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New SO $15 Voucher - makes no sense.
May 5, 2009
5:14 pm
Wolf
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Here is my e-mail to askspeakout@7-11.com
-----------------
Greetings

Good to see new services and promotions. No doubt about that. As long as you keep your current airtime card that lasts 365 days! Most of your customers are loyal to you because of this service. From my point of view (as someone who lived for years in Europe and Africa) it is even insane to pay my incoming calls... but that is how it is in North America... I guess I have to live with it... Just to compare : In Europe you can buy a prepaid SIM card (without the phone) + voucher open for 365 days for about 20 Euros and have free incoming calls for full 12 months even if you finish all your airtime money and your balance is 0.01 cents! Same thing in Africa! The only thing is that the service provider will remind you that the balance is low prior to each call you make.

Anyway... please keep your airtime card that lasts 365 days! Otherwise people will start to look for alternatives.

The 100$ promotion where you get the phone for free was great! Why don't you keep it up?

Regards,

Wolf
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May 5, 2009
7:07 pm
mudskipper
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Wolf said ............
In Europe you can buy a prepaid SIM card (without the phone) + voucher open for 365 days for about 20 Euros and have free incoming calls for full 12 months even if you finish all your airtime money and your balance is 0.01 cents! Same thing in Africa! .......................

ABSOLUTELY RIGHT, Wolf... In Europe, Africa, Australia, New Zealand and many other countries, EVEN IF your voucher is empty at $0.01 you CAN STILL have FREE incoming calls for full 12 months... these guys here make millions $$$ and they are just plain filthy greedy to GET MORE, MORE, MORE millions $$$ into their PERSONAL pockets!!...ALWAYS pleading poverty when they engineered their own companies to go broke and the millions $$$ ends up FROM the COMPANY INTO their OWN pockets!!! ... THEN up our fees, reduce our conditions to make us throw more money their way AND get government bailouts, stimulus package $$$ ( a few more hundred million$$$ from bailouts into their already fat pockets... it's a FACT making us pay a 2nd time as taxpayers of bailout and stimulus packages when people are losing their jobs, their homes, even getting families broken up !!! and suicides because of such SAME greedy people in these big corporations!!! not just cell phone corporations BUT also banks, insurance corporations, airlines, tour/vacation corporations , you name it, they are doing it!!!

May 7, 2009
9:36 pm
Flash
Guest
Guests

Yep, as I posted a few more times, my friends in Europe started laughing when they heard in North America you pay for incoming calls. I enjoyed my vacation back home in Romania visiting my family, as you could buy a pre-paid sim card for only 5€ and could speak with 0,16 eurocents, 6 month expiry time + (PLUS) 7 more months in which you can be called. Of course you don't pay for any incoming calls.
Canada and I guess America too (don't really know about it tho) has the worst ever cell plans in the world.

Also a new thing is the local telephone providers give you a free cellphone that actually uses your landline minutes (so it dosen't matter if you use the landline or the cellphone attached to your landline plan, you use the same minutes). In Europe you have x amounts of minutes included for landlines, then you pay for the rest, unlike north america where you have unlimited landlines, being the only good thing in america (but even that it's for local only).

May 8, 2009
9:36 am
Big Ang
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They laughed at you? Then laugh at them!

Don't forget that SOMEONE has to pay for usage, nothing is free. So, if the person using the cellphone is not paying, then who is? The person that calls you.

So, if you're the person that is calling someone else, then YOU'RE paying DOUBLE. If you call a landline, you pay one fee, if you call a cellphone you're paying a lot more. Remember, they don't get unlimited calls on their landline, they pay for each call. Well, the person calling pays for the call.

That's one of the reasons why cellphone penetration is huge in Europe - cause it doesn't DIRECTLY cost you anything. If you have to pay extra to call your friends, then why should you try and save them money by having a landline? Screw them, and get a cellphone yourself. So now everyone is giving these telcos a lot more money for all the same calls cause everyone thinks it's free.

If I call you, why should I have to pay for your convenience of having a cellphone?

At least here in N.America it's fair. The person who pays for the convenience of a cellphone is the person that's using it.

Look at the big picture people. Nothing is free. Sure, you get free incoming calls, but your outgoing calls cost twice as much.

May 8, 2009
8:30 pm
Flash
Guest
Guests

16 eurocents is not double of 25 cents/minute.
But 13 months of using your cellphone is compared to 1-3-6-12 month you find in north america. And 13 month for 5€ not 25-50-75-100$.

Whoever calls me, has something to tell me, therefore he should pay. I don't really have something to tell him because I wasn't the one calling him, so no, I don't think I should pay.

May 8, 2009
10:01 pm
mudskipper
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Five Euro at today's rate is only C$8.75 and 16 eurocents is only 28 Canadian cents... so if your break that down into sender/receiver (following how it is rated here), it costs only 14 Canadian cents a minute.
If you consider it another way, for SpeakOut, ( sender pays AND receiver pays) then for ONE (1) call, it costs 40 Cdn cents or 50 Cdn cents paid by both sender and receiver.
PLUS, for 16 eurocents (28 Cdn cents), you can still RECEIVE FREE calls for 7 more months AFTER 6-month expiry. Depending on how many FREE calls you receive for the 7 more months after expiry, that would bring the 16 eurocents to even below 10 eurocents per call
Yesterday, Thu May 07, 2009, 10.10 am (Mountain Time) CTV national news was saying that Canadian consumers are paying one of the "highest wireless cell phone costs in the world !!"

