Are there charges you don’t recognise on your mobile bill?

Charities take advantage of this facility too, but I still agree with you: it should be banned. There are alternative payment methods. It’s a form of inertia selling.

Wavechange, I made the opposite move two years ago – from pay-monthly to PAYG. I am now on Three, paying 1p per megabyte and very occasionally 3p/min and 2p/SMS. In London, there’s wifi almost everywhere I go, so Three’s 1p/min data fills in the small gaps.

I’m totally against monthly bundles of minutes, texts and data. Imagine if we had to buy electricity and gas in this way – either guess how much you will consume in a month which wastes any units that you don’t use by the end of the month, or otherwise be stung with a unit price that is many times the usual price. For example, let’s assume that electricity costs around 10p to 25p per kWh, depending on supplier. Instead of charging you simply 12p/kWh, your supplier requires you to buy a monthly bundle of 500kWh for £60 or otherwise you pay an inflated price of £1/kWh for incremental usage. If you don’t use up the full 500kWh, you lose the unused units and if you use more than 500kWh, then you pay £1/kWh. Neither Ofgem nor consumers would tolerate this with energy, so why do Ofcom and consumers tolerate it with mobile phone services?

The only purpose of monthly allowances and bundles is to charge the consumer in full for usage that isn’t fully consumed and to charge prohibitively high rates for any usage over or outside the monthly allowance or bundle. This practice favours the mobile networks without giving any advantages to consumers. I’m not suggesting that consumers shouldn’t be able to bulk-buy their future consumption, but it is unreasonable to impose a monthly expiry on that purchased consumption. The consumer has paid for the consumption in full and should be able to use it in full or otherwise receive a refund of any unused consumption. It would be much simpler and fairer to charge for mobile phone service in the same incremental way as energy – just simple incremental usage prices at competitive prices, similar to Three’s 3-2-1 prices. Of course, mobile networks could offer volume discounts as well as period-based usage (e.g. a fixed fee for unlimited usage in a particular period), but it is an unfair commercial practice to charge consumers for usage that isn’t actually used. It is worth mentioning that the mobile networks offer simple usage-based postpaid tariffs to large corporate customers. That’s because large corporate customers don’t tolerate the ridiculous system of having to guess in advance how much each user will consume. Why can’t all consumers benefit from simple and fair incremental tariffs?

I agree, NFH. I cannot recall Which? ever expressing an opinion on this but I think it should support it.

Ian, as I wrote above, “Of course, mobile networks could offer volume discounts as well as period-based usage (e.g. a fixed fee for unlimited usage in a particular period)“. But how is it fair to charge consumers for an amount of usage and then if they don’t use that precise amount, still charge them for the full amount? A charge should limited by usage or limited by time, but not limited by both. If a consumer has paid for one gigabyte, then they should be able to use all of that gigabyte without any unreasonable time restriction; maybe one year would be reasonable. Otherwise it’s like buying a packet of sugar, which self-destructs after one month if you don’t use it all.

Derek, why should consumers have to buy bundles or packages? Why shouldn’t they be able to pay for only what they use? If you wouldn’t tolerate use-it-or-lose-it bundles with energy, then why do you tolerate them with mobile phone services? I have yet to hear an argument for the difference in price structure between these two utilities.

Derek, it’s a myth that buying a £10 monthly package limits the cost of consumption to £10/month. Most networks (possibly except EE on PAYG) will charge extortionate out-of-bundle prices, which will result in spending much more than £10.

The only effect of a £10 monthly package is that the consumer pays for £10 of usage, even if they use only £5 of usage. It means that you always pay for more than you use. It’s not about limits at all.

I would like to have the choice between a fixed fee for a bundle or a unit tariff. I would personally prefer the latter but appreciate that does not suit everyone.

Derek, you make a good point about giffgaff. If you have no airtime credit, then it really does limit you to the usage allowed by your monthly goodybag. Of course this results in various problems such as giffgaff customers complaining in giffgaff’s forums that they can’t phone 101, which costs 15p per call from all networks. Of course they can instead dial the police’s geographic number instead and use their goodybag minutes, but most don’t know this and some end up dialling 999 instead.

Derek, almost no organisation is allowed to operate on 084 and 087 numbers any more, thanks to a self-imposed ban by the government and for businesses thanks to Article 21 of Directive 2011/83/EU on Consumer Rights, enacted in the UK under Regulation 41 of the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Payments) Regulations 2013. But I agree that this was indeed once a problem on giffgaff.