24 November 2011
AT the time of this post, my patience run out. I can not make a call to the Philippines again. I still have more than 800 minutes to make but I can not use their service. I can say that this service of Vectone is plain rubbish.
I called their costumer service 6 times and they are not very helpful at all. One CS told me a tutorial to tinker on my phone! OK, did what she "tutored" me. No luck! It seemed like she was telling my phone is the problem. Ha-ha!
Then she told me to wait a moment. I told her the service was out since the 7th of November, resumes on the 23rd, then out again today the 24th of November. That's not only a moment it was weeks, I am giving them to sort out one problem.
My account still has 800 minutes on it and I asked them what will happen. They said once the renewal date is due, I can not roll over the unused minutes. I understand if the fault is mine, but it's their system, so I am sure everyone agrees, that we should not buy this explanation.
My advice is not to take COUNTRY SAVER FROM VECTONE.
Here's their response to my report:
___________________________________________________________________________________
22 November 2011
AT the time of this post, my patience run out. I can not make a call to the Philippines again. I still have more than 800 minutes to make but I can not use their service. I can say that this service of Vectone is plain rubbish.
I called their costumer service 6 times and they are not very helpful at all. One CS told me a tutorial to tinker on my phone! OK, did what she "tutored" me. No luck! It seemed like she was telling my phone is the problem. Ha-ha!
Then she told me to wait a moment. I told her the service was out since the 7th of November, resumes on the 23rd, then out again today the 24th of November. That's not only a moment it was weeks, I am giving them to sort out one problem.
My account still has 800 minutes on it and I asked them what will happen. They said once the renewal date is due, I can not roll over the unused minutes. I understand if the fault is mine, but it's their system, so I am sure everyone agrees, that we should not buy this explanation.
My advice is not to take COUNTRY SAVER FROM VECTONE.
Do you have the same experience with Vectone Country Saver? What to do now?
Report your experience to OFCOM !
Here's their response to my report:
___________________________________________________________________________________
22 November 2011
At the time of writing, the problem with Vectone is already resolved. They sent me an email confirming the problem is remedied already. They claimed to have called me and my phone was ringing however, I never received any call from them.
However, I can now make a call to the Philippines after almost 3 weeks.
_________________________________________________________________________________
20 November 2011
Important message.
At the time of writing this post, I have a problem with Vectone's country saver. I could not make a call to the sun cellular destination. The customer service, dial 111, always tell me to wait for 24 hours but until this time I can not make a call. I still have at least 900 minutes left in my account and I feel cheated.
I feel sorry that I have made below post quite too soon.
Original Post
Did you know that you can call the Philippines for 1 pence a minute? £15 would get you 1500 minutes to call a Philippine mobile. .This deal has been around for a while and have seen it before. The fact that it's quite very cheap, I had a bit of a doubt, on signal strength, on network traffict, and the reliability of the affiliate network back in the Philippines. Here's the details
The deal is on vectone mobile. It is called country saver, different from world bundle, and exclusive to Sri Lanka and Philippine destinations. Link below.
What do you need?
- To start, you need a vectone sim card, you can get this at
The sim card will be dispatched within 3 days or less, iPhone 4 users and other mobiles that need micro card, need to specify and tick the iphone button, otherwise just choose the standard sim card. You can order up to 2 simcards at a time and if you need more than 2, you can get back to the site and order more.
- Your contact in the Philippines will also need a sim card from Sun Cellular network
Why Sun Cellular? That's the affilliate network of Vectone in the Philippines and will only work with that network and only one mobile number.
What do you need to do?
- Once you have received your sim card , you need to topup it up with at least £15 pounds.
- Then you need to register the vectone simcard that you want to use for the service. You can register 3 vectone simcards and share the 1500 minutes allowance.
- At the registration, you will also be asked for one Sun Cellular number and the details of your contact in the Philippines. Remember that this number is the only one you can use with your 1500minutes allowance.
- The service will be activated within 3 days, and in the website, it says that you will receive a confirmation text, but in my case, I did not receive a confirmation text after 3 days, what I did was, I've called them free by dialing 111 using the vectone mobile simcard. The customer service did confirmed that my account is already activated and I do not need to wait for the confirmation text.
- If you want to call another Sun Cellular number or another cellular and land line numbers, you can do so but you need to purchase additional credit. Standard calls to Philippine mobile is 14 pence per minute, 9 pence for landline and 10 pence for sending a text.
*There is also a separate service called world bundle that can bring the price down to 10 pence per minute if you add up £5 more on top of the £15 you have used for the 1500minutes, then just text REG PHL05 to 345
See regular world rates here
And world bundles here
http://www.vectonemobile.co.uk/pay-as-you-go/bundles/world-bundle.aspx
* This service is the best if you make a call to a single destination to the Philippines very often.
My vectone experience.
