Do you lose your cool when you lose signal?

Malcolm – What I had in mind is that if a network does not provide coverage the call is routed via another network that does.

If a customer withdraws money from a ‘free’ ATM, they don’t need to go to one operated by their own bank. From the customers’ point of view this works very well and the banks deserve praise for giving us a service that is very useful. Perhaps banks reimburse each other where customers use an ATM managed by another bank, but as a customer, I don’t need to know. As a mobile phone and mobile broadband user, I want a connection and I don’t care how it happens. It is to the benefit of all consumers for the networks to work together. We know that it is technically possible because networks have been shared for emergency calls for the past five years.

Wavechange, I agree with sharing providers under these conditions – perhaps it wasn’t clear when I said “Why does this not happen?”. Revenue sharing would need to be set up (just like the old railway clearing house system). Quite how you would choose the local provider if your own network had no signal I don’t know – presumably from a list of available networks.
This is where the conversations fall down – unless one of the contributors has expert knowledge these questions don’t get answered. We need Which? to help by asking network providers, or other informed sources to contribute.

I share your disappointment, Malcolm. We certainly need expert input and more feedback on comments posted on Which? Conversation. I suspect that some of our previous regular contributors have stopped posting because we don’t have enough input from those can offer an informed opinion.

Rory Boland – Rory, I have some time ago and more recently emailed Which? about the purpose of these conversations if “experts” are not invited to respond to points raised (this includes Which? of course). Otherwise they can lack usefulness when they should be informative for readers. I have received no replies.

wavechange – I have a couple of weeks ago emailed Which? to suggest we have a conversation about “Conversations” to see exactly what they are meant to achieve, why experts and involved parties are not invited to respond to points raised – including adding factual information – and how they can be better used by Which? to support articles in their publications. No response (yet).

Hi both, apologies for the delay in getting back to you. And a personal apology for not responding to your email – it’s a very good one Malcolm with some legitimate concerns.

The chief goal of Which? Conversation is to give people like you a space to share your views on consumer issues, and to debate with one another about them. We then feed your views into everything we do – the number of investigations and magazine articles that have been born from the views on Which? Conversation are now in the hundreds. It’s often very common that posts appear here because our researchers are scoping for a future article – we must be better at telling you this and letting you know when the resulting article has been published.

We’ve also launched campaigns thanks to the views you have shared here, including Costly Calls, Fixed Means Fixed and our nuisance calls campaign. Your views are also very helpful in shaping our policy positions – our investigations into the smart meter roll-out was thanks to the views shared here on Which? Convo.

We also input your views into government consultations, share them with organisations and they help us hold companies to account.

On issues that we have already investigated or we are already campaigning on, we like to show your comments in Which? magazine, or may contact community members to be case studies to share the human side of the issues we work on. Some Which? Convo community members have appeared in newspapers, on radio and on TV thanks to the views they’ve shared here.

Some debates are obviously more useful than others in this pursuit, but we also want to keep the website lively with plenty to discuss and to attract new people to play a part in this community.

What we need to be much better at is showing all of this to you. We need to share how these debates have been useful and where your views have been essential in shaping our work. That’s something I’ll be taking back to our teams.

I also agree that more Which? authors should be replying to comments – especially your questions. This is something I’ll take up with the authors. As for companies responding and being involved in debates – this is also much wanted, but is harder to achieve. We share comments with companies where we can, but they don’t always feel like they want to enter the fray. We’ll try harder.

Thanks again for being patient with us, and for being at the heart of this community.

Thanks Patrick – that’s reassuring. Input from elsewhere in Which? would be useful, such as Which Legal, on occasions. As for companies and trade associations, I have contacted them before, referring them to a conversation, and asking for a view; I have found them helpful – although not making a direct post they did provide information that could be contributed. As Wavechange says, some contributors may be turned off by the lack of informed response to queries or dubious facts, which would be a shame.

Thanks for these comments, Patrick. On the positive side, I don’t know of any other site that succeeds in achieving debate of some rather contentious issues in a civilised way. 🙂

Thanks both 🙂

I agree most comments contain a lot of useful info. I would however like to see more feedback from thumbs down voters so that a healthy constructive debate can ensue. It can sometimes be quite enlightening to hear the other side of a particular issue.

