10 ms·
And yet I am pretty sure that in Germany at least, that plan would not be allowed to be called "Unlimited", no matter how fine the fine print ends up being. I
by anyfoo 8y ago
And yet I am pretty sure that in Germany at least, that plan would not be allowed to be called "Unlimited", no matter how fine the fine print ends up being.
I miss those consumer protections a lot since I moved to the US. It sometimes may seem to get a little bit silly (I'm not totally sure, but I think you are not even allowed to say e.g. "the best pizza" in advertising, because how would you prove that claim), but I easily prefer a little silliness over the deliberately misleading claims here.
- cft 8y agoAlso in Germany you get competent customer service usually, from people who can think. In the US the customer service usually consists first of talking to AI bot and then to a person in Philippines who has trouble with basic English, but asks you to repeat everything you entered / said to the bot.
- dwg 8y agoIs this comment just made off the cuff? I've called customer service departments at about a dozen or so US based companies in the last couple of years, and haven't found this stereotype to be fair at all. Most of them were from the US as far as I could tell. Even when they were not, communication was not an issue.
- derrikcurran 8y agoYou must have a knack for choosing companies with great customer service. I do not.
- rmc 8y agoI wonder how much of that is language related? Plenty of people around the world speak English (with varying levels of skill and with various dialects). But not many speak German.
- cft 8y agoMy experience was getting customer service in English in Germany: hotels/car rentals/ tickets etc
- rmc 8y agoYes, those are tourist industries, no surprise there's a lot of English. But the tier one customer support for a large teleco, or a bank? They probably aren't requiring fluent English for that.
- expertentipp 8y agoFirst contact customer service in Germany are basically call-center farms hiring eastern-Europeans, Italians, and Spaniards as temp-workers, who wait to get out of there as soon a possible.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- sundvor 8y agoYep, if you use the word unlimited, and that's not what you're actually providing, you're a liar. Pure and simple. If this is common practice, then these companies are all a bunch of liars. As opposed to other places in the world, truth in advertising is dead in the US - and also Australia, for that matter. Try using the word "free" in Norway if you're not prepared to offer that for free with zero strings attached, and see how far you get before feeling the weight of the law. (And "zero strings" here means exactly that in the most literal sense).
- aplummer 8y ago> and also Australia, for that matter. what? Australia has some of the strongest consumer protection laws - sometimes I actually feel bad for the corporations... There is a whole strict regulatory system for determining facts vs mere puff.
- maxsilver 8y ago> There is a whole strict regulatory system for determining facts vs mere puff. That sounds amazing. We should probably copy that entirely, for the US.
- sundvor 8y agoI studied marketing law in Norway as part of marketing science before switching back to tech and then moving down under; Australian marketing law is very very relaxed compared to Norway.
- 6nf 8y agoThis is changing rapidly the last decade or so, especially in the telecom industry. There's quite a few companies getting into trouble for misleading advertising recently.
- aplummer 8y agoReally can you give examples? To give recent general advertising law examples about how strict the standards bureau is, in Australia it’s illegal to show a woman doing most of the housework, or a man being a bad father.
- itronitron 8y ago'undefined limit' seems like it would be a more accurate description
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- BugsJustFindMe 8y agoIt's important to keep in mind that most people never know what other systems are like and so don't know what they're missing when they're missing it. I similarly reflect positively on the stunning relative clarity of freemobile in France selling 50GB high speed plans with free international data roaming for like 20 Euros per month. And now it's 100GB for the same. In the US for that price Verizon won't even spit on you.
- rayiner 8y agoAmusingly, freemobile sells a "4G+ illimitée" (unlimited 4G) plan that's limited to 100GB/month: http://mobile.free.fr http://mobile.free.fr.
- chipperyman573 8y agoTrue, but the website is very clear that the unlimited refers to voice and text and only 100gb is included. It's still shifty but way better than what the article is about.
