Dear Sir/Madam,

Sent from my iPad

Not happy to say the least!

On Friday 7th October every major network announced their pricing for the iPhone 4S and opened up pre ordering for new and existing customers to order the phone for either store pickup or delivery on launch day. Every network except O2 that is. Not only were they last to announce pricing but they have also made it only available to existing customers (which in itself isn’t a bad thing) but they are also treating those existing customers like second class citizens by making them queue up in the cold and rain at stupid O’Clock to be able to guarantee getting the handset on launch day and even then it isn’t guaranteed when every single other UK network will happily post one out to you. O2′s twitter feed have been bombarded with complaints about this with their response basically being that doing it this way ensure the maximum number of people can get it on launch day which frankly is complete and utter bollocks!

We then move on to the fast track upgrade issue. Over the course of this weekend a number of O2 customers who have obtained quotes to upgrade early have suddenly found themselves no longer eligible to upgrade. After doing some digging it seems that these customers are no longer eligible due to a change in the terms of upgrading early now requiring customers to be on a £40 or higher tariff. This is another example of O2 altering terms and conditions to suit themselves on a whim such as when they removed unlimited data from tariffs and tried to retroactively alter the terms of existing customers to prevent them from changing tariff. It’s also an example of O2′s short sightedness as to who counts as a high spender as my monthly spend with them is over £40 but is spread over 4 accounts.

Thankfully this is one O2 customer who won’t be queuing in the rain for my iPhone 4S. Three have already confirmed my pre-order with them will be arriving on Friday on launch day. As for O2, despite having bought every iPhone from them since iPhone 3G, they will not be getting a sale from me for 4S. Plus over the course of the next 8 months I’ll be terminating all but one of my accounts with them. Which is a pity as if they hadn’t started to lose their way over the last year or so they would still have many happy customers and not the horde of customers ready to jump ship they currently have.

Well in one way it is a big iPod touch. But on the other hand it does make browsing the web, and in particular using social networking and watching news a lot easier compared to doing all of the above on my iPhone which I frequently would do. Games such as angry birds and the like also benefit from having the larger screen the iPad provides. I’m certainly finding a lot more use for the device than I felt I would especially when it launched and I called it 4 iPod touches glued together, a comment I’ve since found to be inaccurate – it’s actually more like 6!

The burning question is would I pay for one? Hard to say since my ownership of one is down to being luckily selected to win the competition 3 Mobile were running. I certainly wouldn’t fork out for the top 64 GB model as I’m finding it hard to fill mine but a lower end model may be worth the money. Saying that I won’t be forking out for an iPad 2 which the only differences between that and my model is it’s thinner, faster, has two cameras that are so poor they may as well not bothered, magnetic cases that offer no protection for the back and a gyroscope that I’ve found little use for in my iPhone 4 never mind iPad 2. Oh and it’s actually just 6 iPod touches glued together…….

The rumoured £20 per month remaining of contract to upgrade looks good on paper sure. Most iPhone customers are on tariffs ranging from £25 to £75 per month so this is great no? NO it’s not great!!!

Most iPhone customers probably believe the iPhone tariffs are the full range of tariffs available to them. They aren’t. I changed 2 months ago from an iPhone tariff over to the standard set of tariffs as I was starting to use my iPhone sim in a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10. And being on the standard tariffs makes me aware of two more additional tariffs below the £25 level priced at £15 and £10.

So I will be on the £25 a month tariff with 12 months left to run when the iPhone 4 comes out. So assuming this taken with a pinch of salt report is correct upgrading to the iPhone 4 using the early upgrade offer will cost me £240.

Alternatively I can either try and get an additional contract or if that fails I’ll have to wait 2 months, downgrade to £15 and then to £10 a month and then pay off my contract. That will cost me £25 for the first month, £15 for the second and then £10 months at £10 which is a total of £140 saving £100.

