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There's no such thing as a free pay-as-you-go upgrade

Technology is the scam artist's best friend nowadays.

While I am sure there are still a wealth of grifters out there working cons face-to-face, the automatic choice for the enterprising scammer nowadays must be the internet and mobile phone networks.

And while the advice is run a mile if anyone contacts you by email, text or phone call and claims to be offering you something too good to be true, there's a natural temptation to want that good deal to be true.

Two days ago I had one of those moments. A message arrived on my Orange pay-as-you-go mobile, promising me the holy grail for us pre-pay cheapskates - a phone upgrade.

It said: Orange customer. You may now claim your FREE CAMERA PHONE upgrade for your loyalty. Call now on 0207 153 9153. Offer ends 12th June.T&C's apply. Opt-out available.
Sender:UpgrdCentre

For a brief time I honestly thought Orange was genuinely rewarding me for being too lazy  to seek a better deal for the past however many years. And then the alarm bells rang. These were the tell tale signs:

1) Orange love to bombard customers with pointless messages, but they always begin Hi from Orange and the sender is always Orange.

2) Mobile phone companies are not in the business of rewarding pay-as-you-go customers for their loyalty - they might give you a free phone, but they want an 12/18-month contract in return.

3) In order to get this free upgrade you rang a normal 0207 phone number. Everyone knows big business dumped normal phone numbers years ago to milk customers dry with 0845 numbers.

Interested to see what the scam was, I gave the number a call. There was a telltale click, the fuzzy sound of a long distance line and the chirpy voice of an Indian worker (they tend to be a lot friendlier than anyone on the end of a UK phone). He asked me for my phone number. I asked him who he was and why I was texted? And while I couldn't get the full details of what whoever he worked for is trying to do I gleaned the following:

• The company is called CNT
• They bought the numbers for Orange customers from a source they won't divulge
• They are not in the UK, but won't say where they are based
• They pass on your details to a third party who then might offer you an upgrade

I don't know whether this is an outright scam to get people's personal details or one to coax people on to contracts through third party suppliers. It is however to be avoided at all costs. Remember there's no such thing as a free lunch/pay-as-you-go upgrade/lottery ticket/inheritance from a Nigerian prince.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

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PC World's adventure shopping experience

When you buy something in a shop what do you expect?

If I've picked it up from a normal full-price display, I expect a brand new item with everything included, priced as advertised.
Apparently this is not what you should expect at PC World.

Nope, according to PC World, in Kensington High Street, you can possibly expect items that have been returned to the shop and items with crucial parts missing, and it is up to the customer to discover these hidden amid normal full-price items and then ask for some money off.

This daredevil attempt to turn traditional shopping on its head came to light when I went into the nearby PC World to buy a wireless router for my broadband connection.

To be honest, I knew I shouldn't go into PC World. Mainly because it has a weird guard tower style arrangement, where a man sits up on a pedestal with his back to the doors watching each criminal...sorry customer...as they walk round the store.

But I've been meaning to sort out wireless internet for ages and it was convenient, so I went in.

I found the display, chose my router and took it to the till, where the cashier tried to scan the barcode. It didn't work, so he continued trying to scan it repeatedly for about three minutes.
Eventually, I said: 'Shall I go get another one from the shelf?'.
He nodded in agreement and at this point I noticed there was a new barcode label stuck over the original on the box. Helpfully, he said: 'Maybe this one doesn't work because it's been returned.'
I said: 'What do you mean returned?'
Pointing casually at the new label, he said: 'Maybe someone brought it back, they didn't want it or something.'

So, I went and picked up another box and then realised it also had a new label stuck on. Written on this one in tiny letters in biro was 'power cable missing'. I chose yet another and helpfully took the 'power cable missing' box back to the till, where I said it had probably been put on the shelf by mistake.

It was only now that PC World's brave new shopping world was revealed. It wasn't a mistake - it was meant to be there. A customer could find it and ask for some money off. Being a bit slow, I questioned this, saying surely you can't just put it on the shelf with all the other full-price items, hoping a customer notices? Wrong again. The cashier kindly explained this was a shop and they could do what they like.

At this point a supervisor ambled over and - still being a bit slow - I explained the problem. Luckily, he set me straight and explained the cashier was correct.
I left without buying anything.

So, if you're into adventure shopping with guard towers, lucky dip purchases and the possibility of discovering vital bits of kit missing, I can recommend PC World on Kensington High Street - and maybe elsewhere in the UK. Otherwise, perhaps it's best to give it a miss.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

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The new Virgin Media mission statement?

Virgin's takeover of NTL was always going to be a rough ride. You had a broadband/ mobile provider with a generally pretty decent reputation getting into bed with another one that, erm, didn't.

A £25m rebranding later and the newly named Virgin Media has so far managed to shed nearly 50,000 of its customers.

