Cheap calling plans often hide a nasty surprise that comes after several months of use

2024-10-09 11:50:00

Several studies report a drop in prices for most mobile phone plans in France. But this decline hides a practice that is as discreet as it is problematic on the part of the operators…

Since the arrival of Free in France, the price of our mobile subscriptions has dropped dramatically. The various operators on the market now use and abuse promotional offers and price changes to remain attractive and encourage you to turn to them rather than the competition. The mobile plan market is now very aggressive with operators often lining up with each other and offering different options and bonuses depending on the offer selected.

But to adapt their prices a large number of mobile operators rely on one fundamental criterion: the amount of Internet data available with the package. Therefore, the least expensive plans on the market are actually very poor in terms of data, sometimes only 2 GB per month, which represents very little compared to the average monthly consumption of the French, which is estimated at around 15 GB check some social networks and online videos to exceed the limit and pay additional costs.

To adapt the packaging to your consumption, sooner or later you will have to switch to packages with larger capacities. But very often carriers offer consumers plans that are much more data-heavy… or even too much, without providing an alternative or something in between. The technique is simple: offer a volume of data well in excess of the use we make of it, and then increase the price of the package in question in even exaggerated proportions. This is why we often see users get very angry with their operators on social networks as they see the prices of their packages increase over the months.

The main argument given is to stick to market trends or justify a significant amount of internet data. But at the end of the process, some customers will have too much data for their uses, as much as 20 or even 100 GB, that they will never have the chance to fully use. The increase is not always noticed by the latter in the first months, but this allows the operator to justify a price increase by citing the high amount of internet data available in the package.

To combat this phenomenon, there are two techniques: the first is to choose operators that automatically align with the average internet data consumption. Unfortunately, these are mainly virtual operators such as NRJ Mobile, Lyca Mobile or La Poste Mobile. The other technique is to simply adjust your plan regularly based on price increases to ensure you get the best value available.