Link:
Easymobile hangs up, stranded by supplier | The Register
Ok sweeping headline (the ‘everyone + dog’ bit), but here’s what prompted it:
Easymobile – the mobile wing of Stelios Haji Ioannou’s easyGroup – is closing. Customers have until midnight on 13 December to move their phone service.
A message on the website says:”easyMobile.com in the UK was set up as a partnership between TDC (the telecom company from Denmark) and easyGroup (Stelios’ investment vehicle). Due to a change of strategy at TDC, TDC have decided to withdraw from the UK market.”
Alex caught this one in The Register.
Deary me. Close? Not even some sort of fire-sale to keep the repuation alive? That’s telling for the industry. It effectively says that EasyMobile’s customers were worth nothing. Well, in fact, their customers were a distraction — a cost. If they were of any value, someone would have swooped in and bought’em up, one imagines.
I’d much rather have ‘sold’ my EasyMobile business to someone for an ‘undisclosed sum’ of a few quid than tell everyone I didn’t quite mean it when I launched the company, close the business and suggest that anyone who wants to can port their number to Fresh.
This doesn’t say much for TDC at all. What a ridiculous business practice and a whole waste of cash.
Deary me. Running an MVNO in the UK without a good few million subscribers a la Tesco Mobile? You might as well do the same.
Alex commented in his mail:
So if someone of Stelios’s calibre is pulling out of the MVNO market,
how do ‘Blyk‘ think they’re going to do better?
Who knows, eh? Sit back, order a pizza and behold.
My 10p worth is this.. Tesco, Sainsburys, M&S, and (to a lesser extent) Virgin are good brands to run an MVNO as they’re an existing brand with a strong retail base. Stelios has a bunch of internet cafes, an airline, cruise ships, a car rental company and most recently pizza delivery. I’m still at a loss how this whole lot is bought together as a ‘lifestyle brand package’, a la Virgin, or a brand extension to give your existing huge customer base, like the other aforementioned large retailers. BTW on the car rental side, I’ve used Easy a few times – but only when I found out National/Alamo were behind my local outlets, hence I can save money by going via Easy and not direct.
Also, one wonders what sort of contract existed between TDC and Easy. As far as I remember, Virgin Mobile is quite tied together legally between Virgin Group and T-Mobile, and I’d imagine the same goes for Tesco and O2. For TDC to just ‘suddenly’ announce it’s pulling out and leaving all Easymobile’s customers effectively high and dry – with an option of either porting (to another network or Fresh), or a refund – and all of this within literally a few weeks – it’s not going to help the reputation of the Easy brand.
Lastly, I’ve never even been offered an Easy mobile. Never seen an outlet selling them, or know of anyone who’s with them. Maybe I haven’t spent enough time hanging around Luton airport, hired enough cars, or been in one of their internet cafes lately to have someone try to flog me a handset.
Their site says 80k UK customers, no mention about Germany. Also I notice they launched a while back in Holland – wonder what’s happening there?
Before I go, have a read of this. https://www.easymobile.com/selfcare/emcontent/news/press/news9.html
Looks like someones going to be smiling and saying ‘I told you so’ to himself 🙂
Excellent post Alex
the funniest thing is…and I ended up spitting my toothpaste out as I heard this on the radio, I aint laughed so much for a while…
they told their existing customers by text message!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Dear user, I turned up at the office this morning to find the Dutch had changed the door code. the security guard gave me £2.50 for my bus fare back home. I’m sending this to you from my personal mobile (should only take 5 mins ‘cus we didn ‘t have that many of you) to tell you that you can kiss goodbye to your Easy Phone. I’m gone. outa here. see ya at a dodgy cinema/pizza outlet/internet cafe sometime soon, all my love, Stelios”
steve procter
just to throw the cat amongst the pigeons to see what we can stir up…
do you think all foreign owners of UK mobile companies will be taking a serious look at how their UK assets are doing and taking stock of the situation!? Ok none of the others are as bad as the exceedingly embarrising 80,000 customers that Easy had, but it does make you think that it is time for those big boys to review the whole UK mobile game and whether they really want to be at the table any more.
And when they say 80,000 I can gaurantee that it as at most 79,999 active users…we bought one on day one to test them out for iTAGG and haven’t used it since. The SIM is sitting at the bottom of the office fishtank along with various other lost treasures – there is a Rabbit phone in there too, Mr Taggles the company goldfish uses it to sleep in!!
steve procter
“Easymobile is dead, long live Easymobile”
oh but it gets better…
from the BBC…””Easygroup will look for another supplier to work with, I don’t easily give up,” Sir Stelios told BBC Radio Five Live.”
Quick mobile operators, lock your doors, pull the curtains down, Sir Stelios has just pulled up outside in his chauffer driven 747. Tell the receptionist to say we’ve all flown Club Virgin to Barbados for the annual company junket (but if the press call tell her to say we’re in an allday marketing conference in the basement meeting room working out what we should sell next).