That's not bad going - about £500 of marketing money spent for each lost customer.

So how heartening it is to see slapped across the back of their installation vans what I can only assume is the new and painfully accurate mission statement.

'Virgin Media,' it blurts, 'Forward, back, back a bit more. Stop!'

Brilliant.

Richard Browning - This is Money

More virgin stories

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TalkTalk: Is it worse than British Gas?

I've often considered running an award for the worst customer service. British Gas would obviously be a contender but my vote goes to TalkTalk.

I moved there last year for free broadband - but boy have I regretted it as I spend endless hours on the phone dealing with a call centre in India or, more often listening to Thunderclap Newman's Something in the Air. I now know every note and word of that song. I hear it in my sleep and hum it as I walk the streets. 

My call waiting service stopped working properly when I was 'upgraded' to 8 megabit broadband toward the end of last year. I finally gave up attempting to get it put right. Life is too short and they seem to be incapable of fixing it. 

The latest battle is getting calls to mobiles blocked to prevent my teenage son running up three-figure phone bills. You might think that this is fairly straightforward, but nothing is straightforward with TalkTalk.  I originally made the request on March 16 and was told it would take three to five days.

When my massive April bill arrived last week I discovered they had not been blocked. I called immediately and, after 40 minutes on the phone, was promised they would be blocked and offered a refund.  At the weekend I received a text saying the problem was solved. It wasn't. I called again on Monday and after 30 minutes on hold and being cut off twice I eventually spoke to a man who told me I simply needed to key in an activation code (the first I'd heard of it). He also said the call waiting would be fixed and promised to call at 8.15 on Tuesday morning. 

The call never came, when I used the activation code I received a helpful message saying I wasn't subscribed to the service. And neither my call waiting nor caller display work. So I've now taken a step backward.

I wasted a further 25 minutes on the problem this morning but somebody who identified herself as 'Anthea' promised the services would be set up in 'two to four hours'. That was at 10.35 am; I am highly sceptical.   I an now keeping a diary of the number of hours I spend on the phone trying to get TalkTalk to fix what should be straightforward problems.

What is most galling is the record message saying: 'We apologise for your continued wait. We will answer your call shortly.' They're not sorry at all. If they were they would do something about waiting times.  TalkTalk has the worst customer service I've ever experienced (and I'm a former NTL customer, so I know about poor customer service).

Perhaps you've experienced worse. Let me know.

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail

See also -

This is Money's TalkTalk special, with news, advice and debate

Talking the Talk Talk

Threaten to cancel Virgin TV and get a better deal

I don't watch a great deal of television and have never been one of those people who casually switches the idiot box on and uses it as the background sound to everyday life.

However, when I do settle down in front of the TV, I do watch certain things and when some of them suddenly disappear from my screen I am not pleased.

The loss of Sky One from my Virgin Media cable TV and the subsequent inability to watch new episodes of The Simpsons and continue watching the series of Lost that I was halfway through, didn't go down well.

I only have cable TV because we have no outside aerial and diabolical TV reception in our flat, but I had grown accustomed to the little bit of extra choice having Sky One offered - and, as I've written before, I don't care whether this was Virgin or Sky's fault, I'm angry that it's the viewer who has lost out.

But there is a way to get a little bit back if you act fast.

Virgin has said that customers can leave their contracts at no charge until the end of March. And if you call up and threaten to do so, it is offering improved TV, phone or broadband packages.

I gave Virgin a call this week and while it took a brutal 15 minutes or so on hold to get through, I then got a very helpful lady who asked what they could do to keep me. I emerged with a TV package bumped up from about 40 channels to more than 80.

True, it's just more rubbish I won't watch, but at least I got something back and there was no contract extension, extra cost etc.

So, if you have Virgin TV, call their bluff and get a better deal - but you only have until Saturday.

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

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Virgin and Sky - why does the customer lose out?

Why is it that when rival technology or media firms slug it out it's inevitably the customer that loses out?

The latest duo to go head-to-head at the expense of the paying punter are Sky and Virgin Media – the artist formerly known as NTL: Telewest.

In their wisdom these two have decided the nice cosy co-existing situation, where some people have satellite TV and some have cable and everyone gets along fairly well, is no longer reasonable.

This has descended into the business equivalent of playground name-calling in lengthy missives– with both Sky and Virgin attacking the other.

Essentially, these can be summarised as saying ‘we’re great, they’re not’, ‘I didn’t start it, he did’ and ‘it wasn’t me, it was him’.

The argument – rooted in the Virgin rebranding of NTL:Telewest being seen as a direct attack on Sky’s position of dominance – has delivered its first meaningful moment.

And how has this moment taken shape? More choice, cheaper programming and a revolutionising of the service, with each company fighting to give customers more? Nope, a row over charging for basic Sky channels seemingly destined to leave cable customers without popular programmes.

