BillMonitor

While monitoring the millions of ever-changing mobile deals available, here at BillMonitor we get a pretty good idea of the scope of the UK mobile market, so naturally we’re interested in this.

OFCOM (the independent regulator for mobile in the UK) is trying to make sense of it all in its upcoming ‘Mobile Sector Assessment’. Their aim is to see what can be done to make mobile better for all of us – consumer confidence in mobile is lower than all other services considered in a report conducted for the government last June. In preparation OFCOM released a consultation report with a series of questions that have been investigated over the last year. In the consultation they highlighted some key issues:

Tariff confusion:
According to OFCOM only 15% of consumers find it ‘very easy’ to choose a contract. This isn’t surprising to BillMonitor: maintaining our comprehensive tariff and bundle information is serious work – tariff information is unstandardised, with bundle information scattered across many network’s webpages, and with much of the details only in small print terms and conditions. We think that having a choice between over 100,000 tariffs is a good thing – it means there is a tariff out there that is great for you – but an unclear choice is no choice.

These factors can lead to consumers being on a more expensive contract than is right for them. We see the effects of these problems in our results, as almost every one who uses our bill assessment could be on a significantly better tariff. In fact, we’ve been busy number-crunching to find out exactly how much people should be saving – the results will be in our interim mobile price index report, some of which makes for some eye-watering reading.

Billing and cost clarity:
Both the OFCOM consultation and a recent report by Consumer Focus talk of the hidden costs in billing. Often operators charge for itemised paper bills, even though without itemised billing it is impossible to see where your money is being spent. Different networks bill the same types of calls in inconsistent ways such as (depending on the network) rounding up calls, deferring charges and excluding voicemail from your inclusive allowances. BillMonitor takes these kind of things into account when working out the best tariff – but we often have to phone up the networks to find out exactly how much a certain type of call will cost. Compounding this is the fact the each network presents their bill differently and with varying levels of detail.

Ease of switching:
The current economic situation is making many mobile users think about switching. A recent survey by Booz & Company found that 43% are considering changing to a cheaper contract. Switching mobile network while keeping your number should be easy – you just get a PAC code from your old network and give it to your new one. It’s never quite that simple though; one of the BillMonitor team recently spent 45 minutes being bounced around a call centre, finally being put on silent hold for 10 minutes before he finally managed to get a PAC! Even though most BillMonitor users still save when they switch to a better tariff with their current network, consumers should be allowed to move to a good deal on a different network without this hassle.

Problems like these are exactly the reason why we created BillMonitor and we’re looking forward to see what OFCOM has to say.

The BillMonitor team has always felt that personalization is of huge value on the mobile channel- as there is just less space for the user to browse and discover. So we really liked Handmark’s new platform Pocket Express being fully customizable (we just hate to waste time when checking the snowfall and our stock portfolio on the way to Gstaad for a week’s skiing) . Better still there is the easy ability to share this information (via direct download link)- so we can gloat over the latest Oxford United triumph (ahem) at the press of a button.

Best of all, if our limo happens to break down on the way to the slopes, Pocket Express’s very own Jeeves, the “MobileCierge” service can rush to the rescue. Mr MobileCierge delegates his work to a team of round the clock personal assistants who can apparently answer almost any request, anywhere in the world, whether it is personal, travel, medical or emergency-related. We are very interested to hear the feedback from this part of the service – or what about an anonymous live stream of user requests Handmark? Alas we fear MobileCierge, like his colleague Jeeves, might just be too discreet for those kind of revelations…