- lostlogin 8y agoHaving just used it, it’s good but not great if travelling about. This mostly my fault and not theirs as I didn’t realise I needed a mobile number that can sent/receive sms. Many services require an sms for account setup and it’s a PITA not being able to receive them. Bike sharing and taxis were the two I wanted it for. The other weird thing was that one of the cards I bought worked in the U.K. and one didn’t. I never did figure that out but the prices are so cheap it wasn’t particularly problematic. Their (physical) store is also extremely easy to use for a jet lagged foreigner.
- bsder 8y agoYou need to go deep into the bowels of "Settings" and muck with some very obscure stuff called "Access Point Names".
- BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
- prolikewh0a 8y agoI really want to move to another country like Germany for a little while to see how different Capitalism is and get a sense of some sanity in relation to USA.
- rosege 8y agoYou totally should! Its not as hard as you think. I moved to Amsterdam for 5 years and had the best time of my life!
- androidgirl 8y agoHow would an individual go about doing this? Would they need a good degree? I have a junk degree and currently work as a dev after teaching myself programming.
- crgt 8y agoI’d recommend a combo of teaching English and freelance remote dev. Definitely possible to make it work..
- rosege 8y agoThis depends on location though. Some places you can pick up local jobs in English because there are enough companies that work in English.
- roel_v 8y agoAs an American you won't get a visa (to the EU) with a story of 'I'm going to support myself by looking for a teaching job and doing some odesk'.
- rosege 8y agoIt depends where you are going. From my experience any degree is ok. And some didnt need that although it did help a little bit with a special visa I was able to get.
- 8y ago
- mmanfrin 8y ago'Unlimited' to telcos in the US is a word that means nothing, in any sense of the word.
- LanceH 8y agoIt means the data is unmetered. Bandwidth may be throttled. Contextually from whence we came (10cents a text, pay per megabyte), data being unlimited means no overages.
- sundvor 8y agoThen be honest instead of lying: "Unlimited data; limited bandwidth".
- JanisL 8y agoLimited bandwidth means limited data over a finite time frame. Something like "No overages on data; limited bandwidth" would be more accurate.
- Spivak 8y agoUnlimited bandwidth still means limited data over a finite time frame. The distinction is meaningless.
- JanisL 8y agoInfinity times something finite is still infinite. I think this distinction isn't as important as telling people how much data their maximum really is based on how much they could actually use through the system
- userbinator 8y ago...which turns out to be limited data anyway. It's so pervasive that I automatically ignore any mention of "unlimited" regarding bandwidth or total volume of data. These "unlimited" plans are more like "first X amount of data per month at Y speed; Z speed thereafter", but of course that's not catchy enough for marketing...
- lovich 8y agoIs it silly? If I claim my pizza is the best, and I never even ran it in a competition, aren't I just lying? I could say that my internet service is the best when someone provides actual unlimited data in the same area and it's the same thing. I would heavily prefer a country that actually had rule of law and didn't let companies just lie to consumers without consequence. The more this sort of thing goes on in America, the more people will disregard any semblance of law
- dagw 8y agoIf I claim my pizza is the best, and I never even ran it in a competition, aren't I just lying? A (fairly mediocre) hamburger place back where I grew up heavily advertised themselves as "The award winning best burgers in town", reference (in tiny print) a test the local newspaper had done over 10 years ago. So basically it shouldn't be too hard to claim that your X is 'the best' according to some measure without having to outright lie.
- Retric 8y agoIn the US some phrases like Best are considered devoid of meaning. The issue is you can develop an arbitrary scale defining Best such as closest to our restaurant or whatever.
- nkrisc 8y agoWhat really gets me is that words like 'unlimited' have a pretty unambiguous meaning. Is there any limit? Then it's not unlimited.
