Is proof of savings enough? I have money but income is eh ;(
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Doubt it, and it makes sense.
If you need money and have enough savings to cover it you wouldn’t need credit. If you need more than your savings then what guarantees that you’ll have more income in the future to afford to repay?
However it’s somewhat negotiable (not “computer says no”) so you can get through if you have a valid reason (though I don’t see one here).
I have a low income but I’m very tight with my money so my savings are good.
I normally apply for rewards cards ;( but they all reject me here! (income isn’t paid into banks so CRA sees irregular non-salaried income, which is dumb…)
Also I like your idea of no CRA. I’ll suggest outlawing them as policy in an upcoming report on how to fix our financial industry I’m due to give to my party 
In that case use your savings as much as possible and only take out debt for the little that remains that you need? Which should hopefully be low enough that it’s gonna be approved with your income.
What makes you think your positive balance is reported? On all my current accounts my balance was always reported as zero which makes sense to me as balance on a report means debt balance (so the balance reported on my CCs is the debt balance, and on the telecom accounts it’s the price of the previous bill as it gets paid after the report to the CRAs).
If you need credit here just get a Capital One which starts with a low credit limit (mine was 200 a couple years ago) and then every year they raise it, they also report your monthly repayments to the CRAs so it’ll improve your eligibility to bigger loans in the future.
I pay for everything with my savings and my monthly income, but like, I want rewards points lmao
They would be able to see my income I’m presuming otherwise they’re not going to be able to verify my income?
I have an Aqua Rewards that’s like 54.9% APR (since I don’t actually use it for credit, I just want a regular spend card with perks and one to use for security deposits)
I think in reality I just need to get a new job with someone who isn’t addicted to paying their staff in cash + actually pays a decent wage. That and in my actual field, as opposed to a part-time job at a takeout.
Me and my dad were on 3 …
He was in hungry and called me on +4479xxxxxxx , the telecom provider in hungry told 3 that one if their users called +79xxxx which is Russia ( or 3’s system imported the numbers into billing wrong)
So nice big bill, they wouldn’t look into it and I called the number on Skype and it’s not even a valid Russian number!
They still weren’t having it, so I told them I want a copy of the incoming logs of the number to prove that he called a UK number at that minute, but guess what , apparently you need a court order to get this, (also says this on the website)
Eventually got the money back.
So great that Zevvle are hopefully showing incoming also.
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No hopefully needed, Zevvle are already showing incoming call logs including the costs, origin, destination and explanation of cost.
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I could make a book with the bad experiences I’ve had and complaints I’ve had to make to a couple of MNOs, some of those for them to adhere to THEIR terms and conditions. Perhaps I can share some when I have some time. They are quite fun!
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Speaking of bad experiences got another one, this time with Openreach. A bit surprised considering the install costs several thousands so I’d expect them to at least do a decent job.
Ordered a leased line in February, after the initial site survey they determined there were some civil works needed (fair enough) and gave me a completion date in June. After the works have been supposedly completed, they tried to install it but it seems like one of the conduits was blocked and they couldn’t get the fiber through.
What were they even doing these 4 months? I expect these issues to be discovered & resolved during the initial civil works. So now got a new deadline for the 18th of July just to figure out what to do next, and probably another 4 months (if not more) to actually fix the conduit. 
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if you need to ask what openfail were doing for four months, you dont know openreach to well:joy:
although i do feel your pain, they are most unhelpful company i’ve had the pleasure of speaking to on a daily basis…
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Old thread, but here goes. Not a personal experience, but one my boyfriend had from one of the big names. He was on a PAYG plan with that being his only Internet connection and phone service at the time. Dropped to £0, as it usually did fairly quickly. No biggy, right? Just need to hop onto their site to top up. Everything goes well right up until the point his card gets rejected; twice, three times, no luck, there’s definitely money on that card but the site isn’t budging. So off he goes to the webchat where they tell him to call up support, which he does only to then be told he doesn’t have enough credit on his device: apparently this service needs credit to call support on a PAYG phone!
Long story short, he was eventually thrown into a support loop but eventually fixed it when the site miraculously decided to work again a few days later.