As of Thursday it looks very unlikely cable viewers will get Sky One, Sky Sports News or Sky News. None of which on paper are groundbreakingly brilliant, but in practice this means no Simpsons, no Lost, no 24, no Soccer Saturday and no more pointless debates such as 'are we overreacting about snow?'

At this point I should register a vested interest – I have cable. Now, as This is Money’s broadband, phones and technology man it fell to me to write the story when the news broke. That means I had to write a balanced article, putting both sides equally, explaining how it would impact customers and taking into account readers’ views we were presented with. And I think I did that.

However, what I actually wanted to say was:

‘What the hell are you doing you morons? What kind of stupid battle for supremacy leaves customers worse off? Do you honestly think that I, or any other customer, cares for one minute about your ridiculous finger-pointing in statements and whole page adverts in newspapers? Of course we don’t. We care about being able to watch certain TV series and being able to flop down in front of new Simpsons episodes or Soccer Saturday occasionally. Now sort it out, you clueless goons.’

Now that made me feel better, whether it gets my TV sorted is another matter?

- Simon Lambert, This is Money

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Flat screen vs plasma TVs

Don't fall for the "Firteekwid" rip-off, you'll save 85%

It's the law of suburbia that every job requiring the intervention of a tradesman will cost a thousand pounds. "Agraaand".

'Decking? Coorse, sir. I can do that for "Agraaand!'"

'Barffrum? Nah problem. "Agraaand!". Coorse, that won't be including yer ficts-stures and fittins. New bath plug? "Agraaaand!"'

And so on.

But further down the food chain I've spotted a new trend - welcome to the new world order of "Firteekwid".

Last week after a peculiar incident with some nail varnish remover and some pliers, my car key melted. I nipped down to the key cutting man, explained my predicament and enquired whether he could cut me a new key.

'Nah problem, sir. I can do that. "Firteekwid!"'

'Thirty pounds!? But it's just a key! A key that, as it happens, is slightly less long than my little finger!'

There followed an exchange about a microchip for the immobiliser system that my car doesn't have and I stomped off, thirty pounds in my pocket but with little prospect of driving my car in the near future.

Then a couple of days later after a peculiar incident with an umbrella and a newspaper, my mobile phone battery ended up down a drain. I nipped down to the mobile phone shop, explained my predicament and enquired whether a replacement could be arranged.

'Nah problem, sir. "Firteekwid!".'

'OK, what about a cord to transfer photos from the phone to a computer?'

'Nah problem, sir. "Firteekwid"'.

Now, I've seen the drunk man outside Earl's Court tube station who sells two packs of batteries for a pound so I knew it was time to shop around.

I logged on to eBay. Got a new phone battery for a fiver from someone who has 27,000 positive feedbacks - surely trustworthy. And I got the cord for four pounds, both including postage.

A saving of fifteewunpaands. Or 85% off. (I think that's right).

Regular readers will know I'm not a fan of the High Street. Now I wonder how long it can survive.

But the real question is this. As Government inflation figures clearly no longer include the prices of things that go up, what else is now a mere "Firteekwid"?

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Bored of shopping

Talking the Talk Talk

They talk the talk but can they walk the walk? Talk Talk have been enticing customers with high profile advertising but the recent experiences of myself and colleague James Coney suggest their customer service doesn't match their marketing.

When I was 'upgraded' to 8 meg broadband my phone network services stopped working. So call waiting and caller recognition stopped working. The initial customer service while I was trying to resolve this was crap as one call centre passed me to another and nobody had the slightest idea how to solve the problems. Their service provider Opal claimed it was a problem with my phone, which turned out to be baloney.

Now I have caller recognition but it turns out, that despite their claims, Talk Talk cannot offer the same call waiting service as BT. Their upgrade means that when someone calls they just hear a constant ringing giving the impression that either I'm out or can't be bothered to answer the phone. This, I'm told is progress. I call it incompetence.

James Coney meanwhile has no broadband or phone at all  - which was particularly useful when he was trying to file a late story on Tuesday. He was promised it would be fixed in 48 hours but has just received an automated text promising another update in 48 hours. Fortunately he is an office-based journalist or he would be completely unable to work.

As it is he's having to run up a mobile phone bill because he can't make calls from his landline. He's looking forward to a rebate on his bill for services not provided.

Perhaps the regulator should insist that before it can advertise for any more customers Talk Talk should first have to provide a decent service to its existing ones.

Tony Hazell, Money Mail

>> More on mobile phones and broadband

Mobile phone for grown ups please

High drama in the Hazell household this weekend when my wife dropped her mobile phone in a pint glass of water. So I now face the trauma of entering a mobile phone shop and dealing with a teenager who wants to sell me an MP3 player, multiple downloads, camera, diary and tennis racquet all in one.

