GoMo Review: Is GoMo Any Good?
I've been with GoMo Ireland since it launched nearly a year ago. You probably want to know if it's any good.
I can't complain. I have had a signal in most places (but I spend a lot of time in Dublin City, and I appreciate that's not the same as the rest of the country).
I've actually been rather impressed by their customer service, or at least, it wasn't as bad as they were saying. There have been no hidden charges (apart from a little wobble we'll get to). And 80GB of unrestricted 4G is a fantastic offer.
I must explain. As I was one of the first to join them, I am on the "unlimited everything for ever" €9.99 a month package. For that price I wasn't expecting much. Now I am glad I joined them.
What you need to know about GoMo
GoMo Ireland uses their Eir network, and customer service is provided by Eir's Limerick call centre. As far as the customer is concerned, it is Eir.
With its bright colour scheme, weird name, word-of-mouth based launch event and wacky photoshoots, GoMo is basically just Eir for millennials. The Eir brand is considered boring, tied to an old Ireland and a preserve of the elderly. GoMo is where they think it's at now.
That will be why GoMo end every message they send you with the words "That's it!". They obviously think that's the catchphrase that all the millennials are using.
What is GoMo like?
This brings me to what was my main reservation about GoMo. Eir's customer service has a terrible reputation (all communication brands don't, but Eir seems to get the most complaints). If the main Eir can be that bad at customer service, what on earth will GoMo (which is basically Budget Eir - a much better sounding name!) be like?
A quick look on Twitter revealed, just two weeks after GoMo launched, there are hundreds of complaints about customer service. GoMo promises that your email will be responded to within 24 hours: this deadline was normally missed; tweets normally weren't resolved and live chat can go unanswered. There is no telephone service; you can't speak to anyone.
A word of caution here: mobile phone providers always get a lot of complaints. Let's do the maths: if 1% of customers are unhappy for whatever reason (and I made that figure up), we know that GoMo had 100,000 customers by December 2019 so that would be 1,000 angry tweets. But it's still 99% customer satisfaction which means you're very unlikely to have a problem. So you can't base your opinion on a company by what you've read on Twitter (or on some dodgy blog post), otherwise you'd never be able to buy anything.
I can only write about what happened to me. The product was only days old: you'd expect it to be working well, and it did. GoMo was incredibly easy to join.
They have clearly considered the customer all the way through the purchasing process. The order form is very easy to follow, the price plan is extremely simple to understand, and the small print appears to be minimal.
It is amazing how easy it is becoming to switch networks, with any operator. With GoMo I was impressed that I could schedule exactly when my number would be ported across (during office hours only - why is that still a thing?). Once you've scheduled it, you can easily change the scheduled time online.
I scheduled my phone number transfer, and then when the SIM arrived in the post I decided to re-schedule it for 10 minutes in the future. 30 minutes later everything was done. Excellent!
What about the unexpected charges?
Most of this page was written within days of GoMo launching. The real shock came when I received my first bill, which was scheduled to arrive after my first two weeks.
All bills are sent out at the start of the month. Several people reported being overcharged, but nobody seems to be able to beat me.
For my €9.99 a month package, GoMo charged me... €202.01!
Thankfully, we were able to work out what happened. Despite it saying I was in Ireland at the time, I was being charged as if I was using data while outside the EU.
Their system had got that really muddled, because I was neither in Ireland nor outside the EU at that time - I was in another EU country where I should have had free roaming.
GoMo did not stick to the conditions that they text me.
In a sensible world, their system should have flagged up that charging a customer €202 after two weeks on an unlimited price plan is virtually impossible. Their bill breaks down the charges and it is very clearly in breach of their contract.
The itemised bill is clearly in breach of their contract.
Their system was set up to automatically take the money from me. They were in for a shock because I had no money to pay.
So what happened?
While I appreciate there will be teething issues, I wasn't best pleased at having to raise this issue.
I was even more displeased that it took five days for me to receive any meaningful response from them, despite GoMo promising a 24 hour turnaround.
But to be fair, GoMo did resolve the issue before it was too late. They accepted the bill was wrong and reset it. They apologised for the error.
As a resolution, I can't ask for much more. Ultimately I do understand that the service had only been live for a few weeks and issues would have to be ironed out.
But does it really work?
GoMo's promise of "unlimited internet" comes with small print limiting you to 100GB at 4G speed, after which you may be throttled. For average users, or people with home wifi, 100GB is a lot of internet that you will struggle to use.
As I live alone, I tried to use GoMo's 100GB allowance to power my laptop through mobile tethering. Why wouldn't I?
I'm delighted to say it works! So long as you don't download too many files or live-stream too much, 100GB is plenty. And although you get a snotty text once you've used 100GB, and you're in territory where they could effectively cut you off until the end of the month, so far I'm delighted to say that I have been able to use up to 200GB of internet a month without noticing any difference. Big thumbs up to them there.
In fact the only issue I have had is that if you do go over 100GB, they disable your data roaming, which is a bit irritating if you're making an end of the month trip. There are no fees for this and if you haven't used 100GB at home you get your free 10GB roaming as expected. So it would be a bit tight to complain about this small oversight.
Will GoMo stay around for long?
I am a little sceptical of GoMo's promise of offering "unlimited everything for life". How can they be so sure?
I'm obsessed with the impracticality of it. Would they keep the business going if they only had four customers left?
It seems the Advertising Standards Authority agrees. They are investigating the claim, which may not be reflected in the terms and conditions, although I can't find any follow-up.
It doesn't actually matter, because with their 30-day contract and with so many other phone providers being available you can easily just switch if GoMo ever renege on their commitments. You won't miss out on anything.
It remains to be seen how the other mobile operators will react to this. Three and Vodafone, and to a lesser extent Virgin and Sky, have been focussing on how powerful their internet is. GoMo can't compete with that.
But GoMo have launched a new war over how cheap their data is. This will matter to a lot of customers.
Maybe the likes of Tesco and Three will respond with an even cheaper offer. I wouldn't wait around for it - you can always just switch again if they do.
I suppose the real catch is that this is only a 4G contract. GoMo was launched just as other operators started promoting 5G. GoMo is offering you unlimited 4G for life, but eventually that'll be pretty much obsolete technology. I doubt GoMo is ever going to add 5G to their offering, at least not under my current contract.
But so what? You're not tied to a long contract with GoMo, so whenever you decide that you need 5G, you can simply leave them and move on. I suspect that's what they want you to do.
Until then, if price is your main concern, GoMo looks like an excellent option.
