HTC Desire Vodafone 500mb Fair Usage Policy

nm83

What I think they are referring to, would be the addition of their Mobile Broadband tariffs:

£15/month for 3GB
£25/month for 5GB

Laughable really ...

essex_chris

I've just had a call from somebody at Vodafone, and i must admit i cannot recall her name. She was perfectly polite and straightforward about all my issues and i believe that they are now resolved. At least as certain as i can be.

Issue 1 - Since upgrading to an HTC Magic i thought i was on a £35 a month tariff with a 50% discount; 600mins/3000texts/500Mb FUP Mobile Internet, but i have been being charged £40 with a 50% discount.

They cannot check to see what was agreed at the time, and since the difference is not a lot they are going to agree with what i thought was agreed. I will now be charged £17.50 a month, and i will get the £2.50 a month spent so far back as a credit on my account.

Issue 2 - When i upgraded i paid £9.99 for Saturday delivery, only to find when the HTC Magic was delivered that there was no 2Gb memory card inside, so i could not for example take a photo, then email it to somebody. I called and since they had no stock of 2Gb cards i would be sent a 4Gb card. I should have had my Saturday delivery charge credited to my account but i cannot see this on my account history or bills.

This is being corrected by a £10 credit being applied to my account.

Issue 3 - When i upgraded i was sold a tariff with 600mins/3000texts/500Mb FUP Mobile Internet. I knew that i would be looking for work and would no longer have wifi available most of the time so wanted a FUP tariff for data so that if i did go over it as a normal user but not an abuser i would not be charged - i would be contacted and advised to monitor my data use.

We discussed the various announcements on the Vodafone eForum, and the coverage of the issue so far - contradictory comments from Vodafone staff, possibility of being in breach of contract etc. I have been told to expect a formal letter announcing the June1st service which will text message customers who go over their allowance. It will only be after repeated excess use (over 500mb) that any charge will be made, and at this point it will be £5 for 500mb extra in my case.

I am happy with that, if there was an immediate charge for going over 500Mb i would be seeking to cancel my contract.

I will wait and see what i receive, and confirm that the credits discussed are applied to my account.

Of course it is unsatisfactory that i have to jump through these hoops to get what i was simply offered in the first place, but i am not seeking compensation. I will simply hold Vodafone to their word, and if this trust is broken i will take the matter further.

Thanks all for your comments and advice. It has been helpful in guiding what to do. :beer:

DarkConvict

Thanks for taking the time to post that up chris

N20Y1D

Any chance of some answers Tom, as everytime i click refresh its eatting into my data limit.........

danielz000

N20Y1D wrote: »

Any chance of some answers Tom, as everytime i click refresh its eatting into my data limit.........

How many of your 10,000 emails do you have left mate?

N20Y1D

danielz000 wrote: »

How many of your 10,000 emails do you have left mate?

it was 8,000 wasnt it? or have they changed it again


Having reread the latest statement it seems that they will only advise you to upgrade to another data plan after a 'few months' they cannot actually charge you anything extra at that point it is only if you then "continue to use excessive amounts of data over a longer period of time" that they can charge

so if they deem 4 months to be a few months, then according to the wording they would have to wait for another 4 months and then some (otherwise its not a longer period of time) before they could penalise you?

CaptainD_2

Awesome, thanks to this thread just managed to cancel my Nokia N900 on vf contract 4 months in- (no cancellation charge)

Its an awesome phone, which I'm kind of gutted about handing back, but then again they have made such a pigs ear of it its really not worth having it anymore with them and I'm glad to see the back of it finally. I want a smartphone, not an ornament!

Same old story, discovered 'unlimited' internet data was limited to 500MB FUP after 3 weeks of ownership and they wouldn't take it back becase I'd had it too long (even though they clearly misued the word 'unlimited'; how would I have ever taken that the wrong way lol)

I'm just so grateful i managed to read this forum before they snuck that little change in and kept me tied down for another 12+ months and earned another £5/£10 per month charge for something that should have been free anyway based on my original contract

Currently I seem to be throttled to 2G anyway and have been for a couple of weeks, I always go over the 500MB FUP as its nowhere near enough on these phones, admittedly not by much though, I always use less than 1GB.

Vodafone suck so much, this little turn of events and the underhand and downright sneaky way they set about implementing these changes really was the straw that broke the camels back for me. I'm just so happy I don't have to speak to any more of their customer prevention advisers any longer and can just get on with my life.

So VF, thanks for dropping the bat and leaving me with that window of opportunity to cancel the whole deal, thanks also to everyone on this thread who provided me with the info I needed to sever all ties with them.

:T

danielz000

N20Y1D wrote: »

so if they deem 4 months to be a few months, then according to the wording they would have to wait for another 4 months and then some (otherwise its not a longer period of time) before they could penalise you?

I have no idea how to interpret the latest announcement... but it certainly sounds like they're up to more dirty tricks to me... It seems like they want to go ahead with what they were going to do but not amend the FUP...

We have seen quite a bit of speculation

speculation on the official announcements he must mean?

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

I guess that would be the upper limit of unlimited wouldn't it...

advising them to monitor their usage going forward. At this point customers will not be charged anything more

back tracking

Something smells really bad to me...

TheLibertine

The 500MB usage means, you can read and reply to thousands of emails, download 24 Google maps and read 8,000 BBC News stories.



Guys can someone with some technical knowledge give a realistic idea of what 500mb gives you on a smartphone. I.e. without just guessing, something concrete that we can put to Vodafone and try an get them to stop printing what they reckon.

Web pages / you tube / iplayer / etc etc

Thanks

danielz000

N1 CaptainD! Shame you had to give the phone back though!