HTC Desire Vodafone 500mb Fair Usage Policy

DarkConvict

TheLibertine wrote: »

Posted Today, 03:48 PM
jimbo372, on 07 May 2010 - 03:43 PM, said:
...and PcPro http://www.pcpro.co....undle-data-fees

and Broadband Genie http://www.broadband...bundle-data-use

and Thinkq http://www.thinq.co....bandwidth-hogs/

and HTCPedia http://htcpedia.com/...page=1&p_page=1

and Fonehome http://www.fonehome....dle-allowances/

and Recombu http://recombu.com/n...-is_M11693.html

ElectricPig http://www.electricp...ause-web-worry/

Electronista http://www.electroni...phone.data.use/

Reghardware http://www.reghardwa...bundle_charges/

Spread to ZDNET as well now - http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/mobile-working/2010/05/07/vodafone-starts-charging-for-out-of-bundle-data-usage-40088874/

TheLibertine

So I think we have two issues here...

1. People who want to cancel their contract with Vodafone, and therefore are looking at the specifics of this in relation to contract T&C and legality

2. People (like myself) who wish to stay with Vodafone and pressure them into a change of policy, either reinstating the FUP or raising the limit in tune with the iPhone/Nexus1 to 1GB, which while still not perfect would represent a compromise in my opinion. Though this still involves the minutae of T&C and legality of the change.

While we need to keep all of this under the same banner we also need to realise they need slightly different approaches.

---

For those wishing to pressure Vodafone one thing I don't think has been mentioned is an attempt to pressure HTC. While it may prove fruitless I think it's worthwhile for people to email HTC about the issue, the coverage on the web, and specifically the unfair way in which their brand new top of the range phones (desire/legend) are being treated by the UK's 'premier' carrier in relation to the iPhone/Nexus1, and therefore how customers are being limited in using them. I'll put up a template later today if you don't have time to draft your own email.

It would also be handy if people could put up some template letters (these things take a while) for complaining to Ofcom/the ASA/any other consumers groups you can think of. But they need to be drafted to appeal to each organisation as each has specifics about what you can complain about.

We have to understand that 99pc of people don't have the time or will to compile these things, understandably of course, so to get weight of numbers we have to make it easy, then point people to the template and where they need to send it via Facebook etc and on this forum.

Contacts
From what I can find the following emails are Vodafone top brass but maybe out of date, can anyone help out with further suggestions for Vodafone people and also HTC people...these I can't find anyway, even just a customer service email.

Vodafone worldwide Vittorio Colao, Chief Executive webrelations@vodafone.com
Vodafone UK Guy Laurence, Chief Executive webrelations@vodafone.com

Little_Maya

Personally, I'm not going after cancellation of contract "just because". IF they reinstate the FUP as per the contract I agreed to, or make the hard cap at 1GB then that's fine with me and obviously would be happy to continue until the end of my contract. However if they decided to push through the (unfair) changes as indicated in their forum, then I will pursue contract cancellation through breach of T&Cs.

MattJ_2

Cher Wang Chairman of HTC
HT Cho Board Member of HTC; Chairman of HTC Foundation
Peter Chou CEO of HT
Fred Liu COO of HTC

No contact details that I can find though

MattJ_2

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick update to consolidate all the information we've given over the last few days and clarify a few points.

Firstly, a lot of the feedback from you all is that we've not notified you of the change. We haven't even officially announced the change yet and will notify everyone well in advance of doing so. The text messages received by you were sent in error, so nobody will be charged this month. We will be introducing texts message alerts as of June 1st, and we will notify all customers of that 14 days before as per our Terms and Conditions.
There's no need to worry about this change, as only a very tiny percentage of our customers actually exceed 500MB of data usage in a month.



Here's the official statement detailing the changes:

Vodafone UK to give customers total control of their mobile data spend

7 May 2010

In June we'll be introducing a free text service to tell our contract customers when they're approaching the upper limit of their data bundle. We'll send them a text before they reach the limit and tell them how much it will cost them to use more data. Customers can then make a decision on whether to continue, or limit their use, giving them total control of their spend.

Handheld bundles range between 500MB and 1GB.

500MB means you can read and reply to 10,000 emails, download 24 Google maps and read 8,000 BBC News stories. Today, a tiny fraction of our customers use their full allowance.

If customers do find that they’re approaching the end of their bundle the costs are as follows:


Current charge Out of bundle charge

No handheld data bundle 50p a day for 25MB 50p for an additional 10MB

Handheld data bundle £5 a month, or £7.50 with a flexi-bundle £5 for an additional 500MB



Since the initial information given on the eForum, some questions were asked, which we answer here:

Definition of excessive use?
Excessive use is listed in the current Terms and Conditions and applies for now, but when Out Of Bundle charging is introduced, the terms will be amended and so this won’t apply.

Will I be allowed to cancel my account under Clause 7?
We’ ll be giving you 14 days' notice before introducing Out Of Bundle charging which complies with clause 7a. You'll be entitled to end your contract if you can show that the introduction of the new charges has increased your total call and usage charges by more than 10%. This needs to be compared to the same amount of usage in the previous month. You must also write to us within the 14 day window indicating that you want to end your contract. (Address to write to is: Vodafone House, The Connection, Newbury, Berkshire RG14 2FN)

When will I receive the notice/when would the Ts&Cs change?
You will receive a notification SMS well in advance of any changes taking place

Why is there one allowance for the iPhone and Nexus One and another for the rest of the Smartphones you range?
This is because we offer different price plans with different handsets.

Thanks,

Tom

eForum Team

TheLibertine

Ok because this thread is getting quite hard to follow for people coming across it for the first time I've just set up a new thread purely for posting letter templates and contacts and the info people need to complain. I'm just trying to make it easy for people to do constructive stuff, and have also named the thread something that makes more sense.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/32637705#Comment_32637705

I've asked people to not to post on it and instead pointed them to this thread for general discussion.

I'm still not on facebook so would be good if someone could go and add the facebook groups to the new thread. I'll add the stuuf about the ASA to it and various other things scattered across this thread. I'm going to try and get an HTC letter template on there this avo, but like I said if anyone else wants to draft templates please feel free it does take a while

MattJ_2

I'll post on FB groups link to the new thread

Underworld_3

MattJ wrote: »

Based on the above...

If VF say that this 500MB has ALWAYS been "Hard" (I know thier staff have said it hasn't been the case, but if it had...) Then if I ever went over the 500mb by say 1mb, I would have to pay for £1 for 15mb usage then pay per mb at £2... fair enough.

With the proposed changes, we would have to pay a minimum of £5, even if we only use 1mb more. Therefore an increase anyway - 5 times increase for someone who would potentially only go over by 1mb.

u stole my line :santa2:

MattJ_2

It's also worth noting that Bitter Wallet, who wrote this article:

http://www.bitterwallet.com/can-i-cancel-my-vodafone-contract-new-statement-on-new-data-charges-but-theyre-still-wrong/29277

Will be putting up a letter template next week

Underworld_3

what i suggest is, whoever's monthly bill is in the next few days, use the internet to its full, over 500mb.. you will then be able to count this bill as "previous" and might be easier to cancel the policy