Cell phone issues

I'm getting pretty used to living in Holland by now, but every so often, something reminds me that I am, indeed, in Holland. One thing I am never getting used to is regular, "respectable" companies trying to screw you over whenever you sign a contract. Contracts here are often complex, and you may need a lawyer to read through before you sign, especially if you're buying something big. I'm not used to this from Norway. In Norway, a contract may be declared illegal if the company tries to violate basic consumer rights, or tries to get you to sign away rights you are afforded by law. Companies trying to do these things in Norway would be considered crooks. In Holland this kind of behavior is considered normal.

When I first moved down here, I tried to get by with a "pay as you go"-phone. That didn't work out very well, since KPN charged me about 1 Euro per minute whenever I tried to call the service hotlines of my cable company, IKEA et al. (0900-numbers). Also, I managed to run out of cash after waiting for half an hour in line at the Casema help line. I figured, the way to end this was to get a subscription.

This turned out to be easier said than done. At the Mediamarkt, the girl at the cell phone section refused to accept my "not so filthy foreigner"-card (happens a lot, Dutch people don't like foreigners, and my id card has a different color than the regular "filthy foreigner card"), so I had to go back and get my passport in order get a subscription. A couple of weeks later, I received a friendly letter from KPN stating that they could see I was a foreigner (since I had to identify myself with a passport, probably), so they refused to give me a cell phone subscription. This, however could be rectified, if I would kindly pay my subscription in advance for the next THREE YEARS!

Naturally, I didn't go for that, so I walked down the street to the Vodaphone store, which was very happy to give me a subscription right away. One thing I didn't notice until after I got the subscription was that Vodaphone was very expensive. Cell phone subscriptions in Holland work differently from a lot of other places in that you have a relatively high monthly fee, but you can potentially get some of that back in the form of a pool of cash that you can use for calling. This pool of cash is called the "bundel", and there's usually a lot of rules for when and how you can use this. Typically it can only be used for calls within the Netherlands, sometimes only in evenings and weekends, sometimes some types text messages are not included, and there are lots of other rules that may apply. In the case of my Vodaphone subscription, I had a high monthly fee, but the "bundel" went away automatically after two months. Also, the bundle was almost useless to me, as it could not be used for foreign traffic (calling abroad, being called while abroad) and data traffic. This is about 99% of my phone bill in general, so it was pretty significant. I ran up some pretty big phone bills. In Europe there are laws regulating how much the cell companies can gouge customers on international calls. This applies, of course, only within the EU, so after I came back from a trip to the US, I had a phone bill that was three times the normal amount. I decided to do something about it and ditch my provider.

First I had to wait until my contract period with Vodaphone expired. Next I went to a T-mobile shop, and they told me I could get this subscription which lets you do absolutely everything from the "bundel", which meant I would cut my monthly phone bill by about 75%. Naturally, I signed up, but getting rid of my Vodaphone subscription would take THREE MONTHS. I've never experienced it taking so long to port a simple phone number!

My number was ported, my sim card was working, everything seemed pretty good, until I went for a weekend trip to Krakow, and discovered, I could not call my sister in Norway. On every network I tried, I got a voice in Polish telling me that my phone was blocked from calling this number.

When I got back to Holland, I called the T-mobile help desk to figure out why my phone was blocked. They told me that since I was a foreigner I could not be trusted, so they had blocked my phone from making international calls for the first two months. I told them that this was the first time I had heard such a thing, and they replied: "It's in the voorwarden.". Essentially they had sold me a cell phone subscription that was useless outside of Holland, without telling me so.

But, being very helpful, they could turn off the block if I paid my subscription in advance FOR THE NEXT YEAR!!

With your sim card you get a small booklet with terms and conditions, I read through this, and found no mention of the two month blocking period she had mentioned. I did, however, find a mention of a 15 euro fee per incident if you complain too much about your phone bill.

In Holland, there is always another clause...