New Vodafone Mobile Internet pricing w/ text bundles

Mark Coley wrote:
> Assuming Vodafone want to keep their customers, a simple and easy way to
> deal with this issue is for them to see what the customer has been
> using, give them a credit on their bill each month till the end of the
> contract (which must work in the customer's favour) to account for their
> new charging regime. For example, if I send no SMS one month I can use
> 12.8MB of data (£30 of data at £2.35/MB). Under the new scheme, 12.8MB
> of data spread out over the month will cost £6.40, so if I was given a
> £6.40 credit per month for the remainder of the contract I would be no
> worse off. They'd have to waive the 5p minimum charge of course too for
> this to work and allow free access using all protocols. If they can't
> make such an exception, they'd have to negotiate, or provide early
> release if requested.
>
> Mark.

Urm, wrong maths! 12.8MB of data will cost £25.60 at £2/MB... (and that
would mean free rental till the end of the contract). So it would
probably be cheaper to chuck in a monthly pack and ask the customer
nicely if he'd agreed to forgo VoIP (assuming he used it previously?)
and be content with being able to send more text messages as all the
bundle would go to text messages.

---

› See More: New Vodafone Mobile Internet pricing w/ text bundles

On Thu, 10 May 2007 Mark Coley wrote:

>Assuming Vodafone want to keep their customers, a simple and easy way
>to deal with this issue is for them to see what the customer has been
>using, give them a credit on their bill each month till the end of the
>contract (which must work in the customer's favour) to account for
>their new charging regime. For example, if I send no SMS one month I
>can use 12.8MB of data (£30 of data at £2.35/MB). Under the new scheme,
>12.8MB of data spread out over the month will cost £6.40, so if I was
>given a £6.40 credit per month for the remainder of the contract I
>would be no worse off. They'd have to waive the 5p minimum charge of
>course too for this to work and allow free access using all protocols.
>If they can't make such an exception, they'd have to negotiate, or
>provide early release if requested.

This may yet happen, on a per-customer basis. A work colleague has been
having issues with Vodafone (not data related) and during one of the
more frustrating, getting-nowhere Customer Service calls he told them to
shove it and send a PAC. He was passed on to Retention who offered him a
cracking deal on his voice calls and a new phone to boot.

It will be interesting to see if something similar happens with those of
us requesting cancellation because of the data pricing.

Personally, though, I've had it with Vodafone. I can't imagine how good
a deal they'd have to offer me to get me to stay. During the five or so
years I've been with them the quality of service and support has
steadily slipped, and now it looks as though value might be following.
Their Customer Service is a joke.

This recent debacle with multiple useless repetitive e-mails flying back
and forth has been the last straw as far as I'm concerned. In the first
reply I got from them the guy even *****ed my bloody surname wrong, even
though it was quoted in the original message. It might be a minor thing
but it reeks of a lack of professionalism.

I shall be taking my custom elsewhere.

--
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
"Coming from Detroit, this man has no children."
Medical chart entry

On Thu, 10 May 2007 Kevin Reilly wrote:

>I'm not sure what to make of the first part of this, since it seems to
>be a hybrid answer. The £2 per MB seems to be the P2P price, but that
>comes with a 5p minimum which Vodafone say won't apply to me. Either
>way I've just re-done my spreadsheet based on £2/MB with no minimum and
>I'm still looking at a 50% increase when the data bundle is removed.
>
>That's more than good enough for me so I'll be sending printouts of
>those spreadsheets, along with all the e-mail communication, to
>Vodafone requesting termination of contract and a PAC. Let's see how
>they react to that.

Some people may be interested to know that after sending a hard-copy
report to Vodafone CS detailing the 30%-50% rise that my bills would
suffer under this new pricing policy, I've had a reply by snail mail
telling me that they're sending me a PAC and that my account will be
cancelled as soon as the PAC is used.

Just a pity I had to jump through so many hoops just to convince someone
at Vodafone that their new pricing policy sucks, particularly for those
of us on soon-to-be-defunct 'data inclusive' bundles.

What's really amusing though is that the day after I got the snail mail,
an e-mail arrived from a different Vodafone CS representative, once more
explaining in exhaustive detail all those facts I already knew. It went
on to say that, "At present, we're unable to advise on what effect these
changes will have on the charges you incur. As mentioned above, £1 is
not a minimum daily charge and so the changes may still benefit you."

Even though another CS rep has accepted my increased figures as
justification for early account cancellation.

Left hand, have you met right hand?

