3g-g
10th October 2005, 12:43 AM
From This is Money. (http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money-savers/article.html?in_article_id=402108&in_page_id=5)
Not too impressed seing Tesco mobile, which always claims to be cheaper and sensible with its pricing, running up a whopping £88 PAYG bill there?! Three still the place to be for cheapness!
MOBILE phone users are wasting up to £1bn a year in uncompetitive expensive contracts because they fail to shop around for the best deal.
Consumers could save between £15 and £20 a month by searching the market for better deals or changing the tariff they are on with their provider.
According to comparison website onecompare.com, Orange and Vodafone were the greatest losers, with large numbers of customers switching to rivals.
More than half of consumers said they would switch from their current supplier if they were given free texts and talk time, but free handsets are not seen as a great incentive to move.
Onecompare.com director Anthony Ball said; 'Mobile phones are one of the last areas of consumer finance where confusion still reigns supreme and this means many consumers are rooted firmly to deals from providers that we know are highly uncompetitive.'
The company said the difference between the best and worst deals on the market for high pay-monthly users is £36 a month. O2 was the cheapest at £40 a month for its Online 200 Texter package, with BT's Mobile 200 deal charging £76 a month.
In the pay-as-you-go market, the difference stretched to £52.13, with Tesco Mobile the most expensive at £88 and 3 the cheapest with £35.87.
Ball said people had previously failed to switch phone providers because they were worried they would lose their mobile number. He added that consumers were also confused about the huge number of tariffs from different companies.
'They are very good at advertising the headline rate but hiding all hidden costs so consumers are wary about changing because they don't know what they are heading into. It's often a case of better the devil you know,' said Ball.
Not too impressed seing Tesco mobile, which always claims to be cheaper and sensible with its pricing, running up a whopping £88 PAYG bill there?! Three still the place to be for cheapness!
MOBILE phone users are wasting up to £1bn a year in uncompetitive expensive contracts because they fail to shop around for the best deal.
Consumers could save between £15 and £20 a month by searching the market for better deals or changing the tariff they are on with their provider.
According to comparison website onecompare.com, Orange and Vodafone were the greatest losers, with large numbers of customers switching to rivals.
More than half of consumers said they would switch from their current supplier if they were given free texts and talk time, but free handsets are not seen as a great incentive to move.
Onecompare.com director Anthony Ball said; 'Mobile phones are one of the last areas of consumer finance where confusion still reigns supreme and this means many consumers are rooted firmly to deals from providers that we know are highly uncompetitive.'
The company said the difference between the best and worst deals on the market for high pay-monthly users is £36 a month. O2 was the cheapest at £40 a month for its Online 200 Texter package, with BT's Mobile 200 deal charging £76 a month.
In the pay-as-you-go market, the difference stretched to £52.13, with Tesco Mobile the most expensive at £88 and 3 the cheapest with £35.87.
Ball said people had previously failed to switch phone providers because they were worried they would lose their mobile number. He added that consumers were also confused about the huge number of tariffs from different companies.
'They are very good at advertising the headline rate but hiding all hidden costs so consumers are wary about changing because they don't know what they are heading into. It's often a case of better the devil you know,' said Ball.