HTC Desire Vodafone 500mb Fair Usage Policy

essex_chris

I have in the last 7 years i have been a customer with Vodafone experienced a few ups and downs prior to the last 6months, and to be honest i have always considered the acid test of customer service to be what happens when things go wrong, and how they deal with it. Vodafone have always had an exemplary record for me. You might need to push a little, but that's understandable - if you didn't there are people who will always try and take firms for a ride and get away with it. A firm but fair approach, being clear about what you want or expect, and that's always served me well when dealing with phone accounts, electrical equipment warranties, customer service in all it's forms.

This mobile internet situation reminds me of the scene in Fight Club where there is an assesment being made in regards to a car recall after a fault causes an accident;

A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.

I have to look at the response by Vodafone over the last month as being in direct relation to the above. Harsh perhaps, but fair.

essex_chris

Just to add - of course i am not comparing mobile internet charges to loss of life through part failure - but the approach to it from a business point of view seems to come straight from the pages of the same playbook.

N20Y1D

Vodafone have just closed the thread on the e-forum and updated the announcement:

Updated 10/06/2010

Vodafone Out Of Bundle Charging

What is Vodafone doing?

From 1st June we will be introducing a free text notification service to let you know when you are coming close to exceeding your 500MB data bundle limit.
If you continue to exceed your data allowance we will contact you to discuss the options available, it may be that another data bundle is more suitable for you.
If you continue to exceed your data allowance after receiving several text alerts and a call from one of our representatives, we will send you a final notification warning that you will be charged for continued usage out of your data bundle.

What will I be charged if I continue to exceed my data allowance?

• No handheld data bundle – 50p a day for 25MB & 50p for additional 10MB
• Handheld data bundle – Handheld data bundle £5 a month, or £7.50 with a flexi-bundle £5 for an additional 500MB

What have you changed?

We have introduced a free notification texting service notifying you if you are close to exceeding your data allowance.
We will now be enforcing our fair use policy / out of bundle charges if our data allowance is continuously exceeded over several months. We have always reserved the right to do this in your Price Plan documentation - however we have never charged our customers.

Why are you doing this now?

It is unlikely that you will be affected by this price variation as the majority of our customers (more than 97 percent) never exceed their data allowance. However, to ensure we can maintain an exceptional level of data services for all our customers, we need to prevent a few customers excessively using data at the expense of others.

Why have you changed my contract without telling me?

We have not changed your contract. We are varying our charges for exceeding out of bundle data usage. We will not charge you immediately and we will send you several SMS notifications and call you before we introduce additoinal charges.

We mention in your Price Plan that use of your data outside your data allowance will incur additional charges. We have not charged in the past.

Why have you not notified me of a price variation? My contract says you must give me 14 days notice.

That is correct. However as only a few of our customers ever exceed their data allowance we will be notifying them personally of the price variations when it applies to them. We will be sending out several text messages out to our customers if they exceed their usage and we will notify them at least 14 days before they ever incur any additional data charges.

Have we ever said a fair use policy applies / we will charge for excessive use?

We mention under the “Charges” section in your Price Plan that we may charge if you exceed your data bundle allowance.
Certain Price Plans also state that a fair use policy may apply. In this case, our fair use policy (500MB) says we may charge for additional data or throttle data usage.
Please note that we are not applying a cap. You may still exceed your data allowance without immediate charge. We will only charge you if you continue to exceed your allowance after we have sent you several reminders not to.

Can I terminate my agreement because you have changed your charges?

Your contract allows you to terminate if the changes to our charges means you have suffer an increase in your total call and usage charges by more than 10%. This will be compared to your previous month’s usage. However you will only be entitled to terminate once we have introduced those charges – this will not happen unless or until you have continued to exceed your data allowance and we have notified you that we intend to charge you.

You will need to send us written notification that you intend to terminate your contract and this must be sent to us before the charges are introduced (we will give you at least 14 days notice).

Who do I write to if I feel that I have a right to terminate because of these charges?

You will not be able to terminate unless we have sent you a notice of our intention to charge you for out of bundle data usage. If after receiving this notice you feel that this has increased your total usage charges by more than 10% then you will need to write to us informing us that you want to terminate your contract. Please send your written notice to: Vodafone UK Ltd., Vodafone House, The Connection, Newbury, RG14 2FN.

How many times will you contact me before I am charged?

There isn't a predefined number of occasions. If you continuously exceed your data allowance, you will be notified and contacted first and if you choose to continue using data out of bundle you might incur charges.

What do you mean by a month?

Depending on when you joined Vodafone, it'll be either the first day of the calendar month to the last day, or it'll be a date specified on your bills right the way through to the same date of the next month. Your data allowance will be based on your monthly usage.

Your customer services, eForum and employees are telling me different things. What is going on?

Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We will be working with our customer care teams to ensure that that the correct information is being given out by all our channels.

Your eForum is saying that you were not charging for exceeding data. I am confused.

We are sorry for the confusion. We will be charging customers who continue to exceed their data allowance after we have sent them several text messages. Our moderators always look to provide the correct information for the current situation. The honest fact is that things can change over time, but we cannot always go back over the entire eForum and remove all comments which are no longer relevant.

We aim to ensure that information is correct at the time of posting. The information in those certain posts reflected the policy at the time we were not enforcing our fair usage policy / right to charge. If you are unsure whether a moderator's post is still relevant given what is outlined here, the best way to check is to look at the date to see when the comment was posted.

Why does "Unlimited" still appear in your advertising, notifications, and with third party retailers such as Carphone Warehouse?

We are amending our advertising to reflect the allowances, and you will see this taking effect in the very near future across all communications and marketing. We are also working to ensure that third party retailers make the same changes to their advertising.

