SO YOU THINK YOU’VE GOT A BETTER DEAL? Discover the truth.
Friday, June 13th, 2008
It’s amazing how many times our clients call us up saying that they’ve seen a better offer for “cheaper” calls, “unlimited” minutes, “everything all on one bill” etc. Direct Telecom keeps a close eye on the “competition”, and we feel it’s about time we blew the top off some of the offers available on TV, in newspapers and from companies who cold call the unsuspecting client.
Offer 1. 3MB ADSL + National land line calls + Line rental for 29.95€. Sound’s too good to be true? Well, it is. The 29.95€ is for the first month only, then the price increases to 36.95€. The line rental offer is subject to geographic location, and – surprise, surprise – extremely restricted. If you live next to the telephone exchange in Madrid or Barcelona, you may be in with a shout. Oh yes, and this offer is only available to the first 10,000 applicants daft enough not to read the small print! Oh, and be sure to check out their international call rates too.
Offer 2. Up to 20MB ADSL + Line rental + National Calls for just 9.90€ a month (until October). Admittedly, the small print does say that after that time, the price will be 39.90€ per month. Follow the link and you’ll see that in many areas, the maximum speed available is 3MB, and in so-called “rural” areas, you may get no coverage at all. That’s not all – To use your ADSL, you will be expected to pay 2€ per day where your account shows internet traffic, yes! 2€ PER DAY, up to a maximum of 28€ in the month. This means that should you connect daily, your bill will approach 50€ per month. You are also tied to an 18 month agreement, and pay for your router too! And then let’s look at the call charges. Remember, no VoIP here. Connection charges of 11.9 cent, then Europe, the USA and Canada at 8 cent a minute, and a staggering 54 cent a minute for “the rest of the world”. So yes, you probably could save if you never used your internet and never made international calls, but then life would be just boring!
Offer 3. 3MB ADSL + National land line calls for a whole 12 months for just 25.90€ per month. This is a good one – it is ONLY for brand new land line applications. If you already have a land line, you don’t qualify, and your price for the same deal will be 40.90€ per month, just the same as it always was! And again, no super low international call rates.
Offer 4. Unlimited calls to the UK for just 12.99€ per month. Once again, if you sign up online and simply tick the “I have read and understand the terms and conditions” box, you won’t realize that you have just limited your calls to 350 minutes a month, land lines only. Now, let’s do the sums:
12.99€ / 350 = 3.7 cent a minute
almost half a cent per minute more than Direct Telecom’s traditional telephone rate, where you only pay for the minutes you use.
Offer 5. Unlimited internet access for 4.50€ a month. We love this one! Of course it’s unlimited – they want you to be dialing the internet all day every day, thinking it’s only costing you 4.50€ a month. It’s not! You pay a local call charge and a connection fee every time you log on. Let’s say you are online for half an hour a day (praying that your favourite pages will load up in time, and that the email attachment of 5MB you were looking forward to doesn’t take too long to open!). You’ve paid 4.50€ already, plus 30 calls of 30 minutes duration, that’s 30 connection fees of 6 cent and 900 minutes costing around 1 cent a minute. Suddenly your 4.50 becomes 15.30€ - not so attractive now, is it? With Direct Telecom’s dial up internet, there really is no limit to how long you can be online, so for 19.50€ you can rest assured that’s all you’ll pay, even if you stay logged on all day.
If you’re tempted by the tantalizing offers, remember:
READ THE SMALL PRINT!
If you simply can’t resist:
READ THE SMALL PRINT AGAIN!
And if you still have to try, we’ll be glad to have your business back when your bills go through the roof!