Click below to
find interesting
information from our
November 2009
newsletter
relating to:
Roaming
Travel
Mobile phones
Roaming
Going on
holidays?
It's the
holiday season
coming up again
(already?!).
Shops are full
of tinsel and
Santas and many
of us are
planning our
holiday breaks
over summer. If
you're like me,
you're groaning
about how much
the whole thing
is going to
cost.
For some
people, that
includes
overseas
holidays. As
readers of these
newsletters well
know, one of the
major expenses
of an overseas
trip is your
mobile phone
roaming onto
foreign
networks.
Keep your
Australian
mobile number,
avoid topups and
expiring credit
with a vRoam
vSIM (with the
cheapest rates
to call
Australia) on
your holidays.
Travel
Cheaper
airfares
Regular
travellers
will be
familiar
with
time-based
pricing of
airfares,
whereby
booking
fares well
in advance
can be cheap
and
last-minute
fares can be
very high.
Underlying
this is
airline
"yield
management"
whereby if
bookings are
slow for a
particular
flight the
airline
releases
more seats
(often at a
lower price)
to stimulate
bookings. It
can be
frustrating
to want a
very low
fare and not
know how to
be able to
get it.
A new website
may help a
little. While
www.yapta.com
does many of the
normal things
you expect from
a booking
website (and has
some drawbacks -
it doesn't
monitor all
airlines, for
instance), it
has an
interesting
feature - if you
click on "Track
price drops" it
will e-mail you
when the price
for your desired
flight drops.
This can be
useful if you
are very
price-sensitive
(as in "I'll
only go if it
costs less than
$X"), don't care
too much about
the trip timing
("I'll go any
time it costs
less than $X")
or if you have a
refundable
ticket already
booked and want
a cheaper one
(so you can book
it and get a
refund of the
first ticket).
With yapta's
alert feature
you don't have
to keep hovering
on a website
endlessly
checking whether
the price has
changed. We have
no affiliation
with yapta, but
hope it might
interest you.
Mobile phones
Confusing mobile
pricing
Have you ever
been confused by
mobile phone
caps and plans
offered by the
major networks?
If so, you're
not alone.
Consumer Focus
(a UK consumer
group) estimates
than in the UK
there are over
1.3 million
mobile pricing
plans on offer,
and that
two-thirds of
consumers were
"bewildered" by
them. As a
result, many
overspent
(received bills
that were higher
than expected)
or had to pay
"hidden costs".
At vRoam, we
suspect many
Australians
would feel the
same way, and
pricing issues
account for many
complaints to
networks and the
Telecom Industry
Ombudsman.
Roaming prices
are even more
complex than
domestic
pricing, and
involve
unfamiliar
concepts (such
as charges for
incoming calls,
and being
charged three
calls for each
voicemail -
tromboning). In
addition,
pricing
behaviour that
is now rare in
domestic use is
still common for
roaming, such as
charging
flagfalls such
as Optus does
for outbound
calls and
Telstra does for
inbound calls).
At vRoam we try
and keep our
pricing simple
with our vSIM
for your
travels, with
simple published
per-minute
prices and no
hidden costs or
flagfalls.
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