Mel at T-Mobile knew what NFC was, which was a good start. She didn’ t know exactly which phones had the technology, but said“ most of the new phones will have it”.

If she was just referring to high-end devices, she was correct – the Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy S III, BlackBerry Z10 and Q5, HTC One and a range of Sony Xperias are all NFC-enabled.

Mel chose to recommend the Sony Xperia SP, for the simple reason that she had the device herself and really liked it. It cost £ 37 on contract, for unlimited calls and texts and 5GB of 4G data, she said. This was very generous for a 4GEE tariff.

As she was so familiar with EE’ s plans, I hoped she would be able to

tell me about the operator’ s new NFC mobile payments app‘ Cash on Tap’, which it launched with payment provider MasterCard a few days before I called.

No such luck – Mel was only able to tell me about Orange’ s‘ Quick Tap’ app, which was launched with Barclaycard in 2011.

She said this was not available on T-Mobile but would be next year. In general, we would“ start to see more and more NFC services launch in the next few years”. Several CSAs fed me similar lines – that the UK has not adopted NFC wholeheartedly yet.

“ We are not actively using NFC at the moment,” Mel said. I was dropping several hints about Cash on Tap but

she failed to pick up on any of them, saying she didn’ t know what I was talking about. She gave up immediately when I said I wanted to do some more research before buying anything.

For what it’ s worth, Cash on Tap is an app which will be available on all NFC phones, but was only pre-installed on the Samsung Galaxy S4, Galaxy S III LTE and Sony Xperia SP at launch.

EE said it had secured deals with 230,000 UK outlets including McDonald’ s, Boots and Greggs.

It’ s a real shame Mel wasn’ t aware of any of this, as apart from this her performance was solid. She did well to know what NFC was, for starters, although there was room for improvement in her manner.

Manner Understanding Knowledge Helpfulness Clarity Overall

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Time of call 11:00 Duration of call 7 minutes Length of queue 0 minutes Assistant introduced by name Yes

Manner Understanding Knowledge Helpfulness Clarity Overall

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Time of call 10:08 Duration of call 14 minutes Length of queue 0 minutes Assistant introduced by name Yes

Like Katrina at Vodafone, Jack at O2 gave the impression he did not know what NFC was. A brief silence followed my request, before he said“ OK” and started asking me generic questions about my requirements.

He asked whether I used my phone a lot, and whether I currently used NFC. Perhaps the biggest giveaway was when he asked me if I knew any phones that had NFC. I pretended to know even less than him, and he returned to questioning me about my usage.

Jack then said he was“ double checking” if a handset he had in mind was NFC-enabled. A few seconds later he began telling me about the Sony Xperia Z, which has“ quite a large screen and a 13-megapixel camera”. Crucially, it

is NFC-enabled. Jack then got into his stride, listing the things“ that are good about NFC” – most likely he was reading from his computer screen, but I was relieved nonetheless.

The technology is“ like a really fast version of Bluetooth”, he said, that would allow me to connect to other phones and share files.

According to Jack, the best thing about NFC is‘ SmartTags’, fob-like products that can prompt the phone to load certain pages or change settings. He wasn’ t the best at explaining Smart- Tags, saying I could“ touch my keyring to set a Walkman”. The Sony website does a much better job, explaining I could have different SmartTags for the rooms in my house. Touching the

‘ bedroom SmartTag’, for example, would set my Xperia Z on silent and turn on my alarm. I asked about contactless mobile payments. Jack said he knew of several banking applications, including‘ Pingit’ from Barclays. This wasn’ t a great example as it doesn’ t use NFC and only has money-transfer capabilities.

I prompted him by asking about‘ mobile wallets’, hoping this would ring some bells. He searched online before saying“ As in O2 wallet?”. At last. I asked how I could load the phone with money, whether I needed to download the app and for a rundown of how it worked.“ I will just be two seconds,” Jack said, before reeling off some marketing literature on the app – at which point I gave up and ended the call.

Darwin at Virgin was the only CSA who knew both what NFC was and which handsets had the technology.

After hearing my requirements, he said:“ NFC, near field communications. No worries, I can help you”. You have to hand it to Virgin for training their staff to know more about phones than megapixels and contract costs.

He went through some formalities first, asking me if I wanted the phone on prepay or contract and how many minutes I wanted. He then suggested the Samsung Galaxy S III and“ one of the Sony handsets”.

He summarised the specifications of the Galaxy S III( eight megapixels, 4.8- inch screen) well, so I asked him about what I would have to do once I got the

handset in order to use NFC to make mobile contactless payments. Would I have to download an app, for example?

Darwin said:“ The Virgin Mobile sales team has not been told of any app used for mobile payments.” And so he identified limitations in their training.

However, he clearly had a lot of general knowledge about NFC, saying it was being used around the world to connect gadgets to other gadgets.“ In future every phone will have it,” he said.

Having exhausted Darwin’ s NFC knowledge, I asked which handset he would recommend I buy.

He first tried to sell me the Samsung Galaxy S III free up front on a £ 25 contract. He then had to go back on this and raise it to £ 30, as I told him

I wasn’ t an existing Virgin customer. When I said I wanted to do some more research before committing, in an attempt to end the call, he offered me another NFC-enabled device, the Sony Xperia L. This is more affordable at £ 26 on contract for new customers.

I managed to end the call despite several attempts by Darwin to make a sale, though he remained on the right side of“ pushy” and was at least enthusiastic. He was correct in saying Virgin do not have any apps specific to them which enable customers to use NFC-enabled devices to make contactless payments.

A decent performance from Virgin, which is yet to create an NFC contactless payment app for the UK.

Manner Understanding Knowledge Helpfulness Clarity Overall

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Time of call 10:34 Duration of call 10 minutes Length of queue 0 minutes Assistant introduced by name Yes

Average score from the past eight weeks

16

16

T-Mobile

13

Virgin

Vodafone