If the report does turn out to be accurate and that really is the O2 upgrade “offer” I’d strongly suggest people take a good hard look at it and work out if it will be significantly less expensive to do it another way

EDIT – The details are now up on the O2 website regarding the early upgrade offer and as feared its the fantastic £20 a month offer that works out more expensive than dropping down to the lowest tariff and then buying out the remaining months of the contract. Nice one O2

Since the announcement, what have the UK mobile networks done and what information have they released to their (potential) customers? Well the answer to that is not much. Each network have come out and said they will be selling it (in the order O2, Vodafone, Orange and new to the iPhone T-Mobile). O2 have also come out and said existing customers would be able to upgrade onto it but provided no solid details on if that is all existing customers, selected existing customers, a few customers drawn out of a hat or what.

Go onto most of the mobile phone network websites and you’ll find naff all actual information apart from harvesting e-mail addresses with the promise of being the first to find out. But the information we need such as cost and details of O2′s early upgrade scheme are nowhere to be seen. And it’s starting to thoroughly pee me and some other people off. It’s not like this has come as a surprise to the networks, they must have known about the impending announcement probably long before anyone else did. So all the information their customers need should have been ready to go the second Steve Jobs stopped talking.

If you look on the twitter feeds for some of the UK networks HERE and HERE its just full of people asking the same question that should have been answered on Monday night “how much will it cost” or in O2′s case “will I be able to upgrade and how much will it cost” and its getting ridiculous. The only reason I can think of why not one of the networks has come forward and revealed their pricing is they don’t want to be first and risk the other 3 undercutting them. Now that is fair enough but they need to realise that keeping their current and potential customers in the dark is going to thoroughly pee them off possibly to the point where they will just go to the first network to announce the prices even if the others are slightly cheaper.

Last year O2 made a right mess of the 3GS launch by refusing to listen to their customers and not allowing any kind of upgrade path without paying unlawful penalty charges, buying the device at full cost on PAYG or taking out additional contracts. This was responsible for the #o2fail tag to appear on twitter and it has had one or two mentions again this year as has my hashtag #tellushowmuchnow (which hasn’t taken off as yet).  This year 4 networks are bustling for our custom but are making an even bigger pigs ear of things by keeping (potential) customers in the dark and not giving people the information they need. Who knows, perhaps by the time iPhone 5 is announced we might know how much iPhone 4 is going to cost!

Before we reveal them lets just take another look at our expected prices. These were calculated using the exchange rate between US$ and GB£ at the time of the 4 iPod Touch’s glued together announcement.

Now in fairness the exchange rate has changed since they were published so lets update them for todays exchange rate

Now let’s put in the figures Apple got from their calculator

Steve, the calculator is in the post!

New customers get a free sky+HD box with free standard installation and 6 months free HD pack (saving £10 a month for 6 months)

Existing (but not existing skyHD) customers get the above if they also take multiroom

Comment on this post with your name and e-mail address if you want to be referred

So what did Apple announce in their software update. Well the following 7 things to be precise

Multitasking

I went into some depth as to just why I feel this unnecessary when I talked about the oversized iPod touch and basically my feelings were (and still are) that there is simply no need to have multiple open tasks on a mobile phone. Mail polls in the background, the iPod continues to play in the background and calls and texts still come through in the background. On a mobile phone that is more than sufficient

Folders

The first of many “new features” where Apple have merely jailbroken their iPhones and then decided what are the best ideas they can use. Useful yes. Revolutionary… hardly

Unified Inbox

All your email now in one place. Useful no as I only have one email account set up on my phone and if I did have more than one email account such as for work and personal I would want to keep them separate

iBooks

The book reader announced for iPad (but only available in one country… the USA) comes to iPhone. With a free Winnie the Pooh book. Unfortunately as I don’t live in that one country, this is as much use as a chocolate fireguard

Enterprise

No not the starship but some business features that are as standard on any other business phone. Some people may care…. I don’t!

