HTC Desire Vodafone 500mb Fair Usage Policy

DarkConvict

Thank you tom, i would be interested in knowing the answers that N20Y1D posted up yesterday.

TheLibertine

Vodafone_company_representative wrote: »

Hi DarkConvict,

I am chasing answers to the list of questions raised here, so any that I can answer, I will

Tom

Web Relations Team

Vodafone UK

Hi Tom,

Will you change the following at the bottom of your official statement?

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

Why can't Vodafone just be honest about this? I know you havn't come up with these figs yourself but they have been comprehensively disproved are are misleading. Why won't you start separating smartphones out from your descriptions of data usage. Someone reading that who signs up to a Desire/X10 contract will find actually that they can't read 8,000 bbc news stories

andywicks

Just posted this on the VF eForum. I think it sums up the questions quite a few are asking:

AndYWicks_on_VF_eForum wrote:

Tom,

- If I continue at my current usage levels (1.8GB/month for last three months) will charges be applied to my account that were not previously applied?

- If charges are applied at the rate of £5 per additional 500MB, would I be charged for all usage over 500MB?

- If charges are applied on all usage over 500MB, this would constitute an additional charge of £15 per month. As this would clearly be more than a 10% increase on my monthly bill (as my usage has never even approached £150/month), can you please state whether I would be able to evoke Clause 11.2.c of the Terms and Conditions and terminate my contract WITHOUT PENALTY?


It is not unreasonable to expect a decisive response to this enquiry as I am governed by the Terms and Conditions that were in affect when I signed my most recent contract last year.

Regards

Andy

Andy

MattJ_2

Just had a phone call from T-Mobile advising me to contact OFCOM, Watch Dog, Consumer Direct etc, as I asked them, as a competitor, for some advice and some info on how phone companies make such changes.

Norro

It seems to me that Vodafone are simply sticking their heads into the sand that these new devices are used differently to older phones. In the past they were a niche market and so obviously only a low percentage could fully make use of them however as phones like the Desire are pushing them mainstream that 3% is only going to rise.

They would like to pretend that this 3% are abusers but in actual fact 500Mb is simply not enough for everyday use, and it is the scaremongering of added charges that is keeping people from using their phones freely. It is very easy to rack that up that amount simply through surfing the web, let alone using any of the media streaming features that they are using to sell it. At 3G speeds it would be possible to use up the entire monthly allowance in less than 10 minutes! Although it seems as if VF are backtracking on the way they were trying to sneak in these charges, they haven't budged on giving a more sensible allowance. The stats that they give for no of pages downloaded, etc. are completely unrealistic.

danielz000

MattJ wrote: »

Just had a phone call from T-Mobile advising me to contact OFCOM, Watch Dog, Consumer Direct etc, as I asked them, as a competitor, for some advice and some info on how phone companies make such changes.

Classy! Maybe Everything everywhere can have a street fight with nothing nowhere! I know who I'll be cheering for!

DarkConvict

Well i've spread news of this changes via my facebook status (first time logged in for ages) and invited people to go and look for themselves what to make of it.

andywicks

AndyWicks,_on_12_May_2010_-_10:26_AM wrote:

Tom,

- If I continue at my current usage levels (1.8GB/month for last three months) will charges be applied to my account that were not previously applied?

- If charges are applied at the rate of £5 per additional 500MB, would I be charged for all usage over 500MB?

- If charges are applied on all usage over 500MB, this would constitute an additional charge of £15 per month. As this would clearly be more than a 10% increase on my monthly bill (as my usage has never even approached £150/month), can you please state whether I would be able to evoke Clause 11.2.c of the Terms and Conditions and terminate my contract WITHOUT PENALTY?


It is not unreasonable to expect a decisive response to this enquiry as I am governed by the Terms and Conditions that were in affect when I signed my most recent contract last year.

Regards

Andy

I have just been speaking wiith Jakub Hrabovsky, Vodafone's head of web relations. He has been able to provide responses to my questions and is happy for me to post his responses here. The wording below is mine but the overall messages are what Jakub said.