Both my wife and I are in love with our existing mobiles. They were made by Nokia and fold open to reveal - joy of joys - a qwerty keyboard. These phones have allowed us to communicate by text with our teenagers without having to grapple with the mysteries of intuitive spelling or continually tap the same number to reveal a single letter.

But guess what? It appears nobody now makes this style of phone.

Are the manufacturers not aware that people over the age of 40 buy phones and might even buy them more often if they could only figure out how to use them? Have they never figured out why so few of us text or timed how long it takes us to send a short text on a normal phone?

I don't want a personal organiser, access to the internet or any other add-ons. I just want a phone that folds open to reveal a qwerty keyboard. Surely one manufacturer can find it in their heart to give us a phone we can text on.

Any ideas, anyone?

- Tony Hazell, Money Mail

My TalkTalk broadband upgrade problem

I spent 2006 trying to save cash as one of Money Mail's Money Misers. Swopping energy, internet and broadband suppliers and some juggling with credit and loyalty cards eventually left me more than £1,200 better off.

One of the most frequent questions I've had is whether I ran into any problems. The answer is 'no' except for on my phone and broadband. I swopped to TalkTalk and initially all was well, but since the line was upgraded to 8megabit broadband my phone has never worked properly. And the customer service has ranged from irritating to pathetic.

All I want is a call waiting service that tells callers when I'm on the phone and lets me switch between callers. Instead when I am on the phone callers get a constant ringing with no message leading them to believe that we are out and our answerphone isn't working.

I've been passed from pillar to post (or more accurately India to Warrington) and receive regular texts telling me they have fixed it but several weeks later it still doesn't work. This makes it: difficult for me to work from home; impossible to get through to my wife when she is talking to her mother/sister/work colleagues and enormously frustrating for anyone trying to call me.

So why am I blaming my broadband upgrade? Well, my brother in law, has never had a decent internet connection since BT 'upgraded' his broadband to 8 megabits. BT has sent him from India to Wales and back as each side of the business has refused to take responsibility.

So, I wonder are we the only people having this problem, or are there more general problems with the 8megabit broadband that no-one is telling us?

- Tony Hazell, Editor, Money Mail

Useful link - News, features and advice on broadband

New Year, new Talk Talk problem

Oh deary me.

As readers of this blog will know, before Christmas I signed up to TalkTalk's free broadband forever package.

I had emails from some of you that had problems with TalkTalk saying I was an idiot. Afterall, I have reported at length the delays and confusion that many Money Mail readers have suffered trying to get their free broadband up and running.

To be fair though, those of you that are up and running, rave about the unlimited 8Mb broadband you get and the free international calls all for £19.99 a month.

Anyway, TalkTalk convinced me that there problems were at an end.

So I signed up on November 24 and up until last Friday - my activation day - everything had been going smoothly. I have even made some international calls.

I had switched phone lines, my wireless router and modem (which I opted for instead of the one you automatically get) and all the relevant documentation and start up disks had arrived.

This included a letter announcing my activation day would be: January 5.

So Friday arrived, I turned on my router to get a broadband signal......nothing. I tried to go through the start up disk....but of course, I couldn't because my router was not up and running.

After 45 minutes of faffing around the-future-Mrs-C convinced me to call TalkTalk.

I got through quite quickly and went through the identification check and then explained my problem.

The customer services assistant told me: 'You are not yet live. Your broadband has not been activated. Can you call back next week?'

I sighed. 'But my letter says today is my activation date.'

Assistant: 'That's just an estimated date.'

'But that is not what the letter says. It says that January 5 is my activation date. There is nothing that tells me this is an estimated date. What is the point in sending out a letter if that is not the date of activation. I've just spent 45 minutes trying to figure out what is going on.'

Assistant: 'It is just an estimated date. Call back next Friday and we will tell you then if you are live.'

And so that was that. Go on, tell me 'I told you so'. I could have argued for longer -but that would have got me nowhere. So all I can do now is wait another week and see if I am live then.

James Coney, Money Mail

Tell us your broadband woes

As ever This is Money and our sister titles are keen to make sure our readers are being treated in the best possible way by UK companies. That's why we're asking for your thoughts and experiences of British broadband suppliers.

With BT Vision, the TV-on-demand add-on to BT's broadband service, having only just launched, we're particularly keen to hear any feedback about that service. But please feel free to tell us of any other broadband problems.

And to say thank you, we'll be giving out six bottles of Champagne for the best emails. (Our usual competition rules apply).

To be in with a chance of winning Champagne, email me at editor@thisismoney.co.uk

- Andrew Oxlade, Editor, This is Money

Don't miss our previous campaigning coverage on broadband:

> Ontel...

• Our Onetel hell goes on
• No escape from Onetel blunders
• Our hell with Onetel

> TalkTalk...

• Less TalkTalk, more service
• TalkTalk answers your questions

And don't miss broadband advice in our special section... http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/broadband