Switching Telecommuncations providers

​​During our six years in Portugal, we have always had telecommunications and internet through MEO. Unfortunately, we recently needed to make a change. This blog discusses how that process played out. 

While we lived in Porto there was fiber in both of our apartments and the speeds were great for both surfing and streaming. We had a television package, although most of our entertainment time is spent reading so we didn’t use it much.

When we moved to the country, fiber was no longer available, and we were switched over to a 4G internet router. During this switch, I was obligated to a new 2-year contract for the service. A 4G internet router was attached to the side of the house, a satellite TV dish was installed, and we maintained our two cellphones. At first, the internet service was decent, not as good as the fiber in Porto, but adequate for our needs.

Of course, the Satellite TV was clear. At our location, we do get good off-air television reception, including all the RTP channels plus SIC and TVI so the satellite was not all that compelling for us. Our primary interest was the internet, especially for Jana’s publishing business. Our cellphone service is quite poor with a lot of call drops and missed calls. One bar of service just doesn’t cut it nowadays, especially when Jana was talking to an oncology nurse about her next treatment.

As time went along, we noticed the internet growing progressively slower. Where at first it had about 12 Mbps downloads, then it deteriorated to 3, then 2, and sometimes it would drop to 0.4 Mbps. Doing any kind of online work at a rate like that was painful, so we started looking at alternatives.

Our neighbor bought a Starlink system and was quite happy with it, but I still had several months to go on the MEO contract. In the meantime, the MEO technician was at our house several times and they would restart everything and then end up scratching his head as to why our connection was so slow. You can actually see the MEO tower from our house. He would go away muttering about talking to colleagues to see if there was anything that could be done to improve service. The strange thing is that we originally had good service, but it just kept getting worse. It makes me think there are just too many customers on that tower.

After one particularly grueling day of doing a large image download with a sub-1Mbps speed, we ordered a Starlink and had it installed. The Starlink speed is good. The most recent reading through Speedtest shows 50 Mbps download and 22.8 upload. We have seen it as high as 93 download and 32 upload. This recent reading is on the weekend when more people are using the internet.  

​​We’re glad we made that choice. Starlink was originally 65€ per month and has now dropped to 40€. Because of the way the MEO contract was designed, we had to pay for both services for a few months until the MEO contract ended.

Speedtest Results 

During the final month of the contract, I worked with a local Portuguese representative who helped me craft the letter MEO requires stating I wanted to end the contract. Along with the letter I had copies of the most recent MEO statement and my residence card. I sent all of that by registered mail to the MEO address in Porto. About a week later, the calls started to come in.

After several where the call quality was so poor, coupled with my lack of fluent Portuguese, an agent finally called that spoke great English and he explained that they couldn’t accept the letter that I had sent because some of the numbers on the residence card were illegible. He then helped me go through the process of terminating the contract over the My MEO app on my phone. After all the drama of sending in a registered letter, I find out you can just do the cancellation using the app. Sheesh.

Calls kept coming in wanting to know if I was sure I wanted to end the service, and I assured them that I did. There were 18 calls made to me during this time: Some I rejected, some dropped, some the agent could only speak Portuguese, and others where we would work back and forth with my basic Portuguese before the agent would tell me in perfect English that they would have someone else call me back that spoke English. It makes me think that they only have some English-speaking agents that are allowed to deal with contract issues.

I finally received a date when the contract would end, and they said I would receive a letter telling me where I could return the equipment. I did call back a couple of times to MAKE SURE everything was on track .

As I mentioned earlier, the internet receiver is attached to the side of the house and will require a tall ladder to retrieve it. After the end of the contract, I contacted their technical service and finally got on the schedule for a service tech to come out and pick up the equipment. There were seven calls required to get this done, most of them dropped calls because of our poor cell service. The tech did take the equipment from inside, but not the satellite dish. We had another individual remove it.

One thing that worried me during this process was what would happen to our cellphones after the contract ended. With the number of official things tied to that number with 2-factor authentication, I could see a huge problem if I needed to change numbers. The MEO agent assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem and thankfully he was correct, to a point.

After the expiration of the contract, we received a bunch of text messages telling us that our phones were being converted to a pre-paid plan (MPRE Livre) where we were essentially just paying so much per day, call/SMS and MB of data. On the My Meo application, I can add money to my account and the app will notify me if my balance fell below 3€. We never lost service, which is a relief, but this ended up being a rather expensive option. There is a base cost PER DAY is 1,99€ ($2.17 at today’s exchange rate) and that’s per phone. So, $4.34 per day for MPRE Livre service plan for both of us. I didn’t anticipate that much expense as it took some time to figure out what we were going to do next.

My mistake was not having a new provider picked out and replacement SIM cards in hand so I could immediately change providers as soon as we went on the MPRE-Livre plan. I also thought I would need to do another contract, but for simple mobile phone service this isn’t necessary. There are a number of companies who offer no-contract monthly rates and that is the way we ended up going.
 
We chose WOO www.woo.pt/en. I got my SIM card through the local telephone representative, and it is set up for 20GB / 4.5K minutes for 15€ per month. Jana went online with WOO and got a 4GB / 2K minutes plan at 10€ per month. It was only after the fact that we realized hers was less expensive and mine had more capacity. Usually we won't use anywhere near even her 4GB. But recently we stayed two nights in Coimbra at a rented apartment while friends were in town, and she used much more than her 4GB for wi-fi as the apartment's service on the top floor was virtually non-existent. Searching Google Maps, Waze and other such services definitely racked up usage which cost her another 5€, but that is still lower than we anticipated. In retrospect we should have used my phone but didn't think about it until after the fact.

There is a WOO app that makes the sign up and transfer of your number rather painless. You need help there is English-Language support. You just need the portability code (CVP) from your old provider (printed on your monthly statement) and you can transfer your present number to your new cellphone company. It will take about three days (weekends excluded) for the number transfer to be completed.

My experience is specific to MEO, but other providers will probably have a similar process. There seems to be endless hoops to jump through, and it is obvious that the companies do not want to lose a telecommunication contract. Keep at it, and with diligence and determination you can break free of those shackles.