Voicemail Ripoff T-Mobile

[matflat]

I know this may not be the right place to vent off about T-Mobile, but I have a G1 and thought why not.

Anyway, those of us who are in the UK may or may not know that you get charged for voicemail outside of your monthly allowance.

Some of you may now be calling me slightly stupid about this and that it is a well known fact. But I have just had a slanging match with T-Mobile as it does not explictly state in any way shape or form, that I will be charged for voicemail outside of my allowance at 12ppm.

What you will find is that in the Plan Features section there is a piece of text stating "Use your allowance on any mix of UK calls, texts & picture messages. £140 allowance gets you up to 700 minutes or 1400 texts. Don’t decide in advance, just use your phone and use it up." My point to the customer services rep was that unless you are routing voicemail through Bangalore, it is a UK call, that and the fact that the above piece of text does not contain a statement saying voicemail will be charged for.

Next point is that in the Plan Costs section there is a piece of text stating "These are the costs for Flext 30 (18 months) these apply to calls which come out of your monthly allowance, and to costs once your allowance has been used up." In this section there is voicemail costs as well as voice, SMS and MMS costs. Should I safely assume that voicemail is part of my monthly allowance and that should I use my monthly allowance I will be billed accordingly?

Apparently the decision to charge for voicemail was based on a focus group. Presumably the same one that decided sub-prime mortgages were a great investment.

Vent over. Apoloiges if I have ruined anyone else day.

[Android_Dave]

I know what you mean .... I turned mine off!

Pretty sure that I seen it listed somewhere though before I signed up, so it wasn't that much of a shock for me!

Ah well!

[almightyA]

us > uk, sorry

[TommyTank200]

I was not aware of this, although I dont get that many voicemails I would be amazed if it cost me £1 per month.

But that being said I dont use up all of my allowance with them either so maybe they are taking liberties with charging for voicemial.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention I will call and complain in the vain hope if enough of us do it they might rethink it, I doubt it though.

Another thought is a programme called Hullomail I might look into that (its on the market) as I think they email you your voicemail as oppose to you phoning up. I dont know anything about it though so dont beat me up if I'm wrong.

TT

[jonbey]

Reminds me off Vodafone. When I got my last phone, I would receive a call from 121 whenever someone left a message. It would cost nothing to answer this call and hear the message. Then they started just sending a text message, so that you have to call at your cost.

Cheeky buggers aren't they.

There must a be a good application that acts as an answer phone. Is there?

[TommyTank200]

There must a be a good application that acts as an answer phone. Is there?

There is an app called HulloMail on the market, I cant look at it now but I read about it on here some time back and if I remember it stores your voicemail as an email with sound so should cos nothing to retreive with a dataplan.

If anyone else knows of this let me know otherwise I will check it out later.

[matflat]

Greatly appreciate all your comments. I was so infuriated with the customer rep. Anyway complaint lodged and some voicemail charges refunded as they had not clearly stated that I would be charged. Have checked out Hullomail and signed up. Looks like it is a free service and will check to make sure the calls to it are not charged but are part of my allowance.

Woo Yay to Hullomail and Boo Hiss to T-Mobile who have thought of the most stupid way of getting additonal revenue.

[In3dLimited]

Apparently, on some Voicemail Systems You are able to call Your own Number then push # to access Your Messages.

I believe that You have to set it up with a PIN. first.
Having said that, a lot of People WITHOUT PIN. Protection, had the Voicemail hacked.
So, it's possible that You don't need to set it up with a PIN. Code.
Or didn't.

As You would have called up Your own Number, before being redirected to Voicemail, that should come out of Your inclusive Minutes.
Beware, though...
If You don't have inclusive Minutes remaining, that is probably a more expensive way to go about it.

I hope that this is useful.

Nick