I got my X10 back in April, on O2, with the unlimited web bolt on.
Seeing all the palava about data caps coming in, I checked with O2 about their 'excessive use' policy for me - turns out it's 500MB 🙁 Hardly unlimited, and actually a worse deal than the new deals they are bringing in.
What really gets my goat though is this, from the O2 CEO
Based on current usage patterns, 97% of O2 smartphone customers would not need to buy additional data allowances, as the lowest bundle (500MB) provides at least 2.5 times the average O2 customer’s current use.
So what they are blatantly saying, is that the average customer has no choice but to pay 250% more than they need to. Outrageous! Why does no one pick them up on this?
The other option is not to have a data 'bolt-on'. Without this they will charge you 'never more than £1 per day'. Wow. Handily they don't even tell you anywhere what the charge is below that level per kb (anyone know?). (Just found it...£3 per MB!)
What I also love is that because I am on 'unlimited data' they won't even tell me how much data I've used this month! ([i]Unlimited allowance or standard data Bolt Ons you have may cover your data usage.[/i] ). A few hours of TV catchup and I'm over that 500MB easily, so I have to install a bloody 3G app.
So rant nearly over....bundles eh.. WHAT A CROCK.
Why have we all been suckered into consistently paying for stuff we never use?
I'd call it a "rantlet" rather than a "rantette".
What about rant-lite?
i'm not sure what you're saying. once you started talking gb mb and stuff my mind melted
have you spoken to them ? i got a new contract just before the limits came in and i called after and they said i still had unlimited and was not on the 500gb new limit
On O2? You're lucky to get a 3G network signal good enough to even consume 500MB in a month..,
As soon as the White iPhone 4 arrives, I'm off to Vodafone
Rachel
I'll go with Rantlet, yes
Yes I spoke to O2 on the phone, the gruff northern woman sounded extremely sure it was 500MB fair use, I would get charged per MB after that.
TBH Rachel I use wifi a lot so I'm not hitting the limit, 3g is bad round my way though!
Imagine buying 1 litre of pepsi a month (and strangely, your only option is a hotel mini bar)
You can either buy
3x330ml @ £5.00= £15.00
gosh that's pricey...how much is a 1 litre bottle?
"oh it's only £1 sir...but we can't sell you that, min order is 2.5 litres"
"umm OK, £2.50 per month then....well OK lets go for that"
"Great. By the way, if you only drink 1 litre this month, we'll come round and take back the spare 1.5 litres.....no sorrry, you can't keep those bottles for next month. "
"Aaah, so you shaft me whatever I choose?"
"Sir is highly astute today, sir"
This is std practice is it not?
If they are changing your contract by adding a data cap, then you are within your rights to terminate that contract.
If you don't like it try a different service provider. T-mobile don't charge over their fair use limit (1GB) as far as I am aware, they just throttle your data connection until the billing date.
Another 15 months left til I can change ;/
This is std practice is it not?
Exactly.
Why do we accept this rip off?
If they are changing your contract by adding a data cap, then you are within your rights to terminate that contract.
There was a clause that allowed them to do this without breaking the contract, it was published at the time.
If your not using more than 500mb what the problem?
Pretty sure they are not changing the usage policy for existing contracts, only those that resigned after announcement of ne tariff at end of June.
So a bit of a non rant as you presumably took out your contact in April and have not resigned?
Try using the WiFi option if possible, streaming media will batter your allowance (as you've found out).
Yup looks like Bigyinn has it.
Change network? Fair usage limit is 3GB on T-Mobile.
Doesn't anyone see that the whole 'bundle' thing is a rip-off?
O2 insists that 97% of its smartphone customers will be unaffected by the 500MB cap
So as the minimum bundle is 500MB, 97% of it's customers are paying for more than they use!
When I first got a phone, you payed for just what you use. How did they hoodwink us all?
Oh FFS sake will you stop whining!
And another thing....people who are contrary on forums....what's that about
after doing some fairly extensive research on my t-mobile contract im fairly sure its 750mbs. I dont see why it would be 1gb or even 3gb when all the others only offer 500mbs and the odd one or two 750mbs.
as the lowest bundle (500MB) provides at least 2.5 times the average O2 customer’s current use
Hah.. average customer? Mean data usage is meaningless here since some customers use a load of data, and most don't use any. If they're charging you based on mean usage then you should be able to grab other people's data allowances when they're not using them...
Call that a rant? I pay £1/Mb for data access. Rant about that.
I pay £1/Mb for data access
Why in God's name...?
The mobile operators need a wrap on the knuckles!
Adverts witrh claims of "Unlimited data" should mean exactly that!
They should be legally bound to inform potential customers of a monthly MB allowance (if one exists). Fees for additional data should be set at much lower rates too. That way, people would be more likely to use the service and the telcos would get their revenue that way.
When the allowance is used up, the operator should send an SMS to warn users of pending additional charges and how much they will be.
They should also do the same for call and text allowances.
A user should be able to dial up and find out their current data usage at any time.
If any usage goes significantly above normal levels, they should be calling to ask why (like a credit card company does when you spend high sums all of a sudden). If the user can't provide security answers, all non-emergency outgoing calls should be suspended.
Verbal contracts should not be permissable either. A written and signed agreement by both parties should be mandatory before a contract comes into effect.
Variations in pricing throughout the life of the contract should be provided clearly in writing and if excessive, the customer should have the absolute right to cease the agreement without penalty.
So far, the mobile telcos have been acting like a bunch of downmarket secondhand car dealers! This shabby practice should be tightened up, sharpish!
