxy Note 2 functions, a super-fast processor, and at the time it was released it was the first phone to have 2GB RAM.

The 5.5inch display looks great, and thanks to the large screen estate, there is lot that can be done on the handset. A great choice.

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LG Optimus G Pro

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lg optimus g pro
The LG Optimus G Pro is in essence the bigger brother of the Optimus G, a phone that was used as the basis of the Nexus 4.

The LG Optimus G Pro has a large 5.5 inch display with a decent HD quality, and had very decent hardware to power it, including a 1.7GHz quad core Snapdragon 600 processor and the high end phablet standard of 2GB RAM.

Of course it is also 4G LTE capable and comes with Android Jelly Bean.

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Sony Xperia Z Ultra

Only £460 SIM-free

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sony xperia z ultra
Whilst the Xperia Z Ultra was only recently announced, its October release may mark the start of something great for Sony. The handset has a huge 6.4 inch display, but unlike the Galaxy Mega, it has enough hardware to really power the big screen.

The phablet comes with a super powerful 2.2GHz snapdragon 800 processor – something that is possibly twice as powerful as the HTC One’s Snapdragon 400 – and of course 2GB RAM.

The screen is at an amazing HD quality despite the large size, and is capable of being submerged in water without taking damage and can keep dust out of its innards.

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