Know As You Go

Dynch

Most of us, these days, whether on our land line, or mobile, have a package so that some of our calls are covered. It might be all calls to landlines in Ireland, or all calls to the same network from our mobile. By and large these packages are very useful, if you can stay within the rules and mostly operate within your package. The problem is that often, you can't know, at the time of making the call, whether it's covered by your package or not and the first you know of it is when you have to pay the bill, or find all your credit gone, or enormously depleted. To me this seems unfair. I think it should be at least made clear, when I'm making the call, whether it's part of my plan or not.

At the moment, when you make a call from an Irish network mobile, there is an indication, in some cases, of whether you will pay extra or not. For example, if I have an 086 number with O2 and I am calling another 086 number which has migrated to a different mobile company, there is a slight "beep" just before the number rings. If, however, I am calling, from the same 086 O2 phone, an 087 number, (or 085, 083 etc) I get no indication of whether this call is covered or not, even if it has migrated to O2.

I think it should be possible that the caller is let know, before the call commences, whether it's covered in their package, or not. Simply replace the "beep" with an announcement saying "Free" or "Charged" or whatever format would let the caller know what the hell it is that he's doing. This should be applied to all calls made, whether from a land line or a mobile phone.

The more I think about it the more unfair it seems to me that you cannot know, when making a phone call, whether you're paying extra for it or not.

I have contacted both Comreg and the Dept of Communications about this and the people I spoke to had never heard of such an idea before, but both admired it greatly as a service to consumers. The extent of Comreg's powers is that if enough people mention the same idea to them within a certain amount of time, they will recommend it to the different phone companies.

I cannot see any phone company or service provider jumping on this willingly or chomping at the bit to implement it. It would only work properly if all companies and service providers implemented it anyway.

I would appreciate anyone's thoughts or impressions on this idea, and please, if anyone thinks well of it, do contact Comreg on 018049600, and/or the Department of Communications on 016782000.

I hope I've explained my idea well enough but would welcome any questions.

dudara

OK- I know that I'm a pretty educated consumer, but I subscribe only to phone packages that offer calls to all mobiles, not to an individual network. It removes all that doubt.

Your idea is intriguing and I can see a requirement for it. But ultimately, I think this idea of network numbers needs to disappear. I've had the same number for 10+ years, but it's been ported between 3 different networks. 087 does not mean Vodafone to me anymore.

Gillo

The majority of networks offer app's for smartphones which let you very easily tract your usage, I know it's not the same thing but it would help.

I know also O2 offer a spend alert for bill pay customers, basically they opt in and say they want it set for a certain value above their line rental and when they hit that amout they get a notification by text message to let them know, again not exactly what you are suggestion but it would does help customers keep track of what they are doing.

I know what you mean about numbers being ported but I'd generally have a pretty good idea which networks the majority of people I call are on.

(just for the record and since I mentioned an O2 product, it's only fair to say that I do work for O2, that said I'm only posting here as myself not a repesentive of them).

chasm

My mother has her number ported to a different network(from VF to 3) and i know if i phone her from my meteor or vodafone number it "beeps" to let me know she has ported her number. Im on bill pay with meteor and have any network minutes so it wouldn't affect me anyway tbh.

Comreg brought out a consultation paper in 2003 called "Addressing the impact of Mobile Number Portability on user awareness of calls to other networks." where different proposals were put forward regarding alerts as to whether a number was ported or not but it also addressed the issue of tariff constraints.

http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg03121.pdf


If comreg are now saying that this is all new to them perhaps it's time someone reviewed comreg to see how much was spent on this consultation and exactly what did come out of it, other than just the little beeping noise

drunkmonkey

dudara wrote: »

OK- I know that I'm a pretty educated consumer, but I subscribe only to phone packages that offer calls to all mobiles, not to an individual network. It removes all that doubt.

I don't know about the educated bit , but that's the only way you should buy into a phone contract anything else is a false economy.

jimmycrackcorm

I've thought about the same thing but from the perspective that the networks should provide the ability to identify which one a particular number is on. The rationale is to allow people to work out based on their calls whether or not they would be better off on another network package.