How do you like this mailshot, entitled: ‘The True Costs Of Calling Abroad’. Well, it attracted me. It’s all in cyrillic. So, I naturally assumed it is cheap to call Russia with O2.
But nooooo . . . .
Call me stupid. Though once I got the bill I wised up.
Look closer at this mailshot and the signposts. Where (FFS) is Orantsia? Um, it’s in Greece. There is no place in Russia called Orantsia and Greeks don’t use the cyrillic alphabet.
Clicking the links in this mailshot takes you to O2’s fanciful claim:
‘With our money-saving services, you no longer have to worry about calling abroad from the UK on your mobile.’
Well, I didn’t worry until I got a horrific bill. So I wrote to O2 about calling Russia. Apparently it was all my fault. I hadn’t signed up for one of their money saving services such as ‘Discount Country‘.
Hmmm. But if you check O2’s ‘Discount Country’ you’ll find that Russia isn’t one of their ‘discount countries’ at all. So why put Russian on the signposts?
I wrote back to O2 pointing this out and asking why their advertising implicitly featured Russia, you know, with the cyrillic script and all. They still wouldn’t commit to saying exactly what they charged to Russia but replied:
‘You can save up to 80% with our International Traveller Service’
Well, no you can’t. Never mind that being an international traveller and calling abroad isn’t the same as calling abroad from the UK.
Eventually I found another section of their website – and it took a lot of finding – where O2 suggests that it costs £1.50 a minute to call Russia. How do you save 80%? You can’t. If you buy the ITS package for an extra three pounds a month, you might pay 90p a minute. 90p is not 80% of £1.50. Even less with the ITS premium on top.
But is it really ‘only’ £1.50 a minute with O2? It didn’t tally with my charges.
Then I find another O2 website page where ‘calls to the Rest Of The World (Russia not mentioned again) are charged at £1.99 per minute. My attempts to clarify whether Russia is ‘Eastern Europe’ or ‘Rest of The World’ with O2 customer service failed.
In fact, you can never save ‘up to 80%‘ with any of O2’s ‘money saving services‘ since you have to pay a bundle in premium to buy them. Do the math.
Since O2 couldn’t offer me ‘Discount Country’ or ‘International Traveller’ to call Russia, I asked why they sent me the fraudulent mailshot in the first place. I reminded them of the worrying £2 a minute that directly contradicts their sales pitch: ‘You no longer have to worry about calling abroad from the UK on your mobile’ .
O2 directed me back yet again to the O2 website, the great oracle that answers everything. ‘No matter which plan you choose, we will offer you the most competitive rates’
Yeah, right. £2 or £1.50 a minute. What’s the difference. Telediscount charges 5p and 2p to Russia. If only there was a prize for how loosely you could use the word ‘competitive’ O2 could win easily. While O2’s mailshot entitled ‘The true costs of calling abroad’ never tells you what they are.
I passed these observations along to the Advertising Standards Authority. I’ve always wondered what they do all day. At the moment, I’m still none the wiser.