Mystery Caller: Temporary phone

Mystery Caller is attending a string of festivals and wants to squeeze in a holiday in the next few weeks. However, he doesn’t want to take his iPhone 4 with him in case it gets lost or damaged. Can the networks come up with an alternative for £50?

6: O2

“That’s £15 and it’s a normal black handset.” What does that mean? Sounds like dozens of other handsets out there

Manner – 3/5
Understanding – 1/5
Knowledge – 1/5
Helpfulness – 1/5
Clarity – 2/5
Overall – 2/5
Total – 10/30

5: Virgin Mobile

She asked how many minutes I was after, but before I could answer, she interrupted me, at which point I’d had enough

Manner – 2/5
Understanding – 3/5
Knowledge – 2/5
Helpfulness – 3/5
Clarity – 2/5
Overall – 3/5
Total – 15/30

4: Vodafone

I was astounded. Surely Vodafone had the facilities to process a transaction for a prepay handset

Manner – 3/5
Understanding – 3/5
Knowledge – 3/5
Helpfulness – 2/5
Clarity – 2/5
Overall – 3/5
Total – 16/30

3: Three

“Sorry about the music in the background. I’ll get someone to turn it down. I can hardly hear myself think.” She wasn’t the only one

Manner –4/5
Understanding – 4/5
Knowledge – 4/5
Helpfulness – 3/5
Clarity – 3/5
Overall – 3/5
Total – 21/30

2: Orange

She realised that as the iPhone 4 takes a Micro SIM-card, I wouldn’t be able to put it in other prepay phones. Great knowledge

Manner – 5/5
Understanding –5/5
Knowledge – 4/5
Helpfulness – 5/5
Clarity – 5/5
Overall – 5/5
Total – 29/30

1: T-Mobile

Each time, Jo went through the key features of each handset. This was so simple and free-flowing compared to the other networks

Manner – 5/5
Understanding – 5/5
Knowledge – 5/5
Helpfulness – 5/5
Clarity – 5/5
Overall – 5/5
Total – 30/30

Summary

The Everything Everywhere joint venture dominated this Mystery Caller, with Jo from T-Mobile pipping Orange’s Katie, only because she was slightly quicker off the mark with important questions and handset recommendations.

Dame from Three was a little further behind, as her lack of attention to detail let her down, while Vodafone’s Dean was confusing a lot of the time, shocking me with Vodafone’s policy on not selling prepay over the phone. The call with Virgin was stop-start all the way, and neither of the three CSAs at O2 got anywhere near my £50 budget, as nobody asked what I was willing to spend.

Full review in Mobile News issue 496 (August 29, 2011).