We DON'T expect anything for free BUT we don't want to get ripped off either. We want to pay for what is fair and just. People are in business to do business and NOT to charge exorbitant fees or charge false fees like the so called fake "Govt Spectrum Fees" where they made HUNDREDS of MILLION C$$ and it was ALL A LIE. YET NONE OF THEM ARE CHARGED, NONE ARE IN JAIL, AND THE 6-YEAR STATUTE OF LIMITATION IS RUNNING OUT and SOON, NONE OF THEM CAN BE CHARGED OR JAILED. ...and now I wonder if ALL of the 911 fees are used for emergency services OR only 10% of the more than C$244 MILLION 911 fees collected each year are REALLY used for emergency services OR ends up in personal pockets.
A $10 voucher is not even enough to pay for 1 year's 911 fees... a $25 voucher gets ONLY $13 of air time in it ... 48 minutes or $12 per year goes to 911 or personal pockets? Who monitors that? Does EVERY cell phone subscriber uses 48 minutes of "free" 911 calls EVERY YEAR? I'm very, very sure very few people abuse the 911 system... I don't think people spend $244 million on cell phone prank calls every year!! So I think even 20 cents per month for 911 fees is more than enough to cover the "free" 911 calls.
Need to look into this further.

May 11, 2009
6:05 pm
Hello
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Perhaps 7-11 wants customers to come more often to the store to buy slurpees and chips!!

May 13, 2009
5:56 pm
Flash
Guest
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And what a moronic add for the 15$ voucher.

"Our new card costs less, expires sooner" O RLY? Expires sooner??? That's SO GREAT! I'm so gonna buy it!!! It's so cool to have to worry about when it will expire.

"Many SO customers have been URGING us to create a card with shorter expiry date." Did the SO marketing found out our brains shrinked over night? Or they are researching monkeys also, and mixed up the files?

Pathetic

May 18, 2009
9:24 pm
ssfc72
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I was considering moving up to a Speakout bluetooth enabled phone from my basic speakout phone, due to the new law requiring handsfree use of cellphone.

I think I will now hold off on that speakout purchase, because I now suspect that 7-eleven is about to eliminate the 365 day expriy date.

May 18, 2009
10:43 pm
starter
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ssfc72 said:

I was considering moving up to a Speakout bluetooth enabled phone from my basic speakout phone, due to the new law requiring handsfree use of cellphone.


I think I will now hold off on that speakout purchase, because I now suspect that 7-eleven is about to eliminate the 365 day expriy date.


I'm sure current and potential 7-11 SO users would appreciate if you take a minute or two to email askspeakout@7-11.com to voice your concern above.

May 20, 2009
9:27 pm
iamdrumming
Niagara Falls
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I agree with starter. On a side note, I visited a few 7-Elevens, and none of them had the new $15.00 voucher, so it looks like right now they are just collecting emails and trying to get people opinion's to see if the decreased expiry rates will fly.

June 12, 2009
6:23 pm
choklitmoose
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I bought a $15 card about 1 month ago, they never told me it has a 30 day expiry on it. Interestingly enough after reading this on your site I checked my balance and expiry and it says it expires on August 8th. Do you think they have had a change of heart?

June 12, 2009
6:26 pm
Big Ang
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Was Aug 8th the expiry date of the previous airtime you added to your account? I'm guessing that if you have about 3 months left before the expiry and add a $15/30day card, Speakout will not move your expiry date to an earlier date.

June 13, 2009
12:21 am
iamdrumming
Niagara Falls
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I haven't yet seen the $15 top-up card in 2 of the closest 7-11's to me. I'm going to drop by 7-11 tomorrow and see. I noticed they do have the Nokia 1661 in their display now though.

June 22, 2009
10:34 pm
polo
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In the old days, back in Europe (8 years back..) you could buy a prepaid phone and could use it as long as you wish even 100 years, the credit would never expiry. Not sure if this is still the case, but it was standard before.

June 23, 2009
7:03 am
bylo
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Not sure if this is still the case

It's not. See http://www.prepaidgsm.net/

June 23, 2009
2:36 pm
Flash
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Yes but as you can see their expiry is usually around 12 months at least.
Plus you pay nothing for incoming calls

June 23, 2009
3:27 pm
bylo
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Yes but as you can see their expiry is usually around 12 months at least.

Not necessarily. Consider France where it's as little as 15 days and typically only a month or two.

Plus you pay nothing for incoming calls

What's that got to do with credit expiry?

In any case, in Europe you pay by the minute for outgoing landline calls. We don't charge by the minute for those.

June 24, 2009
2:53 pm
Flash
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Yes you get charged for outgoing landline outside your "local" area. And local area usually means the city you live in, not even the province.
Europe dosen't have these very restrictive "local" areas. Country wide is the same price.

June 25, 2009
12:30 am
Big Ang
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In Europe you pay for all outgoing calls, even if you're calling next door. And you pay different amounts if you are calling a landline or a cellphone. Because of that, cellphone numbers start with a different area code so people calling you are aware that they are calling a cellphone.

Is this better or worse? Neither - it's what you prefer. Personally, I prefer our system. The person who pays is the cellphone user, whether it's an incoming or outgoing call. So the person who gets the benefit of a phone that is not locked by cords, etc, is the one that pays. And I like that benefit that here in N.America people calling you do not know whether they are calling a landline or a cellphone, since I prefer only having a cellphone for my business.

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