FACUA (Network of Consumers in Action) have alerted that Movistar are going to make a brutal tariff increase as from June the 1st.
The national land line calls will increase up to 150% in its price/min, and the call establishment fee will increase by 50%.
FACUA have criticised Movistar arguing that this is the consequence of using freedom of market model that is in conflict with the interests of the consumers, to which the government does not set tariff limits.
Consumers must be advised that the rates to national land lines (through Movistar) will increment by up to 150% on it’s per minute rate as well as the call connection charge that will increase by 50%. All this according to the informative letter that Movistar has sent round to its customers.
The letter however, intends to disguise the fact that the rates are going to increase drastically by offering an explanation on the lines of “the rates have been simplified and will have just one time band (0 – 24h, from Monday to Sunday) in order to offer you less complicated commercial conditions”. An argument which the association considers to be insulting to the consumers.
The rate increase will especially affect those customers with a reduced call spend as it is not necessary to contract expensive flat rates.
The call establishment charge and national call rates will increase.
The call establishment fee will be increased by 50% for all national calls, changing from 11.8cts to 17,7 cts (IVA included). So will now be equivalent to the rate that Movistar are currently charging for their Mobile business.
In the same way, the price per minute for calls made from Monday to Friday between 20:00h and 08:00h, Saturdays, Sundays and bank holidays will increase by 150%.
FACUA points out that a 2 minute national call in the current “off peak” rate bracket will increase by 61%, costing 21.24 cts instead of 13.21cts it currently does (IVA included).
In the case of Interprovincial calls, the rates increase from the current 4.9cts to become 8.4cts (IVA included) being an increase of 71%.
Furthermore, FACUA have also found that if you call the Movistar call center the staff are totally unaware of the announced rate increase despite the fact that they have sent the letters out to all their clients.
For Direct Telecom and especially Direct Telecom’s customers, this works out to be great news. All the customers that are currently using Direct Telecom should be completely unaffected while calls are going through the Low Cost Routing prefix either manually, with preselection or preferably DT OneBill.
It looks like Direct Telecom customers will be saving even more money as from June the 1st!
See a sample of the letter that Movistar is sending round here: MovistarRateIncrese