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I rarely hear of people who are happy with their cell carrier regardless of where they're from. In Germany we have three major providers: Telekom (the parent co
by Cu3PO42 6y ago
I rarely hear of people who are happy with their cell carrier regardless of where they're from. In Germany we have three major providers: Telekom (the parent company of T-Mobile), Vodafone and o2 (which belongs to Spanish Telefonica). By all accounts they're all terrible from a customer service perspective.
I just had o2 renew my contract rather than cancel it as I explicitly demanded and it took me a week of regular calls to customer service to get it fixed. I want to switch but it feels like I am between the devil and the deep blue sea.
- rorykoehler 6y agoIt's why I get everything on monthly pay as you go only. I'm not sure of the utility of a contract from the consumer perspective. The only thing it does is reduce your flexibility.
- Cu3PO42 6y agoIt does do another thing: it gives you access to a better deal, generally speaking. But I'm also considering biting that bullet.
- hansel_der 6y agofwiw the "better deals" build their value proposition on buying a new phone every two years and smuggle the price of the phone into your tax deductibles. generally the deals are mid- to high-tier priced but have good overall value if you want video on the go and are complicit with beeing a part in the hardware churn industry. on the other side you get low-end deals w/o contract for <100euro per year (call/sms flatrate plus some data) if you bring your own phone.
- Cu3PO42 6y agoPhone purchases outside of a contract are also partially tax deductible if used for your job in Germany. And while many deals are attractive only if you buy a device, not all of them are. Right now I could get a 24 month contract from Vodafone for an average price of 12 EUR/month with 20GB of mobile data. On the other hand, Lidl Connect (which uses Vodafone's network) charges 12.99 EUR/4 weeks for 6GB of data w/o contract. If you know of any non-contract options that offer significantly better value, please do let me know.
- rorykoehler 6y agoIt really depends how you use your data but I never use more than the 10gb that I pay for so having more data isn’t an attraction. I also buy a new (to me) second hand iPhone every 2 years and the phones are perfectly good.
- distances 6y agoWinSIM is 7.99€/6GB, PremiumSIM 8.99€/6GB, both with month-to-month contracts. Not sure which networks though.
- hansel_der 6y agowinsim is drillisch, which is just about starting its own network, mostly resells telefonica like most cheap options (incl. premiumsim). idk but everytime i call someone and the call quality is abysmal, that person is on telefonica network.
- distances 6y agoI've been happy with Drillisch, but to be fair I call very rarely and even then it's a Telegram/WhatsApp call.
- hansel_der 6y agoyea, that vodafone deal sounds good value if you need the data. guess im an outlier because i rarely use more than a few hundred MB a month, so even 12e/mon is "too damn high".
- Cu3PO42 6y agoThat's fair. I don't always need that much data, but I need it often enough that it's worth having it and not having to worry about it, e.g. when visiting family who don't have internet at home, just working outside or traveling. I've also been in the situation of not having non-mobile internet at home and I had to deal with insufficient data caps for years, so I may also be biased towards avoiding that in the future.
- distances 6y agoGermany has a wealth of minor providers, thanks to the MVNO system. No reason whatsoever to be on a major cell provider when a small one is fraction of the price and cancellable monthly instead of yearly.