Meteor Roaming: Text Costs

Emerson

When you eventually get it all working with the 60euro top up how much does it cost to send a text whilst roaming on Meteor?

Can I assume Free Meteor-Meteor texts don't apply?

parsi

Judging by our experience the last 2 times we roamed you can't even assume that it will work (until you come back home).. bring along a mobile from another network or a ton of change for the payphone when you have to ring Meteor..

Emerson

Hmm.. I've been an o2 customer for years. I've not enjoyed the meteor experience much since I changed over earlier in the year.
I can't get good coverage in most clubs in Dublin and in many rural areas and roaming is stupidly difficult/expensive to setup. (no o2 roaming in eastern counties either)

The only good things were/are the cheap handset and free texts.. get yer act together meteor!

Emerson

To answer my own question, just phoned 1905 to ask about it:

30c appears to be the general price but it apparently differs from network to network.
I was just told 30c in France on the 3 networks anyways.
That would make meteor the cheapest IRL/UK network to text on whilst roaming
o2IRL being 39c/45c and vodaIRL being 49c. UK networks are 30-50p per message!

However the guy was unsure whether it was free to receive messages but he thought it was probable

JTMan

rates are on meteor.ie

Apparently some people have still got free meteor 2 meteor messages while raoming.

samo

If you are pay as you go you as far as I know have to make an advance payment (one off) of 60e and register and Irish credit card before roaming bar can be lifted, at that it used to only be lifted for duration of travel. it is free though to receive sms whilst roaming and used to be 35c for roaming sms, 45c to rec call and varies for dialling back

Emerson

Apparently it's not "one off".. It's 60e for each month of roaming you require according to mr. meteor on the phone

samo

I worked for meteor a while back and know that it can be a little changeable depending on who you get in 1905 but definitly check that 60e scenario even with the meteor store as if you registered credit card and paid your 60e you just had to ring back each time with your travel costs. Their roaming costs arent bad once you know which roaming partner is cheapest for instance vodafone in uk cheapest by far for calls to ireland etc, the meteor stores if you persist will give you this info and will save a few euros!

samo

sorry that should be travel dates!

parsi

During the course of all our arguing with Meteor regarding roaming the following facts emerged:

1. You had to give at least 7 days notice each time you wanted to roam, 10 days aren't sufficient .. (yes we got told that),
2. You have to register your card and they will take the eur60 topup each time,
3. No they don't do the topup - you have to register the card with them and then do a topup yourself,
4. A supervisor is never available,
5. A threat of the small-claims court suddenly gets them to call you back..

samo

The joy of working in a call centre. Is there a greater satisfaction than completely confusing the customer?.......

parsi

samo wrote:

The joy of working in a call centre. Is there a greater satisfaction than completely confusing the customer?.......

Aye..tis funny now but not when I had no way of contacting herself when in the UK or having to spend eur40 ringing Meteor from a phone in France...anyways the move is on over the next few days...

samo

I did the same myself, went into a meteor store and was told I couldnt set up a bill because there was at one stage a negative balance of 0.36c on my bank statement even though I am a homeowner and have an apporved overdraft, I was not suitable for a meteor bill. Went round the corner with my meteor sim to vodafone who laughed at their willingness to turn a potential bill customer away and set up new pay later account same day for me, didnt even bother trying to take it further.

parsi

That reminds me of when we bought our house. I rang the ESB to see about buying some white goods on "the bill" . I was told I would need a guarantor. I laughed and said that the bank had given me a mortgage and "you want me to go home to my mammy to guarantee the price of a washing machine..."

samo

then after a year they will increase your credit limin on the bill from 500 to 3500e, when you dont want credit they are throwing it at you

JTMan

samo wrote:

I did the same myself, went into a meteor store and was told I couldnt set up a bill because there was at one stage a negative balance of 0.36c on my bank statement even though I am a homeowner and have an apporved overdraft, I was not suitable for a meteor bill. Went round the corner with my meteor sim to vodafone who laughed at their willingness to turn a potential bill customer away and set up new pay later account same day for me, didnt even bother trying to take it further.

Ha! Meteor are obsessed with credit history, fraud prevention etc ... it is rediculous.