Are you offering an option to avoid excess charges by locking the internet access when I reach my data allowance?

No. We will not be providing the option to lock usage. Notification will be sent to inform you that you’ve used up your data bundle. In case you do go over your limit, you will receive several notifications over the period of three months advising you to moderate your usage and will be contacted by a Vodafone representative BEFORE you incur any charges.

Will any unused data be carried over?

Unused allowance, including any out of bundle excess should you be charged, will not be able to be carried over at the end of the billed period.



Some other information

If you’d like to monitor data usage for yourself, you could always register for Online Billing. You can see your unbilled data usage at any time during the month, as well as a sum total once your bill is produced each month.

If you feel your data usage will lead to you receiving the notifications, there are a couple of options available to you:

1) Change to our new price plans

The premium tier of our new price plans includes 1GB of data instead of 500MB.
If your current price plan has “YP” at the beginning of its code (see the first page of your bill) then you’re on the older version of the premium plans and are eligible to move to the new ones. You’ll pay the same as you currently are per month for the same allocation of minutes and texts, but with twice the data allowance. The handsets this applies to are: HTC Touch Pro 2, HTC Desire, Google Nexus One (which was previously 1GB), HTC HD2, Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, Samsung Galaxy S or Nokia N900.

If you’re on any other plan currently, then you’ll either be on an older price plan or one with “YC” or “YE” at the beginning of the code. As these plans normally have a lower monthly line rental, you can move to the premium plans which include 1GB of data, but this will involve you paying a higher amount of line rental each month or taking a drop in minutes or texts. You can’t move to any of the newer price plans which have a lower monthly line rental or commitment length than you’re currently on.

Please be aware that any discounts or special offers you’ve previously received on top of your price plan won’t necessarily be transferrable to the new one.
To change your price plan, you can call free of charge from your mobile on 191, or contact us via secure email here.

2) Stay on your current price plan

The price plan you’re currently on will stay the same, and you’ll have access to 500MB of data on a fair usage basis each month. If you frequently exceed 500MB of data usage on a monthly basis, you’ll receive the notification messages as per the explanation above.

If out of bundle charging occurs and increases your total bill by 10% or more compared to the same usage in the previous month, you’re entitled to cancel your account without penalty. Once you’ve received notification we’re going to start charging you the out of bundle rate (this will be after you’ve declined to upgrade your plan) you simply need to write to us within 14 days requesting cancellation at this address: Vodafone House, The Connection, Newbury, Berkshire, RG14 2FN

25MB Alerts

We’ve received some reports of customers receiving a notification at 25MB of usage, when in fact they’re on the 500MB Mobile Internet Bundle. We’ve collated examples of this and the matter will be resolved shortly. We don’t require any more examples at this time.

Forum Threads

This information represents all of the options available to you regarding this matter. Any future threads opened regarding this topic will be closed and linked to this announcement, or removed altogether.

Kind regards,

Tom

eForum Team

jwb9961

:mad::mad::mad::mad:

Really can't believe they've shut the thread ... tho I guess they reckon their reputation can't get any worse!

:eek:

essex_chris

I saw that - funnily enough i was just filling in the forms on the Watchdog site, but that didn't work so i lost my submission, but have just finished writing a complete account of the matter and submitting it via email.

I did have a feeling that the statement would be changed after specifically mentioning that Vodafone are saying one thing there, and then telling customer something else.

Luckily i have copies, and no doubt the page is cached at Google anyhow.

jwb9961

Just posted this on the VF Forum - locked in 40 seconds !
Not terribly keen on suppression of debate ... maybe could post on the Amnesty board?

What Vodafone don't seem to understand is how much of a marketing disaster this is ...
Word of mouth advertising is very much influenced by 'early adopters' ie most people are afraid of the bleeding edge technology so they ask the one or two connected people they know whether its a good idea or not (How many of the people on this thread get asked regularly "what laptop shall I buy/ which mobile phone shall I buy?" by friends and family? Quite a few I should imagine) So irritating these connected Mavens gives them lots of negative word of mouth advertising. Coupled with the various other websites / forums, it could become a "known fact" that vodafone have very poor customer support. If this impression is widely created, it will be very difficult to shift.
Closing the thread will lose much of the in house nature of the complaints - people will find other forums to post on. This will only increase the likelyhood that non VF customers will get a true sense of VF's attitude to customers!

N20Y1D

essex_chris wrote: »

Luckily i have copies, and no doubt the page is cached at Google anyhow.

Indeed it is:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:J08PpQt3y-sJ:forum.vodafone.co.uk/forum-53/announcement-137-updated-mobile-internet-charging/

N20Y1D

Twitter is also a good way of spreading the word.

if you search @vodafoneuk & @vodafoneukdeals you can reply to people who seem to be showing an interest in maybe switching and letting them know just what they could be signing up to.

and by including @vodafoneuk @vodafoneukdeals in your tweets anyone searching for those will see it.

Allan87

They've basically said that those who exceed the 500MB FUP continuously will get notified of a charge and then charged though? And then if that's >10% of the bill we get to cancel without an ETF? Seems a no brainer, why charge us £5 extra to risk losing hundreds on a terminated contract :huh:

N20Y1D

Allan87 wrote: »

They've basically said that those who exceed the 500MB FUP continuously will get notified of a charge and then charged though? And then if that's >10% of the bill we get to cancel without an ETF? Seems a no brainer, why charge us £5 extra to risk losing hundreds on a terminated contract :huh:

The conspiracy theorist in me reckons they have made a note on all the accounts of those who posted on that thread and will not charge us for that exact reason, which im fine with but i have an issue with them charging others without making them aware they have the right to cancel instead of just charging them and hoping they are naive enough to pay it.