How to Choose a Mobile Service Provider

When it comes to mobile phone service providers, in this country, we’re spoilt for choice. In fact it can be a little overwhelming. Most of the time we’d simply head on over to a store and be bombarded with a spiel on which provider offers the cheapest, no, ‘Best’ plan available. There’s a lot more to it than just the cost per call or message charge. There’re features and VAS (Value Added Services) to take into account as well. What we’ve tried to include are a few things we kept in mind that should give you some perspective on how to pick the right service provider in terms of value for your money.

We’ve included here some simple advice on how to go about selecting the best possible plan by illustrating a few examples that are available. These are a few simple tips on what to look for or ask the right questions if you ever decide to change your plan or carrier.

There are plenty of choices, we know that already, but there’s also enough room to customize a plan to your needs or at least find one that best fits them - what can only be referred to as getting your ‘Paisa Vasool’ as we say.

The first thing to take into account is the kind of requirement you’d have before deciding on a plan. In fact that’s the very first question any customer service rep would ask you – ‘What’s your usage going to be?’ This is a bit of an odd question especially if you’re a first time mobile user; although I seriously doubt that would be the case, not in this country. But you never know.

In our examples of the few plans available for selection (currently prevalent), which don’t of course include usage as that’s a variable factor, the rates are accurate to the best of our knowledge. Believe you me; it was a rather painful journey to get you just this simple information as most times I found out that rates mentioned on the websites contradicted with a few rates that customer service reps provided, plans had already gone stale and been replaced with newer ones that only the CS reps knew about and PR companies as well as the service providers themselves were of no help at all and gave me nothing more than the royal run around. The oddest thing was they didn’t seem to have a single individual with the knowledge to provide me with just the tariff rates. To them it appeared as if this were some sort of expose on marketing as I kept being sidelined to that department in general.

Naturally it seemed just easier to make the painstaking decision of staying on unnecessary long holds, dealing with the ‘Press 1 for this and 2 for that’ and let’s not forget listening to the sometimes excruciatingly painful IVR voices and elevator/Hold music to deal with Customer Service representatives at the individual companies and obtain information. I asked a few people if they could understand the information provided on the websites and off the Tariff plans sheets available at outlets and the general consensus was that they did make sense, but only to a certain extent and in most cases they would need to speak a person to clarify certain bits of information to avoid being charged “hidden costs” etc.

So I came up with this, a few examples of plans that are available and a few important questions that you should ask when talking with a representative to help you select the right plan, or you’ll be just wasting time listening to the highlights and won’t know what hit you till the bill comes a-knocking. Although the reps themselves try their level best to be helpful and service your needs as best as they can, it always helps to ask the right questions to get a straight answer and avoid a sales pitch. I do hope it helps. Take a look.