--
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
"Experience with LBM compatible computers."
From a resume

Kevin Reilly wrote:

>
> What's really amusing though is that the day after I got the snail mail,
> an e-mail arrived from a different Vodafone CS representative, once more
> explaining in exhaustive detail all those facts I already knew. It went
> on to say that, "At present, we're unable to advise on what effect these
> changes will have on the charges you incur. As mentioned above, £1 is
> not a minimum daily charge and so the changes may still benefit you."
>
> Even though another CS rep has accepted my increased figures as
> justification for early account cancellation.
>
> Left hand, have you met right hand?
>

Or you can purchase 120mb for £7.50 a month.

Charlie Mitchell wrote:

> Or you can purchase 120mb for £7.50 a month.

So have they published their data bundles? You think they'd press a
button on their computer and chuck in 10MB for free for those still on
contracts and keep everyone happy. That should set them back about 62p a
month but it would mean they'd keep the customer and possibly tempt them
to go for the bigger pack.

Is anyone from Vodafone reading this?

Mark.

Mark Coley wrote:

>
> Is anyone from Vodafone reading this?
>
> Mark.

Yes, me

Charlie Mitchell wrote:
> Mark Coley wrote:
>
>>
>> Is anyone from Vodafone reading this?
>>
>> Mark.
>
> Yes, me

OK, so will the data package allow SSH communication, or will that come
under the 'could be voip, could be p2p, could in fact be anything so
will be outside the bundle and attract a minimum charge of 5p'???

Though what happens if there is a data session in progress (say normal
web browsing), and then the odd bit of intermittent p2p takes place. How
will the session(s) be identified? Will it be 5p for the whole lot? Or
5p everytime a new p2p is noticed?

Mark.

Kevin Reilly wrote:
> On Thu, 17 May 2007 Charlie Mitchell wrote:
>
>> Or you can purchase 120mb for £7.50 a month.
>
> This is EXACTLY the sort of thing I'm talking about. In the last ten
> days or so I've had dealings with at least five individuals working for
> Vodafone CS and not one of them, including the guy who verified my
> spreadsheet calculations and confirmed that my costs would go up,
> mentioned a new bundle to replace the existing £9 Text And Data bundle
> that's being dropped.
>
> I'm assuming that this MAY be the information I would have eventually
> received had I registered interest in the new Monthly Browsing Bundle
> (an option that only appeared on the website midway through all this
> chaos). But again I have to ask: why must the customer jump through all
> these complicated hoops just to get a straight answer?
>

It was only released to staff today.

Mark Coley wrote:
> Charlie Mitchell wrote:
>> Mark Coley wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> Is anyone from Vodafone reading this?
>>>
>>> Mark.
>>
>> Yes, me
>
> OK, so will the data package allow SSH communication, or will that come
> under the 'could be voip, could be p2p, could in fact be anything so
> will be outside the bundle and attract a minimum charge of 5p'???
>
> Though what happens if there is a data session in progress (say normal
> web browsing), and then the odd bit of intermittent p2p takes place. How
> will the session(s) be identified? Will it be 5p for the whole lot? Or
> 5p everytime a new p2p is noticed?
>
> Mark.

As far as I know, so far the system isn't capable of telling
what data is what, that's something that is being worked on
though. If you want to use MSN/Yahoo!/AOL chat etc then there
are plenty of web based browsers that should work.

The new live portal is very good though, it has a new
rendering device that makes web pages fit to your mobile phone
screen.

On Thu, 17 May 2007 Charlie Mitchell wrote:

>It was only released to staff today.

Thanks for the honesty! Things are starting to make sense, now.

As many of us may have suspected, you're as hamstrung by lack of
information as the rest of us yet apparently can't say as much in
official correspondence even though such knowledge tends eventually to
leak out elsewhere. Surely the Powers That Be at Vodafone must realise
what this does to customer confidence?

Problems like this are exacerbated by the communications style used by
CS staff, some of whose e-mails come across as absolutely authoritative
even when the information they're providing is a) inconsistent between
individuals and b) apparently based on incomplete knowledge.

I'm probably going to be incommunicado for a week or so and by the time
I return I should be armed with both my PAC and a more solid idea of
what Vodafone's data options are to be post-June 1st. Sad to say it's
extremely unlikely I'll remain with Vodafone even if the new bundle
works in my favour, partly because there are similar offers from
competitors already in place (with accurate information available for
some time now) but mainly because I've had enough of being given the
run-around and trickle-fed snippets of information when all I need are
straight answers.

Vodafone certainly aren't the only company to work in this way (it seems
to be becoming very common on the service side of most businesses) but
my experiences in the last week or so have led me to the point where I
simply can't trust any short-term answers I get from Vodafone's
customer-facing elements. And if there's no trust, how I can continue to
buy the service with confidence?

--
Kev
__________________________________________________________________________
"Somewhere between real and real real."
Dan Quayle

"Charlie Mitchell" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...

> Or you can purchase 120mb for £7.50 a month.

Is that the only bundle option and is it available from June 1 or later?

--
John