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Juicy thread topic. No names… OK, well, let’s see if I can put this in a readable state and without resorting to nicknames or what have you (apologies in advance if this turns into an essay):
Month 1 - bill received, couple of hundred pounds over what it should be as they’d managed to convert my data use amount into the data charge amount (so, 20.345GB would be £203.45, that sort of thing, plus VAT). Duly contacted customer service who took one look, said “oh yes that’s quite obviously wrong isn’t it” and advised accordingly (stop the DD as the incorrect amount would come out if I didn’t, pay bill amount minus data overcharge manually, customer service would credit my bill with the non DD charge for the month, notes added to reflect I’d been advised to do the previous by them and why and to redo this credit should issue continue) adding that my bill would be sent off to billing for a recalculation and everything should be back to normal by the next bill. Paid bill manually, service continued, all well and good.
Month 2 - bill received, month 2 charge amounts correct, but month 1 overcharge still on the account. Contacted customer service to ask what went wrong with the recalculation “oh, oh yes, don’t know what happened there. We’ll send it back to billing for recalculation, things should be corrected on your next bill”. Non DD charge credited as per previous notes, month 2 bill amount paid manually, service continued, all good.
Month 3 - bill received, month 3 charge amount correct, month 1 overcharge still sitting in the account. Contacted customer service to ask what went wrong with the recalculation (again) “oh, oh yes, don’t know what happened there. We’ll send it back to billing for recalculation, things should be corrected on your next bill, I’ll credit your bill with the non DD charge as per the notes.” This time I pressed the issue, saying I wasn’t going to blindly wait for the next bill and wanted an update before then as I’d had this already. Customer service advisor agreed, arranged a call back a week later, made this call as billing had apparently asked for more information, more information provided… and things ground to a halt. Customer service (different person) response “you need to wait for your next bill”, my thought ‘I know where this is going’… Oh, meanwhile, month 3 bill amount paid manually, service continued.
Month 4 - bill received, month 4 amount correct, month 1 overcharge still on account. Contacted customer service… and all hell broke loose. Short version; billing had refused the recalculation requests it had received within 48 hours as the month 1 bill was ‘correct’ despite themselves acknowledging it quite clearly wasn’t (??), various other departments got involved to point fingers at one another, billing refused to deal with me, I got calls from other departments, including one from registrations who was clearly hot and bothered thinking I’d complained about her (I hadn’t, she was actually pretty good, the one she’d put me through to, who had point blank refused to give me their name, not so good), and so on until… How can I put this politely… A of a team leader from their billing department called me, full of attitude, to say wtte of “contact us as often as you like, it won’t change a thing, yes the bill amount in question is incorrect but you’re going to pay it anyway and then we’ll consider giving you a refund of the money we know you don’t actually owe”. Yeah - at this point I wasn’t very polite, gave her some attitude in return, then hung up on her. She called back - twice - but no, just no.
After this, went direct to their executive/head office who, after looking at things, couldn’t do enough for me. Indeed, they told me to contact them directly with any customer service queries for a period as it would be “unwise” to have my account dealt with by customer service within that period! Hmm… Yes, so, while the end result was good, getting there… Not so much.
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2.7% for one customer is peanuts. On a typical £15 pound bill, that is around 41p. Assuming you have 2 million customers, that makes it an extra £810,000 a month, for doing nothing. You can buy quite a few Aston Martins with that. You can bet a good chunk of users just go “i can’t be bothered to contest this 41p charge, my time is worth more than that price”.
This is why they do it. And, in case you haven’t notice, practically all the main Telcos are now doing this. I happen to think it’s about time that OFCOM banned this practice, but until they grow some teeth and use them (ahem!), you just have to vote with your wallet and leave.
I wish some insider could shed some light on why the practice is widespread, because I have the view that technology generally gets faster and cheaper over time, so there’s not the same inflationary pressure on the cost of providing service as there may be in other businesses, but I’m just speculating.
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I wonder if it’s linked to the random loyalty discounts that they give out, and needing a way for them to not end up staying so low?
I don’t believe that those signup/loyalty discounts ever result in them selling the service at a loss, so they’re not under pressure. They just sacrifice a little bit of profit to muddy the waters a little.
My suspicion is that some boffins sat down and ran some optimisation maths/algorithms and worked out that a complex pricing strategy results in higher profits on average than a simpler flat structure, despite being operationally more expensive to administer. I don’t think all the big players came to adopt these practices for the fun.
