This made me think of the principal that more important than the prices you are given is the attitude of the company you do business with. If they show attitude that they intend to make you very satisfied with their product then take that into account as well as the cost of the service, it matters. I believe that O2 do not aim to make you satisfied, they aim to make you slightly less dissatisfied than you would be with another provider. The example above is limited to people who use smart phones and use that smart phone in foreign countries. Here are two others.

O2 used to be the underdog, then meteor, now 3. O2 hit the point where it had the same coverage as vodafone and those who didn’t make a habbit out of throwing money away when it got dirty switched to the cheaper provider. Another reason you would switch is that texts were not included in the vodafone monthly contract, you would pay x amount a month and get y minutes and even if you didn’t use any of your minutes they would still charge you for them and every text. Where as with O2 you would pay a certain amount per month, some would go towards rental and the rest would be credit for calls and texts. This meant you could make calls and texts to whatever number assured in the fact that it wasn’t charging you unless you went over the credit.

Then they changed to the vodafone model only it’s calls/texts rather than just calls, now whenever I ring a 1890 (low cost) number I see the charge on my bill. I could have 169 or my 170 minutes still left on account and yet that 1890 number would still be charged. This is designed to make you spend more money than you intended.

I moved out of home a good while ago but never bothered to move my mobile from out my dad’s account. Recently I decided it was time to do so and was told that I’d have to restart the contract in order to do so. So I’m 8 months through my contract with o2 and in order to transfer it over to my name I have to start the whole contract again. I told them forget it and instead I pay my dad who pays for the bill. Not ideal, but better than an extra 8 months of lock in.

As a sub point, o2 are in Britain and in Germany, if you decide you want to move to either of those countries, ignore the fact that the networks are owned by the same company, they will not allow you to switch over while on contract.

After this experience I would be very tempted to buy a pay as you go phone. It may be dearer on a per call basis and the phone itself may be more expensive but you don’t spend 120 euro on a pay as you go phone without noticing and while your phone is locked into the network, you aren’t locked into a contract.

Finally, right now, every phone provider in Ireland attempts lock you in to their service, it won’t last forever, people crave convenience and within a few years someone will provide them that. While it does it will continue to be a very expensive essential service and we can only rely on the EU to step in on our behalf, because the Irish people aren’t prepared to make a stand on this issue and I don’t think anyone knows how to make them. It just seems too small but it’s something everyone has to deal with it.

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These aren’t going to be on every persons list but if you implement them correctly, they are going to make your site a lot easier to use.

• Don’t be afraid to add too many options
  You can hide them behind advanced tabs and expanding sections but please don’t leave me with max, min and location. I don’t want to go through every letting in Dublin City.
• Use free tagging
  Its a lot cheaper to add free tagging to the add property screen with auto complete for popular tags than trying to keep a track of what people are looking for currently in houses.
• Right input control for a piece of information
  If you have a large number of locations to choose from, don’t make me use a multi select box, I’m not going to hold down the ctrl button every time and at some stage I’m going to click away accidentally. Use a number of check boxes, that way I’m not getting frustrated on your site.  Similarly, don’t use a drop down, very few people decide I want to live in that particular town, most people decice I want to live within easy access of work or loved ones, drop downs just don’t suit it. Just think about it.
• Save my searches
  It can take a while for me to enter in every location I want to live in, particularly when they are all spread out along bus routes, so please for the sake my mental stability provide me with a save function. This makes sense from a usability point of view but it also makes sense in that it helps lock users into your system. Daft have the email system which is meant to send you an email whenever a property matching your criteria comes on the market. Very clever but like their save search function it doesn’t allow you to use the advanced search functions (with the time consuming options) thus defeating the whole purpose.
• Let me know if I’ve viewed this ad before
  I don’t know how many people I’ve called up at this stage but at once but undoubtedly I’ve missed properties that I hadn’t seen thinking I had or called up advertisers twice thinking I hadn’t read the ad. If there is an option to login, why isn’t there a function that tells me I’ve seen this one already.
• Give me all the properties that are beside a public transport route to location X
  Daft claims it can do it, I found it just gave me a lot of properties around town. Why aren’t myhome, property.ie and let.ie trying to up the ante?
• Google Maps
  Its free, there is no reason not to use it and its woefully underused by property websites, don’t just show the property I’m looking at in the area. Show all the properties that match my search too, and while you’re at it, allow me to define the area in which I want you to search for properties with google maps.

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