Free €2 Forfait

[Chancer]

When this was brought in just under a year ago it was intended to humiliate the other operators who had under government pressures created "forfait sociales" of €10 for 20 minutes of calls.

Free gained the maximum of publicity by cutting the price to one fifth and giving 3 times as many minutes, basically 15 times cheaper and made the point very loudly "and we are still making a profit on this deal".

The competitors all screamed "concurrence déloyale" like petulant children and started dirty tricks campaigns to attempt to discredit Free which in the main backfired, they insisted that Free must be losing money and hence it was illegal under French law. They also attacked the Free €20 illimité forfait citing the same reasons.

Then not 10 months later Bouygues Telecom launched B and You with an illimitée service for €10 per month, half the price of the competitor they said was déloyale [8-)][8-)]

Anyway in a price war its the consumer that wins in the short term at least so Free have now improved their €2 forfait which is F.O.C. to Freebox abonnées, we now have 120 minutes of calls per month and unlimited textos, the website says that we can also now use these minutes to call landlines overseas but this functionality does not at present work.

So now there are 2 very good low cost no contract French mobile offers.

Free: €2 per months for 120 minutes of calls to French landlines and mobiles and (maybe) to fixed lines in 40 other countries, unlimited texts and data

B and You, €10 per month for unlimited calls to French land lines and mobiles (not sure about overseas) unlimited texts and data.

Its taken a long time for proper competition to bring French mobile phone prices in line with the rest of Europe and just as it happened with the internet/television/telephone it was Free that brought about the revolution and the others had no choice but to slash their prices in double quick time or go under.

When I think how much it used to cost me for a landline, calls back to the UK, dial up internet and throwing away money on mobicartes that expired in 7 days back in 2005 it makes me shudder.

[NormanH]

As you know I also have this offer, but I am not totally over the moon with the quality.

I often don't get messages, or can't connect.

Is yours any better?

[crabtree]

Do Free have their own network, or do they use another network (e.g Orange or SFR)?

[Clair]

[quote user="NormanH"]As you know I also have this offer, but I am not totally over the moon with the quality.

I often don't get messages, or can't connect.

Is yours any better?[/quote]

Someone else I know who uses Free seems to be having a similar problem with network availability.

[Chancer]

Hard to say I dont use it a lot, certainly for messages, I have noticed some are broken into several messages but the girl concerned is very bavarde, I think also some have taken a long time to get to me but I am uncertain if the other person has just sent them at the last minute, many think this is acceptable.

When returning from the UK the greeting message has arrived after 6 hours or so or even the next day [:-))]

Never had any problem connecting to a mobile or landline.

If you arent happy then ask for your money back [:P][;-)]

[NormanH]

They have their own limited network and an agreement with Orange to use theirs when the Free one isn't available.

[Chancer]

An update, my "free" Free phone will now make free calls to UK landlines [B][B]

120 minutes of free calls [:-))]

Now I wont be phoning the UK anywhere near that much and in any case I can already do so from the Free fixed line but in the early days with FT and an orange mobicarte it was costing me an absolute fortune.

€20 a month phone line IIRC

€50-80 in calls when I was phoning back a lot

€45 for the internet?

Another €30 a month on mobicartes as a €15 credit was lost after 15 days [:(]

No television.

Now I get the lot and loads of television channels as well for €32 per month.

[Quillan]

I have to say I am very tempted but am still not convinced.

I have two friends who work at the local college. They had students there who changed to Free for their mobile phone service as did some of their of family and friends. A high proportion seem to have had problems and have ended up going back to their previous airtime supplier or an alternative. I must stress that this is only where I live and as I said before the Orange signal is very bad here and abouts and that I suspect Free are using the Orange network.

As somebody said it has made some networks rethink their deals and prices are dropping. I to often felt that 'line rental' and call prices in France have always been high when compared to the UK (the only other place I have owned a mobile phone). Hopefully as Free roles out their own network things will improve and their service round here might become better and more attractive.

[Chancer]

Yes Free use Orange where they dont have coverage which is most places except the grandes metropoles.

I dont think that I have ever seen anything but Orange F displayed as the network but then I very rarely look at the phone unlike most people around here who never look anywhere else [:'(]

[NormanH]

I can usually manage to call, if not always at the first attempt.

That doesn't worry me too much seeing as I only call 3 or 4 times a month at the maximum.

What is a bit more worrying is if I don't get a message, especially now that banks are using the mobile number as a security measure.

[Chancer]

A double whammy for me as I now bank with Credit Agricole whose mission in life seems to be to prevent its clients from spending their own money, I'm sure it was them that started the "what do you want it for?" thing!

I bought a car battery from an on line vendor, the transaction would not go through and she said that they always have this problem with CA, could I please use another card, any card but a CA one. I doubted that I could pay with a Nationwide visa for a delivery in France but it went through, she said she had done many sales to UK debit/credit cards, this is a big merchant who do hundreds of transactions a day so not just a one off aberrance with C.A.

The text thing is also a worry if you dont know whether the other party recieves one that you send, I get a sending confirmation but what does that really mean in practice?