I am absolutely loving the fact that I can talk to people … on the phone… on the go… it really is just brilliant.
Obviously you can do this with any mobile phone account, just not consistently in my experience. My 3UK account is generally reliable, but my two T-Mobile accounts are nothing short of disastrous when it comes to audio. So much so that I have spent — on reflection — years waiting until I got ‘home’ or ‘back to work’ to make phone calls that I could ordinarily have made on-the-go, were it not for the ridiculous audio quality.
I really abhor people telling me ‘sorry, this is, er, a very bad line’ when I’m phoning their office landline from my T-Mobile account. It is such a pleasant change to be able to transact business continually and without issue via my Vodafone handset.
I’m delighted too with the unlimited landline calls option on my price plan. That is pretty neat indeed. Hugely neat. I call a lot of landlines, particularly when it comes to public relations professionals who very much operate from their desks. I haven’t looked to see what the terms and conditions are relating to this. There’s probably a fair use policy of a few thousand minutes.
As for text messages, I signed up with a paltry 250 text messages.
I always do rough mental arithmetic when faced with a text bundle to work out how ‘good’ it is. I try and divide by 30 to see how many texts are available daily. So in the case of 250, that works out to about 8 text messages per day.
Shit.
The arse with text messaging is that when you text someone, they usually text back — and it’s often only polite (or required) for you to text a reply. To which you might get another reply. That needs a reply. So one ‘Are we on for today’ interaction could actually ‘cost’ 10 text messages. No problem when you’re on a T-Mobile Flext 75 price plan that let’s you use as many texts, MMS or minutes as you wish. Serious issue when you’re using Big Red and you’re about to get whacked for 12 pence per text.
Vodafone continually tell me that this isn’t a problem. They paint an idyllic picture of text message usage and always immediately counter with ‘Ahhhh yes, but Ewan, listen Ewan, old-chap, that’s the OUT OF BUNDLE price… No one ever pays that, no one ever goes over their bundle, you see… it’s fiiiiiiiine.’
Bollocks, is it.
The first thing I thought I’d do when I got my new handset was text everyone in my address book with my new number. That’s at least 800 people. Not only would that wipe out my 250 ‘bundle allowance’ but it would actually cost 550 x 12p (66 pounds). Ridiculous.
Firstly why does Vodafone not do a ‘move in tell-your-friends-your-number’ text service?
Secondly, why don’t I just increase my text bundle and stop whining? Good idea.
I popped into a Vodafone store, back, actually, to the place where I originally purchased the account. Saj remembered me. Good man. “No problem,” he said, when I asked for a text bundle, “You can buy them in 500 or 1,000 chunks,” (I think it’s about 6 or 7 quid for 500, and roughly double for 1,000 texts).
I asked Saj to hit me for 500 extra. That’d give me 750 a month. Good enough, right?
I waited a few minutes.
Saj began to look more and more pained as he operated the Vodafone terminal showing my account details.
Eventually Saj phoned the call centre and found out that, since I’ve got ‘unlimited landline calls’ on my account, I cannot purchase more text messages in a bundle.
Both Saj and I were a little confused.
“Would you like to swap to unlimited texts?” came the question from the call centre.
“No,” Saj explained, “The customer wants unlimited landlines and wants to add extra texts,”
We both waited. I rolled my eyes. I could already see what was coming.
Welcome to Vodafone, land of the binary. It’s one or zero. One or the other. You can’t have both. You’re either screwed for 35p/minute calls (after your bundle) or you’re nailed for 12p texts (after your bundle).
So came confirmation.
“Sorry,” said Saj, shaking his head.
Ridiculous.
I phoned up the call centre at the weekend and upgraded to pay the highest possible monthly tariff, which, unbelievably is sixty odd quid (excluding VAT). That gets me unlimited landline calls, 3,000 cross network minutes and … 500 texts.
Can’t upgrade my text bundle any more. I’d have to swap to unlimited texts and give up my landline calls. Gah.
I am going to absolutely 100% NUTS if I am charged twelve pence per text message by Vodafone. Absolute NUTS.
I’m suprised you’re quoting 3uk as being reliable, I have found them to be one of the most unreliable. vodafone seem best for 3g and suposedly them and 3uk are joining up to share towerrs and improve reception.
Peter’s last blog post..Offset mortgage
Ouch – that stinks!
Another problem I see all the time is that picture messages can be a real pain.
Half of phone users don’t know how to send them and have problems.