Game Centre

Social gaming similar to xbox live, PSN or the open feint system (that many games already use) comes to the iPhone. Meh

iAd

Do not get me started on this “feature” of the new OS as if there was ever a reason not to upgrade this is it. Yes I know this site uses ads but in over two years of having them on I have made the net sum of £52 of which I can’t get at £26 until I reach the withdrawal limits with those affiliate networks. However I do not want ads on my mobile phone and there is a damn good reason why I use adblock plus with firefox on any computer I use. There is also a good reason why nearly 800,000 other users download adblock plus every week. Because we don’t want ads!

Sorry Apple but if this is the best you can come up with I really am glad I jumped ship to Android. I’ll end this post with my tweet which sums up my thoughts on this new OS

“So to summarize a load of features ripped straight from jailbroken iPhones and adverts. GET IN!!”

So onto the product itself, dubbed by Apple as a revolutionary and magical device, named the iPad (and opening up to a large number of iTampon jokes that actually managed to trend on twitter above anything actually to do with the device or Apple). Ok I haven’t had one in my hands yet but to me it seems that what Apple have done isn’t revolutionary or magical. Indeed this device has been around for nearly three years already and is called the iPod Touch. Because what Apple have done is taken their existing iPod Touch, blown it up to 4 times the size, put a faster chip in it and created some word processing, spreadsheet and presentation software for it.

A lot of people are slating the device because it cant multitask, much like the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Personally, I cant see the appeal of multitasking on a device like this. On my PC currently which can support multitasking, I have the following open

1. Thunderbird – as the mail app on iPad can be set to poll automatically or even push if supported, there is no need to keep mail open on the iPad
2. iTunes – the iPhone will continue playing music even if you exit the iPod app. As the iPad is based on the same OS as the iPhone/Ipod Touch there is no reason this wont still be the case. And I have iTunes open but aren’t even listening to music so no idea why its open
3. Firefox with 12 tabs open – Safari supports multiple tabs on the iPhone so presumably will on the iPad. Of the 12 tabs open half of them don’t need to be, I just haven’t bothered closing them yet
4. Sticky Notes – Fair enough the iPad wont support notes on the desktop BUT of the sticky notes I have the majority of them serve no purpose anyway and there’s no reason they cant be hidden away in an app

The price of the device whilst looking reasonable is unlikely to translate well to the UK as is the normal case with Apple devices. For example based on the US price, the iPod Touch 64GB retails for $399. This should translate to a UK price of £246 but it actually costs £60 more than that.

Based on the US prices, the UK prices of the iPad should be

We’ll see how well that translates over into UK apple money. As for if I’ll be buying one, I can see this device replacing my netbook which as Steve Jobs pointed out is slow and not better than anything BUT that will depend on if

1. The price translates over to the UK well
2. If the Wifi only model will support tethering to the iPhone, something which strangely never got mentioned at the keynote last night

The iPad, whilst being a large iPod touch, probably isn’t too bad a device. I’m just disappointed there was nothing else announced like a new iPhone (though this could be because I was hoping for new iPhone as I have an upgrade due next month)

Oh and anyone buying this as an ebook reader who doesn’t live in the US may want to check the small print at the bottom of THIS PAGE

Now the following is a variety of reasons why I wont be taking up this deal

1. My satellite equipment was for the most part completely replaced when we had skyHD installed in October this year so is still under warranty
2. Even when the warranty runs out there are still three main options should a fault develop. Firstly sky charge a standard £65 call out fee (and yes that is £65 and not £72) for any out of warranty faults. Secondly sky generally waive this if you threaten to cancel due to the fault. Thirdly even without the warranty you still have rights under the sales of goods act in the event of a fault
3. The company in question has had 2 adjudications against them by the advertising standards authority here and here for similar marketing material but seems to have disregarded much of the adjudications against them
4. This company, and/or others like them, have been the subject of consumer reports in particular BBC Watchdog (before it became pants) and the like
5. I am registered with the mailing preference service so shouldn’t be receiving any unsolicited direct mailings

So dear reader, what have I done about this mailing and what can you do if you receive a similar one? Well the solutions are threefold

Complain to the MPS

You can only do this if you are registered with the MPS. Details on how to complain to them are on the MPS site.

