Quote:On the other hand Vodafone are actually an utter disgrace on Pay as You Go in terms of failing to have any mechanism to automatically top up your credit when it falls below a certain level (very inconvenient when you are abroad and if you are in a remote uk area and run out of credit) and because there is no way to check the value of calls you have made if you feel your account balance has fallen drastically for no good reason. Compare this with Fresh from the Carphone Warehouse which operate true Postpay (a system widely operated in other European countries) where you have no monthly line rental but do receive a statement of the amount of calls made that month and for £1 a month extra can get a fully itemised bill. More importantly the value of calls made is simply debited monthly from your credit card so there is no tedious account balance to have to keep topped up and that may run out.
I much prefer to receive a bill for such services and don't see why I should have to 'top up' in advance. Even if this were one which is purely online, it would cost my provider less than sending a hardcopy through the post.
andy9 wrote on Jan 8
th, 2006 at 1:39am:
The fact that almost all prepaid services don't provide online billing implies to me that it is a service with pared down costs and resources - and why would it be necessary when the balance is available via the phone?
PAYG providers should be forced to provide such services. That 'cost saving' is just another reason why reverse-charged premium rate SMS scams go unnoticed, and when the subscriber does suspect something, there is no way of telling for certain how much these theives have taken. It could be £1, £10, £20 or more, who knows. The one thing for sure is that that money cannot be used to pay (proper) bills, put food on the table, save up etc. It has been taken without consent and the billing company (the mobile operator) says they can't do anything about it!
So ultimately, that 'cost saving' is only rewarding the networks by providing more traffic that they can make a profit on. It does not benefit the public one iota.