I am mobile in the UK at the moment..
Needing a local number I went and bought a SIM card. The iPhone being on O2 here I grabbed one of theirs.. The one that said ‘50 Free Minutes’ on the packet.
It seemed reasonable at £10.00.
However 10 minutes later flashing down the M25 iPhone in one hand, steering wheel in the other I realized it’s a big stinking scam. The ‘50 Free Minutes’ is only for calls to a number outside the UK, and only once you’ve loaded some more money onto the phone!
Customer Service calls are charged at 25p from a fixed line or the mobile itself.. There is NO WAY to get in touch without paying, or loading the SIM.. even if you simply want help or advice.
Furious I dived into a petrol station to deal with some ‘local’ who barely spoke English and shovel another $20 in O2’s direction… So I could then finally call friends to let them know I had arrived back in rainy blighty!
Much later reading through the notes for the O2 SIM card I realized exactly how badly the phone companies here shaft travellers.. Your first 3 minutes of calls on any one day are charged at 25p each. That is actually more expensive than the normal per-minute rate to call Thailand (for example). After that it drops back to a more normal rate for the rest of that day. This ensures that the average traveller making those odd contact calls each day gets shafted each and every day.
Any direct internet connection is barred. On the iPhone the Edge stuff is completely disabled. They throw you some free multi-media messages, and a free ring tone.. But any internet access is at an exorbitant rate and only via their WAP service.
To call and complain, or get advice is billed at $.50 per call, and is not possible at all until you load and enable the SIM. That’s right.. That’s not a typo.. To get any help or advice you must load the SIM, and pay to speak to Customer Service.
Total cost to simply make a call once in the UK : £20.25 or $40.50
That is £10.00 to buy the SIM.
£10.00 to load the SIM. (It’s impossible to get smaller top up amounts).
£00.25p for your first one minute call to say ‘Hi. I am here’.
Alternatives.. Find a working Payphone at Heathrow (Ha!), or Roam using your home country SIM. That option is almost certainly cheaper for one or two contact calls while finding your feet…
I assume the other networks are the same but am not willing to cough up another $40 to find out. I have gone back to roaming on my Thai SIM.
Moral of this story. The UK is still in the dark ages for phone communications and cell charges, as well as wet, miserable and full of crap food, and people who don’t speak English at Petrol Stations!
DO NOT BUY O2 Pay as you Go SIM cards when in the UK.
O2 always has been a rip-off though, you only need to look at the whole Iphone situation.
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Left by gavin smith on June 16th, 2008