Things like quoting a high price and then giving specific people discounts “just because you’re special, I’ll do you a favour” could win some loyalty (e.g, you often hear people, I’d leave EE but i have a 60GB plan for £20 a month – conveniently leaving out the fact that they only use about 7GB in any given month). Doing things like this would also gain you the money that you’d otherwise leave on the table for people who either don’t know, are well off, or can’t ask for the better price (e.g vulnerable people) when any discount expires.
Just an outsider’s speculation though.
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Thank you for joining the community, @tinker! That read was rough… 
What’s sad is that I reckon those customer service people knew what the right thing to do was, but the fear of ‘repercussions’ brings them down. That and the completely disjointed departments shirking responsibility…
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Thanks for the welcome @nick, it was rough, and that was the short version too 
Looking back, I think you’re right. Most, if not all, of them knew full well what was needed to move things forward - however one poor guy in month 4 spent best part of 2 hours trying to get pretty much anyone who could move things forward to do so, to no avail as both ranking staff and departments simply didn’t want to know (I know he was trying as I asked him a few times if he wanted to ring me back when he got someone, and he said no - stay on the line).
That being said, no one wanting to get involved is probably not as much of a surprise as it should be, considering when I got to executive/head office level they advised me that my account had been “'improperly managed” at their end" (they described it differently, but I’m being diplomatic here), which is why they told me if I had customer service queries to contact them direct rather than customer service for a period, which says it all.
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The minimum wage increased between 1.5-2% across the board
Their partners probably also raised their prices to cover their increased costs
Pair that with retail stores that are basically sitting there to pay rent for a place that has 5 customers a month, with business rates being a tad high for dying town centres
That and as an additional thing now, they’re having to replace all Huawei infrastructure at massive cost
The point of a long-term contract is so that I have the peace of mind of a fixed price, and they have the benefit of a reliable income stream for the term of the contract. They take a calculated risk in the prices they set, and they factor in their expected costs and markup before setting a price.
If they can write a contract that removes all risk for them and assign that risk to me, what’s the benefit to me of tying myself down for 12 or 18 months? And thry carefully design their PAYG tarriffs so that you have to penalise yourself for being on them if you’re even a light user.
Energy retailers aren’t allowed to do this on their fixed term contracts, but we allow telecoms to do it as if theirs is not an essential service.
Mind you, I also face rising costs in my life, and yet my employment contract doesn’t have a 3.9% cost of living adjustment baked in. My council tax bill for example, went up 5% following a year that saw most people’s income affected by covid – there were headlines recently about Nurses getting a pay rise of 1%. The nurses were the lucky ones in many cases, cos a lot of people got nothing or lost jobs altogether.
I won’t continue to debate with you on this point. I’ve already voted with my wallet and moved to Zevvle.
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I mean, you don’t unless you’re on Tesco Mobile
To further mention, you’re generally trading a longer subscription for a cheaper per month cost
The discount is in exchange for a more predictable revenue stream, because it can go straight onto the balance sheet as this year’s receivables and they can borrow against it if needed, lowering their operating risk
What risk do you have? If they go bust you lose the months fee (£20?) and they lose it all lol
Reduced cost
Yeah, PAYG sucks but man, you can get 1GB w/ calls & texts for £6 a month now (which is equivalent to what I’d pay on Zevvle currently)
These are actually two very different industries, it’s like comparing the UK with Moldova as if both are apples
It’s called the ability to quit with a notice period, furthermore I don’t see why you’d think it’s your employers job subsidise your increased costs? Your living standards don’t come into their equation, whereas cost of providing a service to you definitely does in the case of a mobile network. What you’re really asking for is a free ride or razor thin margins. As we’ve seen with travel this year razor thin margins bring industry to the brink. Huawei removal could have very easily been the COVID to mobile network operators unless they run on good margins.
So… councils have to get more funds from central government and the central government has to borrow more, they borrow against their tax income so… where do you want them to get the money exactly??
For the record though I think the Tory’s pledged to a max £5 raise, which you could make use of if it bothers you enough
It was actually a misleading headline since we are currently implementing a raise for them anyways, so the effective raise this year is 1.7% and then theres meant to be a further raise iirc
But yeah, you did indeed vote with your wallet and I approve of it