Mate just signed up for Meteor Minutes 200. She had to pay Euro 100 up front (repaid in credit) because she "did not have a detailed credit history".

kevinmcc

Does anyone know why Meteor have their roaming set up completely different to O2 and Vodafone? Why do you have to make an advance payment of €60 and give them credit card details? Their losing out on a lot of potential revenue from roaming as not everyone has ra credit card or could be bothered giving them a weeks notice if your going away particulary if your only going to Northern Ireland. Like I travel to Derry on every day so I need roaming but I won't be bothered with that crap. O2 and Vodafones roaming system is far superior.

ferryman

Think it has something to do with the fact that Meteor doesn't receive real-time billing information from it's roaming partners - updates are only received every few days. This makes it possible for customers to run up massive bills while roaming, and if they're not paid then Meteor may have to foot the bill, or run the risk of their roaming agreement being terminated. The €60 top-up provides them with a form of security, and although it might not cover much in the way of roaming charges, customers who aren't too bothered about roaming might find it a bit steep.

Meteor allow roaming in more countries than O2 or Vodafone (on their pay-as-you-go service), so I guess that privilege must come at a price.

samo

Meteor put you directly on the roaming partner rather than piggy backing as vodafone and o2 would but as said above they dont get the billing information from the roaming network for 2-3 days sometimes even 5 so you could well overspend go into a negative balance and this wont be picked up until they receive billing info, this means that while you get cheaper roaming rates but the possibility for fraud is massive. it's possible to use that 60e prepayment in one call if you were in say thailand or somewhere! So in short if you were prepay they could lose out on you big time!

Jamie8292

People in Ireland who have Free Meteor-Meteor texts can text you for free while you are abroad. You will be charged 30c to text home however. It usually takes about two days* for your credit balance to update so don't think that you aren't being charged just because your balance seems to have remained the same.

*Your credit balance will update instantly as if you were using your phone in Ireland i.e. if you text a Vodafone/O2 number while roaming, 9c will be deducted from your balance instantly. The further 21c will be deducted after approx 2 days.

I recently spent €80 on credit while in Spain for two weeks, so watch how much you spend! Your texting/calling habits in Ireland will cost you alot if you keep them up while you're abroad!

ferryman

Been a Meteor customer for nearly three months now, and the roaming thing is really starting to annoy me. I was billpay with O2 previously, and took roaming for granted ... it was just something that worked any time I went away. I've been in the UK twice in the last three weeks, but still haven't gotten around to paying my €60 to get the roaming bar lifted. I'm pre-pay at the moment, so when I top-up with €20, I get an additional €10 free. Therefore, I think paying €60 up-front would be a bit of a waste, not to mention the fact that I could get €30 of free credit if I split the €60 top-up into three separate €20 top-ups.

Anyway, three weeks ago I thought that I'd try diverting my Irish number into my Virgin Mobile number in the UK, that would mean that I'd really have roaming without paying the €60. I couldn't do it directly myself, but after speaking to a Meteor CS rep I got it set-up and it worked fine. I did of course get charged for the forwarding part of the calls (€0.50 per minute), but I didn't mind that as I was only away for a few days and it worked out far cheaper than paying the €60.

This time I tried to do the same thing, but I ran into a bit of trouble. First the CS rep I spoke to said that she couldn't do it at her end, but that I could do it myself by inputting a series of codes on my phone. Tried **004*+44xxxxx# and **21*+44xxxxxxxxx#, but no joy. Rang back again, and this time I got a different rep who said "sorry, you can't do that". I was like "I just did it three weeks ago, what's the story?". Don't think he believed me, he said that there was no record of it on my account. Finally he said that he contacted the Technical department and that they informed him that they don't do diverting to non-Irl numbers for fraud reasons, and that whoever set it up previously for me shouldn't have done it at all. I don't even think he got in touch with the technical department, he put me on hold a number of times and tried to fob me off each time he spoke to me ("you know we have a roaming service", "you know you will have to pay for each call to be diverted" etc etc).
Since I was getting no help from him, I decided to ring back, and luckily enough I got a very helpful girl called Cathleen. She said that they would set-up the divert no problem, but that it would be later on in the day as they were busy working on the national roaming agreement. It turned out that they never bothered setting it up for me at all, but I had spent that much money calling their customer care centre that I decided that it would be cheaper to contact people to inform them of my UK number rather than continue to waste money on calling them...

Did anyone try this type of thing in the past - and if so - what was the outcome?
It's really annoying when one CS rep tells you one thing, and another tells you something different...

Sorry about the essay!!
Ciaran

Celticwarrior

But isnt it free to ring the meteor CS?

ferryman

Not while in the UK it's not! I rang them here before I left, but ran out of time - was on the phone to them when they were doing the safety demonstration on the plane!!