- dagw 8y agoYou can download as much data as you want over the 32 kb/s connection we provide you :)
- unnouinceput 8y agoI have 1Gbps (125MB) unlimited. I've never had any throttle. And down service is like max. 5 hours per year. Sometime I just put 100GB worth of torrents in queue, go eat lunch in kitchen and comeback and they are all finished. Welcome To Romania where unlimited is the norm here. Oh, and costs ~$15/month
- carlmr 8y ago>And yet I am pretty sure that in Germany at least, that plan would not be allowed to be called "Unlimited", no matter how fine the fine print ends up being. My German O2 plan is called a "flatrate" and is throttled after 300GB according to their "fair use" policy. Both terms are verbatim what O2 calls it, Germans have a lot of anglicisms. They claim it has "bis zu" 50Mbit/s ("bis zu" meaning "up to"). So sadly no, in Germany Ginger Beer is called Ginger Brew, but DSL contracts are still scammy.
- Xylakant 8y agoIt’s a flatrate. Flatrate only implies the price does not change depending on usage. It does not imply “unlimited” or “no throttle after a certain limit” by itself.
- soohyung 8y agoWe have a lot of anglicisms in the German language and a few of them have developed meanings different from their English counterparts. The word "flatrate" is one such example. In German it is not taken literally to be a "flat rate" but rather to mean "unlimited".
- carlmr 8y agoYes, I agree with that. We used to have volume and flatrate tariffs for DSL. The flatrates used to be unlimited, then the volume tariffs were removed and the flatrates became volume tariffs with a high (but limited) volume. Even according to English Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flat_rate "A flat fee, also referred to as a flat rate or a linear rate, refers to a pricing structure that charges a single fixed fee for a service, regardless of usage." Emphasis mine. I'd understand this as there being a service (e.g. high-speed DSL) which you pay a fixed fee for, independent of how much you use it. That does also mean that if you use it more they don't shut it off, because otherwise you're not getting the service independent of usage.
- 8y ago
- ginnungagap 8y agoNow those advertisements for "wahrscheinlich das beste bier der welt" I used to see while I lived in Germany finally makes sense! At the time I thought they had confidence issues or just wanted to be very precise
- ljcn 8y agoDifferent beer (I think), but cf. the famous 1973 beer tagline: "Probably the best beer in the world". Interestingly I would be surprised if that stemmed from onerous marketing regulations as suggested above.
- expertentipp 8y agoIt's just culture-specific words-play targeting urges of local population. In Germany one can sell one thing but guarantee 50% of it (the cable internet market is an oligopoly): https://www.vodafone.de/media/downloads/pdf/Red-IundP-Cable-100-Feb-2018.pdf https://www.vodafone.de/media/downloads/pdf/Red-IundP-Cable-... or even only 30-40% of it: https://www.vodafone.de/media/downloads/pdf/Red-IundP-Cable-500-Feb-2018.pdf https://www.vodafone.de/media/downloads/pdf/Red-IundP-Cable-...
- BrandoElFollito 8y agoSame in France. My plan is 1G/250M unlimited, as in unlimited. I could download at full speed all month long. They rely on people like me taking the most expensive contract and knowing that nobody will ever max it out (rather running at sub percent levels of the pkan)
- dalore 8y agohttps://gettingthedealthrough.com/area/64/jurisdiction/11/advertising-marketing-germany/#link-16 https://gettingthedealthrough.com/area/64/jurisdiction/11/ad... Saying "The Best Pizza" might be allowed if the viewer understand that it's just puffery and it's not really making a claim. It's a fine line though but I think best pizza would be allowed under the law.
- smsm42 8y agoI am pretty sure there's no consumer plan that doesn't have bandwidth cap in the US. And even if there wasn't caps, there are physical limits of the channels. So, does it mean no plan can be called "unlimited" at all? > I think you are not even allowed to say e.g. "the best pizza" in advertising That is silly. Ads are not peer-reviewed science article. Everybody knows that. Looks like a bunch of governmental busybodies in search of a "problem" they could "fix".