Quote:
Originally Posted by ronwi
Perhaps it's the American lawyer in me, but....
from everything I have read, Germany has some very pro-consumer rules re mobiles
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Nah you read wrong
When it comes to mobiles, Germany is one of the less consumer-friendly countries, at least in Europe, and especially with postpaid contracts.
There aren't many countries where:
- You get a 2-year contract (in most other countries, it's one year)
- If you don't cancel your contract at least 3 months before it expires, it is automatically renewed for 1 additional year (in most other countries, after the 1st year, you can cancel it anytime)
- You get a SIM-locked phone for the duration of your contract (in many other countries, the phones are sold unlocked by law)... this will hopefully change soon.
- It's prohibited to use your data plan for VoIP and P2P applications (and those ports are closed)... also this will hopefully change soon
- The price for SMS, stubbornly remains at 0.19€ (national) and 0.29€ (international), with most pre- or postpaid plans of the four major mobile telcos (while everywhere is Europe is falling down to 2c per SMS)
and so on and so on...
I learned the above the hard way... so when in Germany, use prepaid cards but not from the 4 big mobile telcos
