Peter's Blog

Iberianspices spicesiberia

Saturday 28 April 2018

Getting rid of landline

Over  the years I have enjoyed an offer from Meo the phone company. The offer is for 200 minutes free to call any landline in Europe at any time. I have used this to call my Mum and it was how I kept in touch for all this time. But from the start I have never been told when the offer ends until I get the latest phone bill. As I don't know the offer has ended I just carry on until the phone bill arrives a month later.  As I had no notification when the phone bill came in I would then get not just my normal bill that had the Internet cost but also all the free minutes charged for.

Every time I get a phone bill with increased charges I would call and complain but not her ever got done. The only thing that would happen would be to reinstall my 200 minutes offer but not back dated and I had to pay the charges.

It's happened again the offer has ended without notice and my bill instead of 32/ 35€ came in at 96€ quite a shock. Ok I made the calls but with the amount of British people living in Portugal you would think there would be a system in place to let them know sorry but not all Expats can understand Portuguese and could they let use know in a form we understand. In this day and age it's not a problem to translate from one language to another and with the computing power they must have it should be easy.

What makes the problem more difficult is I am in the UK so I have no means to call and complain as the phone number is 16200 not a number to call from the UK. In Portugal they have a system where every business has to display a complaints book. Also it is law that when asked for the complaints book the person you ask must immediately provide you with the book. Now the system has changed and the complaints book is online this system over a period of time will affect all companies. At the moment only the largest of companies have to have the complaints book online.

I made a complaint online and received a reply early next day. The reply said that the offer runs from one date to another date the next year and to discus the matter call 16200. What part of telling them I was in the UK till the 14th May did they fail to notice?

When I get back I will call and see if I can cancel my landline as my UK mobile on the Three network only cost me 3p per minute. The problem there is some people will not call a UK number from a Portuguese phone so I have an answer for that. My Portuguese mobile that I don't normally use I will use that instead of my land line. As I like my tech my Portuguese phone is great for calls and text nothing else it's no good for the modern world.

I pound for sale in the UK an IPhone for sale and all I need is to get it unlocked and use the sim from my old phone to keep my number. So Meo your days as my phone provider are numbered when I get home I will no longer have a land line.

I have a friend who when we talk we can talk for hours having a good catchup what do I do, I suspect he will be in touch with an answer as I know he reads my Blog.

2 comments:

  1. If that friend is me Peter, we'll talk about the phone problem. I too also received a huge bill on my UK mobile calling Pt numbers. Not sure what happened there as generally, it's not too bad.

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