Complain to the ASA

The advertising standards authority deals with complaints from the general public and other companies about a variety of advertising along various media (TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, direct mailings, text messages etc etc). Advertisers have to adhere to a strict code of practice governing the advertisements and the ASA investigates any breaches of this practice. The letter from DSWC ltd breaches several requirements under this code and as mentioned above they have been in trouble with the ASA before for breaching the code but have done little to change their marketing.

I submitted the following complaint using the online form

I am complaining about the advert on the following grounds.

1 – I am registered with the mailing preference service and should not be receiving any direct marketing mailings without my consent.

2 – I believe the claim “If you require a service call and your sky digital system is not under warranty, you will now be charged a minimum call out fee of £72″ is misleading as

a) I understand the maximum call out fee sky will charge is £65
b) In spite of the expiration of the warranty, any faults with my digital satellite system would also be covered under the Sales of Goods Act which offers up to 6 years protection and
c) I understand that sky will often waive the £65 call out fee in order to retain customers who threaten to cancel their service if a fault develops

3. I question how the mailer obtained my details as I am registered with the MPS but am also ex directory and am omitted from the edited register of voters in order to protect my privacy

4. I question how the mailer knew I was a digital satellite subscriber

5. I question whether the statement “IMPORTANT NOTICE REQUIRING URGENT ATTENTION” in red at the top of the mailing, exaggerates the importance of the mailing and goes against the adjudication made on 28th November 2007 by the ASA regarding a similar statement at the top of a similar mailing from the same advertiser

6. I question whether the advertiser has also breached the adjudication made by the ASA on 21st October 2009 as the advertiser is still sending unsolicited mail following that adjudication.

7. I challenge whether the mailings are properly targeted following the adjudication on 28th November 2007 or if a further breach of this adjudication has occurred.

8. I challenge whether the claim “NO MORE FREE CALL OUTS” is misleading as

a) I understand the equipment is still covered under the sales of goods act which would result in a free repair and call out
b) I understand sky frequently waive the call out fee when a subscriber threatens to cancel the service due to a fault

9. I question whether the statement “YOUR DIGITAL SATELLITE SYSTEM WARRANTY IS DUE TO EXPIRE” is misleading and whether the mailshot has been properly targetted as the vast majority of my digital satellite system was replaced on 13th October 2009 when I upgraded to skyHD. Notably the dish, LNB, vast majority of the wiring was replaced as well as a new box being provided and new wiring to rehome my existing boxes. As such a new 12 month warranty would apply to this system from this date and would not expire until 13th October 2010 which is some time away and not “due to expire”

Get Legal On Their Asses

It should be very simple to get this company off your back. In order to prevent marketing from a company you just need to serve them a notice under section 11 of the data protection act. The notice doesn’t need to be anything fancy or in a prescribed legal form. Simply stating

Take note I hereby serve you a notice pursuant to section 11 of the data protection act to cease processing any and all of my confidential data for the purpose of marketing. You have 21 days to comply with this request

will do the trick. While you are at it you may want to throw section 10 of the data protection act in as well which covers the processing of data likely to cause damage or distress, and receiving junk mail is distressing right? If the company fail to comply with this notice and you still receive junk mail you can file an N1 form with the county court seeking an order enforcing the data protection requests. This will cost in the region of £30 but is free on many benefits or low incomes and would be recoverable from the other side anyway.

Dont want to fork out for stamps to mail Digital Satellite Warranty Cover ltd. Well don’t worry, they provide a very handy freepost envelope just for this purpose…. well ok its for sending the application form for the warranty back but we wont be doing that so may as well use it.

Whilst you are at it, since they like junk mail so much, here is their freepost address should you need to mail them for any reason. I am in no way suggesting sending them lots of mail which would cost them lots of money and may make them think twice about sending unsolicited junk mail to people. If you are interpreting this paragraph as saying that, that’s down to you

FREEPOST RRHK-EUUZ-EKHC

Unit 5

Capitol Trading Park

Kirkby Bank Road

Knowsley Industrial Park

LIVERPOOL

L33 7SY

Enjoy!