Mobile Phone Reviews
 
 
Mobile phones rates double without warning

Thu, 27 Oct 2005

According to a new report, eight out of ten mobile phone users are paying too much for their service, some by more than £120 a month. Confusion over complicated rival tariffs and costs is the main reason.

The punishing charges begin when customers speak for longer than the time agreed in their contract mobile phones. The moment they cross over the limit the rate instantly doubles, and in some cases triples, without warning.

Youngsters in particular are running up huge bills because they don't check when they have reached their limit.

The survey, by mobile phone price comparison service www.OneCompare.com reveals that most customers agree to pay the operator around £20 for 100 minutes. But more than one in three talk for longer and send more texts than their agreed limit.

With around 35 million adults and 6 million children using mobiles, these extra minutes are said to earn the operators £132 million every month.

Vodafone, which made £10.3 billion profit last year, has a cross network anytime tariff of £16 a month for 75 minutes of calls. But if customers talk for double that they receive a bill for £46 because the excess rate rises from 21p per minute to 40p a minute.

O2's 100 tariff costs £25 a month for 100 minutes worth of calls and 100 text messages. But if users spend just 20 minutes longer talking and send 50 extra texts in that month, their bill rises from £25 to £39. If they were to talk for 200 minutes instead of 100, and send 200 texts instead of 100, their £25 bill would more than triple to £77.

Pay-as-you-go customers are not affected by the charges and contract users could switch to a more suitable tariff, but there are more than 250 tariffs to choose from.

Operators have been accused of making the system so baffling that customers rarely switch once they have signed up. The result is that they can make up to £1.6 billion a year extra from customers on inappropriate tariffs.

A Consumers Association spokesman said, "There are just too many of them. People often sign up to a tariff which is not suitable for the number and type of calls they make."

Anthony Ball, a director of www.OneCompare.Com, said, "The companies are offering tariffs that are basically designed to snag people. They offer a free glitzy mobile phone handset but the tariff it comes with is not particularly competitive."
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