Oh and shouldn’t that be “…I don’t EASY give up…”!!?? I’m afraid to say “I don’t Easily give up…” may need to be looked at by the lawyers of my old company Easily.com – they will be very worried about his use of the word ‘easily’, which as everybody knows was invented by us at Easily Limited in 1999!!!
steve procter
oh boy oh boy, sorry Ewan but I aint had so much fun a while. Sir Stel is such an EASY target. I promise I will let somebody else have a go now. Hey, you never know, somebody might come on and defend the wonderful Easymobile – any active customers out there? hello, can you hear me, anybody got an Easy SIM???…
steve procter
[…] There’s a stimulating line of commentary taking place on the EasyMobile post. In particular, check out Steve’s point about Stellios looking for another supplier! […]
Hey this is not all bad you can always switch to (( truphone )). These guys have an amazing service. Get a WiFi/ GSM dual phone and start saving; I have got my third mobile phone bill after starting to use http://www.truphone.com and it has saved me 80%. The bill has dropped so much that I am jumping into the air each time I receive one. Clearly this is the future. Forget Easymobile go TRUPHONE !!!!
Re: trulover’s comments.. Nice plug, but slightly off topic?
Kinda like being told you won’t be able to buy diesel in the UK within the next 28 days, but don’t worry – just buy a petrol and LPG hybrid car and bob’s your uncle. It’s cheaper to run.. which should make you feel better after spending all that money on your diesel car and fuel for the last couple of years.
Anyway analogies aside, as far as I know you can’t port your Easymobile number to Truphone – and even if you could you’d still need a normal mobile network for those moments when you’re not quite within coverage of a Wifi cell, or you need to run Truphone over GPRS/UMTS.
Alex
PS: No I’m not bitter because I’m still waiting for the Truphone N80 client. Honest 🙂
Re: Steve’s comments about Stelios looking for another partner.
So let me get this straight. You p**s off your 80k UK customers by cutting their service off and giving them a month to move.. then six months later you come back again as if nothing’s happened?
This could be interesting. Stelios has two problems now – first he’s got to find a partner interested in providing such a service, and second he’s got to undo all the brand damage that’s been done by this to persuade everyone to come back to his service.
As an accountant once said to me, ‘Problems I can fix, but miracles take a little longer’.
Anyway, if Easymobile was such a viable business proposition, why did TDC pull out, and why haven’t T-Mobile (EasyMobile’s network provider) stepped in and gone direct with Easy? Having already fallen out with Orange (see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/21/stelios_sued/) that leaves O2, Vodafone and Hutch as potential network partners. Maybe T-Mobile can’t get involved directly because of their existing partnership with Virgin?
I’m still curious what exactly the contract terms were between TDC and Easy, and also between TDC and T-Mobile. If it was anything like the T-Mobile/Virgin deal, at 80k customers multiplied by £4/month the resulting £320k/month income should be enough to pay the wages and still have a bit left over for marketing.
Hey don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.
Customer service was excellent (up to the closure text!), itemised billing available online and downloadable as pdf, cheap (for PAYG) to use abroad.
the quote from the TDC guy basically said “we were totally un-impressed that Stelios had only got 80K customers which was not good enough for our profit plans in the short term”.
To be fair, the way the world is moving more and more to this short term “we want a zillion percent profit within 3 days of investing” is getting really boring.
But then to be fair back to TDC, 80K customers in 2 (or was it 3?) years is a pretty dreadful achievement!!!
So all other operators will look at this and think “make stelios a vmno!? you must be joking, it’ll be a complete waste of time and money”. So I think Stelios is outa this game for good. His Arnie statement was simply about saving face.
steve procter
[…] EasyMobile dead; Everyone + Dog exiting MVNO market (SMS Text News) the funniest thing is…and I ended up spitting my toothpaste out as I heard this on the radio, I aint laughed so much for a while… […]
I only found out about this today (30th November). They tell me I have until the 7th of December to port to another network… and that it’ll take at least 7 days to do. Oh, fine then, why don’t I just throw my SIM away and get a new number, and go around everyone I know updating them!
Worst thing is, I’ve been with them less than a year after leaving the abysmal fresh network (who couldn’t even tell me my credit without a phone call from a land line), and who do easyMobile offer me a free and easy port to? Why, fresh of course! If I never go into a Carphone Whorehouse again, it’ll be too soon…
Easymobile was such a viable business proposition, why did TDC pull out…
Here is the answer (sort-of)
http://www.mobilebanter.co.uk/uk-mobile-phones/38717-easymobile-closing-down-3.html#post181483
I just wonder to know the name of this Web Reputation Management company.
I feel I’ve just made a big mistake taking my number to Fresh. Oh well, I’ll just use the free credit and disappear off to someone else!