I echo Malcolm’s and Wavechange’s comments and look forward to more input from authors. Sometimes we get useful responses from experts or practitioners and this does make a big difference to the quality of information and the content of the Conversation.

I have to confess that sometimes – with notable exceptions – I think the Which? authors throw a stick in our direction and wait to see whether we pick it up and if so how far we run with it!

I must agree with Wavechange’s appreciation of the conduct of this blog. Without a doubt it is best kept etiquette on the net.

That’s a good point Beryl – hopefully if we create at atmosphere that let’s people feel they can come in with a different viewpoint, more people will be likely to do so. Another option could possibly be removing the down-thumb altogether – I’m not sure if I’m yet signed up to this idea 🙂

Hi John, our authors do often want to see if a subject flies here to see whether we should investigate it in the future. We want to see you talk through the issues so that it flags up what we should look into. However, for want of better words, I’ll ‘throw a stick’ at our authors every once and a while 😉

I really do think Which should remove the down-thumb’s vote thing. I think over 90% of my comments get voted down just because I have a difference in opinion & it feels like a slap in the face just because I don’t agree with other people’s point of view.

We should all be free to be able to talk about our own points of view & opinions on the subjects.

Lee & Patrick: I agree Lee with your last comment that we should all be free to be able to talk about our own points of view & opinions on subjects, which makes for good and open debate but I would be in favour of keeping the down-thumbs Patrick. For example, if someone doesn’t agree with a comment I made I would be interested to know the reason why, as I accept there is nearly always going to be another side to a debate and there can occasionally be a very valid point I may have overlooked.

To get back to topic, yes I get very frustrated when my son ‘phones me on a daily basis whilst driving on his hands free system necessary for his work. Mid conversation the line always goes dead, sometimes more than once, the reason being he is out of range of the signal usually in a rural or semi-rural area and has to keep phoning me back. It is very infuriating.

As far as I am aware, mobile phone companies are sympathetic to those who struggle to make and receive calls from home. Malcolm has given us an example.

Signal boosters are available for home users who have problems in their home. They are not cheap but some users have managed to acquire one free of charge. I know you like challenges, Lee, so perhaps try and get hold of one at no cost. 🙂

I did have a little look at them wavechange. But it said the booster box must be connected to a landline / broadband & as I’ve left Plusnet & no longer have a stranded BT line anymore it wont work 🙁

Lee, you can buy a £9 Nokia phone from Tesco and £10 of payg as a standby to your Network 3 phone – if O2 covers your area you could then make calls without embarrassment.

You are right Malcolm, I am thinking about getting a cheap mobile and get a Tesco PAYG Sim for a spare phone, as tesco run on the 02 network, but get clubcard points too.

I was with Tesco before moving to Three, but left due to no unlimited data plan for me & Tesco/02 have a perfect signal in my area.

I regularly take members of the public on trips in areas where I know that my mobile phone may let me down. Though I know that I will be able to use it for emergency calls, I carry a mobile phone on a different network in case I have a breakdown or need to make non-emergency calls. PAYG is fine for this sort of use, but it soon becomes expensive if you use it regularly. That is what forced me to move from PAYG in the past year. My landline tariff covers calls to mobiles, but only in the evenings.

For emergencies, you could keep a non-UK SIM card with a favourable expiry policy (e.g. 6 months since last use). Non-UK SIM cards generally roam on to any UK network. Examples are O2 Ireland or Channel Islands / Isle of Man networks. Intra-EU roaming call charges are similar to UK PAYG rates anyway, often less.

That’s an interesting idea NFH. I recall that Vodafone once cut off my spare phone when it was unused for little more than a month.

One reason for having a second phone handy is that phones can go missing or the battery can go flat. I find it amazing that although I could pop a spare battery into a cheap Nokia I cannot do that with an iPhone. 🙁

Just to update: I have been contacted by Network Three via Twitter DM’s & they are sending me one of those booster box things that will connect to the internet.

My friend who lives next door is also on Three so the box will be connected to his internet & will help both me & him.

Thanks Three…..and Which for posting this story 🙂