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Meteor, O2 customers face 80% price hike for prepay service
Category: Mobile Phones |Date Published: 13/07/2010
CUSTOMERS of mobile phone company O2 are facing price hikes of up to 80pc.
Prepaid customers, who pay for their calls and texts by topping up their mobile accounts with credit every month, are set to be hardest hit.
The cost of initiating a call for a prepaid customer is to rise from 5c to 9c, a jump of 80pc, the Irish Independent has learned.
The changes will affect almost 700,000 prepaid customers of the company.
There will be no change in the per minute charge once a call is made.
Price hikes will also be imposed on people with mobile phone contracts, as these customers will have to pay more once they exceed the monthly voice and text allowances that come with their price plans.
More than 400,000 people have contracts with O2.
The rises take effect from Monday week and will mean that someone who exceeds their monthly allowance of free calls will see the price of making a call rise by 35pc, the phone company confirmed yesterday.
A spokeswoman for O2 said a smartphone user who is on the Advance 350 price plan pays €60 a month and gets 350 free call minutes, unlimited internet browsing and 150 free texts.
If they exceed the limits for calls on this plan the cost of making a call will rise from 20c to 27c. The cost of sending a text goes from 10c to 11c for those who exceed their free "bundled" number of texts each month.
Roaming
"The majority of customers on these price plans don't exceed the voice and text allowances that come with the price plans they have chosen," the spokeswoman said. "If customers do find they exceed the bundled minutes and texts with their plan we advise them to choose another plan more tailored to their usage."
She said O2 offers a free "spend alert text service" for all customers, which alerts them when they have reached a particular amount on their bill to help them manage what they spend. The customers sets the point at which they would like to receive an alert.
The price hike comes days after the EU imposed caps on roaming charges that phone companies can impose when people are using their mobiles abroad.
But the company denied yesterday that the increases had anything to do with that cap.
The cost of making a call to the 11811 directory enquiry service is to rise from 99c to €1.17, the Irish Independent has also learned.
The mobile phone operator, which is part of European telecoms giant Telefonica, is also moving to suspend prepaid accounts that have not been used for more than six months.
O2 said it would write to people who have not used the prepaid mobile for more than half a year and if there was no reply it would remove any phone credit two months later.
It is also scrapping a desktop text service where people can download software to their computer and send free texts.
Customers can still avail of free texts via the internet by accessing the O2 website.
- Charlie Weston Personal Finance Editor
Irish Independent
Prepaid customers, who pay for their calls and texts by topping up their mobile accounts with credit every month, are set to be hardest hit.
The cost of initiating a call for a prepaid customer is to rise from 5c to 9c, a jump of 80pc, the Irish Independent has learned.
The changes will affect almost 700,000 prepaid customers of the company.
There will be no change in the per minute charge once a call is made.
Price hikes will also be imposed on people with mobile phone contracts, as these customers will have to pay more once they exceed the monthly voice and text allowances that come with their price plans.
More than 400,000 people have contracts with O2.
The rises take effect from Monday week and will mean that someone who exceeds their monthly allowance of free calls will see the price of making a call rise by 35pc, the phone company confirmed yesterday.
A spokeswoman for O2 said a smartphone user who is on the Advance 350 price plan pays €60 a month and gets 350 free call minutes, unlimited internet browsing and 150 free texts.
If they exceed the limits for calls on this plan the cost of making a call will rise from 20c to 27c. The cost of sending a text goes from 10c to 11c for those who exceed their free "bundled" number of texts each month.
Roaming
"The majority of customers on these price plans don't exceed the voice and text allowances that come with the price plans they have chosen," the spokeswoman said. "If customers do find they exceed the bundled minutes and texts with their plan we advise them to choose another plan more tailored to their usage."
She said O2 offers a free "spend alert text service" for all customers, which alerts them when they have reached a particular amount on their bill to help them manage what they spend. The customers sets the point at which they would like to receive an alert.
The price hike comes days after the EU imposed caps on roaming charges that phone companies can impose when people are using their mobiles abroad.
But the company denied yesterday that the increases had anything to do with that cap.
The cost of making a call to the 11811 directory enquiry service is to rise from 99c to €1.17, the Irish Independent has also learned.
The mobile phone operator, which is part of European telecoms giant Telefonica, is also moving to suspend prepaid accounts that have not been used for more than six months.
O2 said it would write to people who have not used the prepaid mobile for more than half a year and if there was no reply it would remove any phone credit two months later.
It is also scrapping a desktop text service where people can download software to their computer and send free texts.
Customers can still avail of free texts via the internet by accessing the O2 website.
- Charlie Weston Personal Finance Editor
Irish Independent