August 11, 2003
Wake up, Vodafone!
Vodafone just don't get it. That's not to say they are any better or worse than the other incumbent mobile "service" providers. But still, they clearly have no idea about how to run a successful telco. Two cases in point:
- GPRS tariffs. I use my mobile phone on the road an awful lot, predominantly to download email to my laptop. I don't want to pay prohibitive amounts for the data usage on my phone, so when I heard that Vodafone had announced an "as much as you can use" tariff for around 50 quid, I was delighted.
I tried to switch to that tariff last Friday. The support person on the end of the phone had no idea what tariff it was. The closest he could come up with was "Mobile Connect Complete" - but in order to use it, I must have a Vodafone PCMCIA card. Why on earth would I want to carry around another peripheral, when I already have a perfectly decent mobile phone / bluetooth laptop setup? I asked him to check this was the really necessary, but needless to say, he didn't call me back.
Oh, and if you really fancy a laugh - try wading through the mess that is the Vodafone site, to find out what tariffs are available for GPRS and normal telephone calls. The information is split across several pages, and there's no "all on one page" table of charges. Customer-friendly, eh?
- When I was on O2, I used to use the excellent ents24 site to look up films all the time. It was the perfect killer app for the mobile. Imagine you're at in the pub, fancy seeing a film, not sure what time it's on or the nearest cinema. Just type in the approximate postcode or town name, and up pops a list of cinemas, films, and times. Brilliant! Although every time I use the web on my phone it eats into my data allowance, I didn't mind paying the excessive per-kilobyte charges for mobile phone web browsing, as the service was so useful.
On Vodafone, this has all gone horribly wrong. You can still access ents24, and it's even available as a menu entry in Vodafone Live! (the Vodafone web portal). But when you select a cinema and want to see film listings, you are asked to accept a charge of 25 pence per request.
So: not ONLY do you have to pay vodafone for each page you download, but they also want to add ANOTHER charge for you to access the information you want to use. Information that is FREELY available elsewhere.
I'm disgusted, I really am. Time to consider moving to 3 after all.
Posted by savs at August 11, 2003 11:04 AM