1. As of the 1st of June, Vodafone will be implementing a text service to notify 'heavy' users that they have used their allowance. The exact wording of this text is still being clarified. Jakub thought heavy users would be all users who used over 500MB. No additional charges will be applied to their account at this stage.

2. If they continue their heavy usage in the following month, they will be called by someone from Vodafone to discuss what options they have - either reducing usage, upgrading to a Mobile Broadband bundle or having charges applied to their account in subsequent months. No additional charges will be applied to their account at this stage.

3. If the users doesn't take an additional bundle and their heavy usage continues then they will be charged at the rate of £5 per additional 500MB. Jakub confirmed that if these charges were to lead to an increase in your total bill of more than 10% then you should have grounds to terminate your agreement under clause 11.2.c. without incurring early termination charges.



- Jakub confirmed that no-one will be charged for excessive usage before they have been contacted by a vodafone representative.

- Vodafone are still trying to clarify the definition of 'excessive usage'

- Jakub said that it is highly unlikely that customers who use in the region of 500-600 MB per month will incur additional charges.

- There are discussions going on with their legal department around the following clause in the Terms and Conditions:

Priceplan_Terms_and_Conditions_from_1st_July_2009_said: wrote:

27. All Vodafone services offered free or under unlimited subscription are subject to our Fair Use Policy. If, in the reasonable opinion of Vodafone, your use is excessive, we may ask you to moderate your usage. If, after we have asked you to moderate your usage, you fail to do so, we reserve the right to:
(a ) charge you for the excessive element of your usage at your price plan's standard rate;
(b ) throttle your usage; or
(c ) suspend or terminate your service in accordance with your airtime terms and conditions.

The clarification is around "your price plan's standard rate". It has previously been confirmed on the Vodafone eForum that no pricing structure has been in place for this and so this might require a small change to the Terms and Conditions.

Jakub also provided more information on the 3% figure previously quoted. This is the number of Mobile Internet users who use 500MB in a month. He also used the figure of 1% to describe the number of customers whose use is 'excessive'.

I also raised the question about why the 500MB limit was deemed to be sufficient to most smartphone users whilst it was decided that 1GB was needed for an iPhone or Nexus1. He said that this was confusing and would be looked into, but was not able to provide a more detailed response.

Andy

DarkConvict

So as it stands, if VF won't let you cancel now just purposely start hammering your internet connection just to be sure.

The 3% figure i don't argue is those that use 500MB or more a month, however that is going to be 3% of all people with internet bundles. Point being it is bundled with packages and the user may personally not use the internet on the phone or not have a phone capable of such internet usage. However the newer smartphones use internet significantly. Now if they honestly redid their figures on people using smartphones released in the last 24 months the figure would likely show a much higher average usage.

N20Y1D

andywicks wrote: »

1. As of the 1st of June, Vodafone will be implementing a text service to notify 'heavy' users that they have used their allowance. The exact wording of this text is still being clarified. Jakub thought heavy users would be all users who used over 500MB. No additional charges will be applied to their account at this stage.

2. If they continue their heavy usage in the following month, they will be called by someone from Vodafone to discuss what options they have - either reducing usage, upgrading to a Mobile Broadband bundle or having charges applied to their account in subsequent months. No additional charges will be applied to their account at this stage.

3. If the users doesn't take an additional bundle and their heavy usage continues then they will be charged at the rate of £5 per additional 500MB. Jakub confirmed that if these charges were to lead to an increase in your total bill of more than 10% then you should have grounds to terminate your agreement under clause 11.2.c. without incurring early termination charges.

Thanks for the info, they really dont appear to know what they are doing, only this morning Tom stated this was vodafones official statement which seems to be contardicted by what Jakub has told you:

The minority of our customers (less then 3 percent) who do come close will receive a text telling them they are approaching their data allowance and advising them to monitor their usage going forward. At this point customers will not be charged anything more.

If after receiving several such alerts, over a period of few months, customers continue to use excessive amounts of data they will be contacted by Vodafone and advised to upgrade to another data plan to avoid incurring unnecessary additional charges.

Customers will be able to make an informed decision on whether to continue, limit their use or change to a different price plan, giving them total control of their spend.