A few things,
1) You'd have to try really hard to hit their 'acceptable use' limit. For a phone, 500Mb should be plenty.
2) You seem to be arguing for a lower limit - "I'm paying for 500mb and only using a third of that, what a rip off" - unless I'm misreading. Is that right? I'm not sure what your point here is; if you want to use more, use more.
3) In my experience, they don't enforce it unless you're taking the proverbial. What they're really trying to do is stop you from 'tethering' your phone and using your mobile data as your primary Broadband connection. They don't like that.
4) I wholeheartedly agree that "unlimited" should mean unlimited, otherwise it should be a Trade Descriptions issue. As far as I'm aware, the only true "unlimited" data connection in the UK currently is Sky Max ADSL.
When the allowance is used up, the operator should send an SMS to warn users of pending additional charges and how much they will be.
This already happens, I'd get a text advising me when my limit was near and another when the limit was up
Why in God's name...?
Almost never use it, might spend 50p a month checking my emails when I'm not in the office. Don't feel any other need to be connected so I don't pay the 7.50 a month for the web bolt-on.
Fair play, you must be one of the lowest users.
Cougar-
1) half an hour of tv streaming could use 100mb on 3g
2)Yes definitely arguing for lower caps. If the average user uses 200MB a month, there should be a 200MB a month bolt-on. And lower ones.
3) Tethering is one thing they want to stop, regularly using your smartphone for the things it's built to do is another
4) I agree there, but it seems the ASA decided that 500MB/month IS unlimited!
500mb is not plenty on a phone - my Android phone on the standard browser can hose through 40mb+ a day easily of just browsing internet pages. If you then download a couple of video's, an mp3 here and there you can very easily breakthrough 500mb!
I use opera mini to make the allowance go further!
While you are at your rant speak to the upstream telcos who provide the internet circuits that all these data plans backed into via your mobile provider - international bandwidth is rudely expensive. But yeah they are milking it but basically with all these new phones caps will be the norm to manage the cost of the upstream bandwiidth which is going mental, used to be OK when there was SMS etc as all small bursty non-ip traffic, now its all http which is very bloaty.
So as the minimum bundle is 500MB, 97% of it's customers are paying for more than they use!
???
TV licence lets you watch TV unlimited hours even though most people watch it only (say) a couple of hours a day, even though it could be priced by the day. Parking permit gives you the right to park a car on the street constantly even though most people will move it every day, even through it could be priced by the hour. Rent lets you live in your house every day of the month even if you're not there and it could be priced by the night, like hotels.
Are all those people being ripped off too? And aren't people entitled to pay by the MB if they want to?
It's a point, but not a great one. Those are hard to track for individual usage. Telcos track your minutes/texts/data use all the time.
Yes you can pay by the MB. On O2 you can choose between £1/1MB, or £5/500MB. There's nothing inbetween.
1) You'd have to try really hard to hit their 'acceptable use' limit. For a phone, 500Mb should be plenty.
Except if you have a modern smartphone, where things like last fm, iPlayer, youtube etc mean you can burn through 500 meg really quick.
3) In my experience, they don't enforce it unless you're taking the proverbial. What they're really trying to do is stop you from 'tethering' your phone and using your mobile data as your primary Broadband connection. They don't like that.
But surely the whole point of this moan is that the companies are not only publicly saying they intend to enforce it, but that rather than enforce it by telling you off / cutting off your connection, they'll just start to charge you loads per Mb extra on your phone bill.
upstream telcos who provide the internet circuits that all these data plans backed into via your mobile provider - international bandwidth is rudely expensive
If internet bandwidth is so expensive, how is it broadband, using the same upstream data connections can cost way way less, with ludicrously high limits (last time I had cable, my connection was supposed to slow down by traffic shaping once I got over 3Gb a DAY or something insane.) Surely it must cost less to a massive company like O2 than it does to a home user?
The big cost in 3G is surely masts and networks, being as the more people use 3g, essentially the more cells you need to avoid congestion.
Joe
One of the big costs for 3G is (was) the government. The licenses for the 3G wavebands were sold to the phone companies for a huge amount of money. They have to get that back somehow.
There has [i]always[/i] been a "fair usage" cap, even on so-called 'Unlimited' usage, it just wasn't clear what the cap actually was. It's taken the huge uptake of smartphones like the iPhone and now Android phones to focus attention on the lack of bandwidth due to people tethering laptops and streaming live TV, slowing down the networks. It happened to O2, Orange suddenly suffered as soon as they took on the iPhone, as did Vodaphone. AT&T is continually plagued with dropped calls in cities in the States for the same reason. If you don't want to get clobbered then stop using huge amounts of bandwidth just to watch bloody TV on your phone! Do what the rest of us do, wait and watch it at home. I regularly stream BBC 6Music on my phone, and my usage over the eighteen months I had my 3G was 6.6Gb, around 366Mb/month. If I find my usage going up then I'll just get the £5/month 500Mb bolt-on, which should be more than adequate. But then, I'm not a sad man with a TV fixation.
Yes you can pay by the MB. On O2 you can choose between £1/1MB, or £5/500MB. There's nothing inbetween.
£4 a month 🙄
How tragic I am, watching TV.
What if I'm not watching TV, but simply exercising my basic human right to watch streaming porn whilst sat at the back of the number 23 to Gateshead?
If internet bandwidth is so expensive, how is it broadband, using the same upstream data connections can cost way way less, with ludicrously high limits
They don't charge based on what it costs them. They charge based on what people will pay, so that they can make enough momney to cover all their costs.
Ahh...O2...wouldn't give them any of my money even if they gave me twice as much back!!