I have been using the world bundle service before I have signed up for the my country saver for more than 3 years. In fact the sim card that I was using for the world bundle is the one I signed up for the country saver. I can say that the service is good and can be as good as the popular mobile providers here in the UK. I've used the service south of England and at land's end without any signal problem.
Sun Cellular netwrok at our mountainous place in the Philippines has a nice signal as well. My contacts have a clear reception, and I can call them as often as I want without looking at the time. Start saving now, and get country saver. Feel free to share to your friends especially whose relatives do not have internet connections for SKYPE!
* This service is the best if you make a call to a single destination to the Philippines very often.
My vectone experience.
I have been using the world bundle service before I have signed up for the my country saver for more than 3 years. In fact the sim card that I was using for the world bundle is the one I signed up for the country saver. I can say that the service is good and can be as good as the popular mobile providers here in the UK. I've used the service south of England and at land's end without any signal problem.
Sun Cellular netwrok at our mountainous place in the Philippines has a nice signal as well. My contacts have a clear reception, and I can call them as often as I want without looking at the time. Start saving now, and get country saver. Feel free to share to your friends especially whose relatives do not have internet connections for SKYPE!
Hi! I'm currently subcribed to vectone country saver. Can you please tell me how to call to phil? I tried 0063932**** and +63932**** but I still couldn't be able to call. I hope you can help me. Thanx.
ReplyDeleteHi, I am sorry for the problem you have encountered, in fact I have that problem as well for at least 2 weeks already. I called the customer service (111) and they always tell me to wait 24 hours. It's been many times that I have called them and I decided to give them a chance for another week. If not I do not have any other option than to tell the tales at consumer watchdog and publish another blog about the service which I have already started.
ReplyDeleteOn Tuesday, I will be taking down this article and replace it with the updated version.
My problem with Vectone is finally resolved today, I've got an email from them and tested the service and it's OK.
ReplyDeleteI hope your problem is also been resolved. If what they told me is true that Sun Cellular was the problem, I am sure yours is also been resolved.
If not you can call them at 111 and you may request for a reference number of your complaint. I can help you follow up.
I've got another problem from vectone again.They charged me with £15 for the renewal of my account but the minutes remains zero.i called them a couple of times and they keep telling me to wait for 24 hrs.it's almost two weeks now and they haven't fixed it yet.it's so frustrating!i called again a while ago but I wasn't finish talking to him, he put the phone down.they answer calls for ages and that's what i got!the guy told me that he could not see the payment in their system!how come?it's in my bank statement!This vectone system is giving me headache!their customer service sucks!i emailed them already.i hope they will take action on this matter.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteReport it to OFCOM, just click the OFCOM at 24 Nov. post, or copy and paste this https://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/tell-us/switched-without-permission . There might not be an immediate action but your experience will serve as a reason for them to consider to do a move. If you know someone who has been treated unfairly by vectone, please tell them to do the same. What you can do now is to call vectone again and ask for your PAC code. They might again ask what happened why you want to change provider and hopefully you can negotiate with them to stay put if they will give you your lost credit. If they do, just finish the credit and eventually ask for PAC code and change provider.
ReplyDeletethank you so much Lakay. Ur of great help. I've given them another chance before I report to OFCOM. I called again a while ago and a lady answered me. She was very accommodating and she gave me a reference number. However, I still need to wait for another 24hrs. I'll wait and see what will happen tomorrow. She said they'll give me a ring and fix things up. I'll send you a message then. BTW, Happy new Year. ;)
ReplyDeleteThat's what they always say. I've been promised many times and many times disappointed by them. Whatever happens with your inconvenience, I think the best way forward is to give OFCOM a feedback.
ReplyDeleteIf you are using BT, you can use a direct access code to call overseas, 1 pence to call US. You can buy mobile credits by texting a code as well which you can use with a mobile phone to use your call time free credit or you can also use it with BT land phone. See it more under call saver
I tried Vectone's country saver to call the Philippines. It really is a good deal. I only call one mobile number in the Philippines for 1p a minute and I get to talk to my whole family! It's good for me because I am a student and I am on a tight budget :)
ReplyDeleteit's good Vectone's country saver is doing you good. I hope it won't give you any problem later on, like my problem and one of the readers, and that's the connection issue. Vectone explained that the problem lies on the Philippines end but my theory was they throttled my connection and just enabled a day before my free calls (900 minutes) became expired. It was a rip off on my part. Please share us your experience after sometime.
ReplyDeletevectone completely scammed me at least 3 times now and i will never part my money with them again after the last time i topped up.. they had taken a total of £9 from me in a matter of 2 hours from topping up when i only made a 37 minute and a 3 minute call and 1 sms text to another vectone user internationally at a usual rate of only 1p per minute as was charged earlier and later on that day. the rate is and always had been only 1p per minute but several occasions they have seemed to charge whatever the hell they like and take masses of my credit! check this vid and spread the word!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fS17qoELocg
ReplyDelete