vodafone: the competition also suck, why should we improve?

[waider]

I got billed for €50 on my last Vodafone bill, which I noticed when it hit my bank account today. This breaks down as roughly €25 for the basic subscription, €10 for 3MB of GPRS data, and about €7 on calls, with the remainder being rounding error (on my part) and VAT at 21%. I figured this was too much to be paying given that my phone usage these days amounts largely to text messages, of which my €25 plan is supposed to grant me a certain number for free, in addition to a certain amount of talk time. Of course, there are catches.

• Long text messages aren't included. If you run over 160 characters, and your phone helpfully offers to send it as two messages or whatever, you get charged - apparently at data rates
• International messages also aren't included. Texting the US costs me 20¢ a go, and there are no price plans which cover this.
• I see a charge here for "Vodafone live! content". Which is fetched via GPRS, and thus you'd imagine would be covered by my 3MB per month allocation. Apparently not. On top of that, each GPRS connection incurs a minimum 20¢ charge. I don't actually know if this applies to "proper" GPRS use, i.e. that which originates from my laptop, as opposed to that which originates from the WAP browser on the phone.

Obviously I don't need the GPRS add-on, since it's not being used except on the rare occasions when I'm out of reach of a friendly dialup line or other source of bits. Just as well, too, because it's no longer offered as part of the Personal price plans - you can get it on one of the Business price plans, which have a higher entry level. And if it's not being used for the only use I do make of GPRS - the WAP browser - then what's the point?

So I had a look at the new price plans, and the bottom of the range is the €19/mo one which gets me 30 minutes of talk time, 30 texts, and some number of free calls to a number I designate (which are independant of the 30 minutes of talk time). I figure I'll overshoot the text limit, but I'd need to overshoot by more than 200 messages in order to hit the €50/month minimum I've been paying for the last while.

So I make with the clicky on the site, and I notice they're offering two add-ons up-front: 79¢ International Roaming and 79¢ "Ireland-Wide Tarrif". After some poking at the terms and conditions it appears that the latter is a version of the former, except exclusively applied to the island of Ireland (I wonder if that makes the Unionists unhappy?) despite calls to and from the six counties being, technically, international calls. What I couldn't find is what this actually means. It's not obvious whether the 79¢ is a one-off charge per call, or per month, or per minute, nor what it compares against - I would have thought the latter would be a no-brainer marketting point: "Save billions with our 79¢ whosit!" seems a damn sight more obvious than making me read legalese to no discernable benefit. In the end, I figured neither feature is something I'm likely to need either in the short term or on an ongoing basis, so I opted for the basic package and nothing more.

While I was there, I figured I'd look at upgrade options for my current phone, which has developed an annoying habit of switching itself off if stressed in certain ways (and no, I don't mean "such as throwing it at the wall"). Vodafone do not, apparently, have any sort of public statement of how you qualify for upgrades. If you check their FAQ, it says, "ask us if you qualify, or we can email you when you qualify" (via the website). I'd assumed that since the phones come with a rider that you've just signed up to a 12-month contract, the periodicity was 12 months, but it's been 13 since I got the current phone and no sign of anything yet. Perhaps when the current billing cycle comes around (next Sunday) I will be eligible, or perhaps I'll go all whiny again.

Ultimately, though, this faffing about with what qualifies for free, and what various special offers actually mean, and all the opacity is the norm for the industry. There isn't a single other phone company who'll give you any more information on how any of this works. And two things fall out from that: there's no point in me taking my indignation to another company, and there's no incentive for any of the companies to change their ways. It sucks, but it's the way it is.

Comments

[opadit.livejournal.com]

I would pay good money for a cell phone plan that was a calucation of (1) a flat rate per second of all airtime, regardless of the time of day or week, including "live content" and web browsing; plus (2) a fraction of a cent per character in text messages; plus (3) a standard utility tax, period.

Everybody's cell or land line plan includes different services, too, so it's terribly time-consuming to try to compare prices, too. Locally, Verizon's "basic residential package" might include call waiting and regional long distance for one price, with caller ID for a little more; but then Cavalier might include call waiting and caller ID but not regional long distance in their "basic residential package." The different premium services are added at different schedules as the prices increase, so comparisons are useless.

BUT EVERYTHING IS ALWAYS BETTER WITH FREE-MARKET COMPETITION.

[eejitalmuppet.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Reading this has just reinforced my Luddite status. Occasionally, I think about getting a cellphone, mostly for text messages. Then I hear complaints such as this and think "fukkit".