The Carphone Vodafone Arse
Is this the beginning of the end of having third parties sell your contracts, now? As a few people have already commented — how long before Orange, T-Mobile, o2 and Three follow their lead?
In one action, by taking its new contracts business ‘in house’ and exclusive to just one national supplier, Vodafone has crippled Carphone Warehouse — and potentially the industry in general.
Whilst losing the ability to sell only Vodafone contracts isn’t a huge biggie for the Carphone — it’s the message that’s the problem. They’re no longer comprehensive. They can no longer help around 1/5th of the mobile market who currently use Vodafone. Another problem is the market in general — is it safe to assume that the market for independent mobile phone stores will be drying up pretty quickly. If Orange or o2 were to do the same to Carphone, where does that leave the business? Surely Carphone’s whole reason for existing is to serve contracts (and PAYG) to customers — and Vodafone is a critical part of that.
It’s like going into a sports shoe shop and finding that they no longer stock Nike.
In fairness, Carphone has always been on the cheapo end of the scale. Agree? I mean, if you look at any of their stores at the moment — and compare them to Phones4U or the network’s own brand stores, they look appalling. The vast majority of Carphone stores that I pass are in dire need of freshening up. They didn’t keep pace with the palaces that the operators have been opening up.
I wouldn’t buy my Vodafone contract from Carphone. I’d go to Vodafone’s shops — they’re everywhere. Same with Orange and so on.
Vodafone have always been one of the most expensive networks. So I wonder if, in reality, this won’t actually change things much. Are Vodafone’s customers automatically avoiding the dirty, boring and old Carphone stores anyway?
Ah it’s all very interesting.
after my experience with cpw I do not blame voda at all. There is no way I’d say voda or the other operators are perfect or anywhere near it - but cpw in my honest opinion offered no real added value to the operators service. ok some interesting rates here and there, but when you spend twice as long dealing with their shoddy customer service then you have to consider how much your time is worth and therefore what the actual cost of having an account with them is. But they saw a time limited market, they dived in and cleaned up…
…and now they have moved on. USA, broadband and beyond. They’ve been there done the UK mobile thing, sold a shed load of phones, made a packet and got the t-shirt. But now the game has moved to a different playing field. We are sat here talking about what this means but I don’t think anyone at cpw is listening - “they’ve already left the building”.
steve/itagg
Posted by steve procter on October 12th, 2006 at 6:45 pm.I think you’re concentrating on Carphone Warehouse too much (let’s face it, they are a relic.. even their name is a joke!).
What about the smaller independent traders that just lost Vodafone!
Could limiting availability to essentially two chains of shops and their websites actually turn out to be a bad move for Vodafone?
Personally, I’ve never purchased a phone from a 3rd party, every phone purchase I’ve made has been online from the network’s website or from their branded stores. I can’t say the customer service from either was particularly great apart from the Orange shop in Norwich but I had walked in and purchased every single Nokia 6630 they had in stock so I imagine the guy was on some form of commission!.
Posted by Dan Lane on October 12th, 2006 at 6:47 pm.Looks like Orange might be following suit too - according to an article in The Times this morning
Posted by Alex on October 13th, 2006 at 5:44 pm.Orange “reviewing the situation” http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1517432006
Strewth, this is all hot stuff. Imagine if all the networks did this. as Dan points out, not only cpw, but a whole industry of independent retailers would die over night. Surely some Monopoly’s type body will have to step in and monitor all of this.
Can you imagine the headline - “5 major players who are pretty much the only ones licensed to have networks destroy entire retail sector overnight and give themselves exclusive rights to sell their own products”. hhmmm…
steve/itagg
Posted by steve procter on October 14th, 2006 at 8:48 am.In defense of Carphone Warehouse. (I have no commercial relationship in anyway with CPW).
Carphone Warehouse sets service standards that the whole mobile industry should look up to. They actually invest in training their staff (visit their HQ and see the training for yourself) whom I have found always to be knowledgeable, courteous and efficient.
The CPW monthly catalogue is the most comprehensive guide to pricing and T&C’s available on the high street today.
CPW are a great retailer and like all other great retailers e.g. Tesco, really are passionate about the customer. Did you know that they employ mystery shoppers to visit their stores and test their staff. hear the staff get bonused if the mystery shopper has a positive experience. I have voted with my feet and gone back to retail. Indeed only this week I gave up on O2 direct online channel and purchased an O2 contract from CPW - a free N73 at £25 per month for a 12 month contract with £75 cash back after month 4 - what a steal! Unfortunately the N73 has developed a fault with the camera but I know that I can walk into any CPW store with the receipt and get it swapped out on the spot. Where else can you do that?
Posted by David Whitewood on October 14th, 2006 at 5:58 pm.In terms of operator stores the UK should look at the Sprint stores in the US. Which other operator sells so much data services and even accessories. How do they do it? They train their staff and instead of trying to sell expensive insurance polices, they take the time to show their customers how to get the best from the Sprint Network and their purchase.
I will bet that Vodafone will be back with CPW by the spring after a dissapointing Xmas new year period.
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Posted by Text To Screen » Blog Archive » In defence of Carphone Warehouse on October 14th, 2006 at 7:13 pm.Vodaphone will be back with carphone before the end of this year I recon. They had a bad Christmas and so far this year they’ve not done any better. They sold out to a firm that have far less stores nationwide, yes they made a quick buck because they’ll have got paid for exclusivity but I’m pretty sure there’ll be a clause in the contract that says they can run back to cpw and all the other phone retailers when they’re on their ass. And to make things worse for them it looks like carphone will have exclusive rights to the iphone, for a while anyway, they’ll shift millions of them, on orange, t-mobile, three, etc etc… probably tying them all into 18 month contracts, thats millions of customers they can’t get onto their books for at least 18 months.
Posted by kev on April 22nd, 2007 at 3:48 am.carphone has been fine without vodafone. i work for carphone in a retail store and i can count on one hand the amount of sales i have lost due to the fact that we lost vodafone. all thats happened is that the other networks have takens vodafones connections. admittedly when i heard the announcement last october i was fearful for the future of the business but all my fears have not been realised. i fully expect vodafone to come back to carphone on terms that suit both sides better.
when will the networks realise that consumers are handset led not network led. carphone warehouse gets exclusives on most of the new handsets and colours so people will continue to shop with carphone because the handset is what matters not the network. the sooner the networks realise that they need the independant channel e.g phones 4u and carphone and they need to work with them rather than alienating them the better it will be for them
Posted by bigjok on July 26th, 2007 at 9:53 pm.