I thought your readers might be interested to know if they click the link above I’ve just added an article on my blog about how to fix any problems with MMS – hope it’s of some use to someone 😉
…would sir like some salt for those nuts?
(also comes in handy for rubbing into wounds, next time you need to interact with VF propositions logic)
😉
(not speaking for Voda etc)
I’d agree that it’s pretty dumb that you can’t buy more bundles. Especially when PAYT customer can add 500 texts for £15. You could always get a second PAY SIM 😉
Are you going to be using more than 3,000 minutes? If you go with the unlimited texts, landline calls out of bundle are 10p each. Is 72 seconds of voice worth more than a text?
Ha Ha, Ewan you were warned! however it just how the big red need to get their act together on stuff like this. No being able to add a text bundle, are we back in 1994 or something? 😛
How quaint!
Does this mean you’ll be using Jaiku or GoogleTalk more often?
;-p
HeavyLight’s last blog post..Apple, RM Battle Shapes Up
Ewan, you and I switched to Vodafone at about the same time. You’re not alone with the above experience.. I called Vodafone customer services the other day to get international roaming enabled on the phone, no problems and everything initially went smoothly.
“Anything else I can help you with, sir?”
Pleasant customer service, so I’m inclined to stay on the line and ask for the call and data rates for that region.
“Are you on Vodafone passport?”
“Umm.. you tell me. I don’t know what that is..”
So she explains. Vodafone Passport will mean I’ll pay a 75p connection charge for each call, and the minutes will then come out of my allowance as if it were a UK call (for the first hour).
“Sounds great. Gimme.” I say (or words to that effect).
“Certainly, sir.. *pause* oh.” comes the voice from the other end.
(Here we go)
“Because you’re on a custom tariff, I can’t add Passport to your account. We could move you over to a Vodafone tariff, but the closest tariff we have will cost you an additional £7.50 per month in service charges.”
Cue headache. Eventually I gave up, and there was “nothing she could do” – so I’m stuck with slightly more extortionate roaming charges than the ordinary Vodafone customer (but let’s not kid ourselves, we’re all getting equally shafted).
Having said all of the above, I am absolutely loving being on Vodafone. When people call me… get this… my phone ACTUALLY RINGS. And if I answer, I can actually hear them, and they can hear me! (coming from T-Mobile, that’s a mini revolution in telephony right there).
Are MNO’s getting too smart for their billing boots?
I called 3UK after reading your woes Ewan, the biggest package they do is 1100 minutes or texts. No add-ons. No offers. That’s it, for £20 (on special, I think it’s normally £27)
Certainly their whole tariff structure is much simpler to understand, kind of like FlexT, which must be easy for both customers and staff alike. Of course, they will miss out on the pinstripe brigade, but are they fussed? Maybe not. Sticking to consumer mass-market knitting, etc etc.
I understand VF (and most others) make sod all off corporates anyway, because they roll over to get the deal.
/mike
From Tom @ Vodafone:
– – – –
Hi Ewan,
We at the Vodafone Forums team were ever so disappointed to see that you’ve had a problem with your account. I really don’t understand why it’s been stated that you can’t change the texts on the price plan that you’re on.
On all of our current price plans (excluding ones with the Unlimited Texts offer) you can choose from either 100, 250, 500 or 1000 texts. You just pay extra to jump up to the next level from whichever one you’re on with your current price plan. I’ve checked on our systems and the Unlimited Landlines offer you have shouldn’t affect this.
Would you mind getting in contact with us via email? I’d love to get your account fixed and get you onto exactly the price plan you wanted. If you go to the URL pasted at the bottom of this message, enter your account details and a brief explanation of the problem we’ll look into this. Please include the code FIT135 in your message too; this will route your query to the Forum Team.
I’m sure we’ll be able to get this sorted for you, and I have my fingers crossed we’ll see some blogs on here in the near future about how well things are going with your Vodafone account,
Tom, Vodafone UK
Hi Ewan
Thanks for a great blog
Have you looked at the O2 deals for
£35 you get 600 UK minutes and 1000 UK texts each month Plus one of the following
Unlimited O2 to O2 Calls; Unlimited texts; Unlimited Web Bolt On; Unlimited weekend calls ; Unlimited landline calls or 200 extra anytime minutes
and if you want more than one it is £7.50 for each
I have just got the xda orbit2 with the above and unlimited landline calls may add the unlimted web bolt on later