Vodafone starts charging customers for browsing Live!

scaldyflash

Just bumping this one up because it is important.:money: :money:

scaldyflash

scaldyflash wrote: »

Just bumping this one up because it is important.:money: :money:

And again... Sorry :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Dom9171

I wrote to Vodafone about this a week ago. Having had no responce today I sent the same letter via email. I had a number of complaints.

1. They have re-debited my account with £30. The £30 was a 'goodwill' payment given to me last month due to them getting the delivery of the phone wrong twice. Having given it me it seems when they think my back is turned they can stick it back on again.

2. The new charges for Vodafonelive.

3. Not calling me back to discuss both the above after saying they would.

4. Not advising me I lost my rollover minutes when I upgraded recently. I was told no such thing in fact I was advised I was on the same deal.

My main concern is the new charges. I am fairly confident they will ultimately have to release me from my current contract if I push hard enough. Will keep you informed

ajbaker

Thankfully I am not affected by this. Whilst pricing remains so high I absolutely refuse to browse the providers web pages or the rest of the internet - for that reason a simple call plan does me fine.

However I thoroughly agree with everyone here - these changes are incredible. What makes it worse is that they are still advertising free access to Vodafone Live on the rest of their site

The prices are not clear at all. Browsing 5 'made-for-mobile' pages costs 25p. That must be about 2p/kilobyte. That's 4 x more expensive than Virgin which I thought were the most costly. Anything over 50k (upto 15mb) in one day will cost you £1. That equates to £30 for accessing 1.5mb over the period of a month. Insane.

ajbaker

These changes in availability of service must be sufficient for anyone to terminate their contract early as allowed by the terms and conditions. What was now free is now being charged for, increasing your bills by well over 6% which is quite a common limit in T&Cs.

Out of interest, how much did access to the internet cost before these changes?

ajbaker

A further thought: doesn't this make browsing more expensive on a contract phone than on PAYG??

PAYG web access is charged at £7.50/mb per month. If you browse 2mb in a month thats £15. Assuming 68k browsing per day on a contract phone, that equates to £1 per day or £30/month. Twice the price of PAYG....

scaldyflash

ajbaker wrote: »

These changes in availability of service must be sufficient for anyone to terminate their contract early as allowed by the terms and conditions. What was now free is now being charged for, increasing your bills by well over 6% which is quite a common limit in T&Cs.

Out of interest, how much did access to the internet cost before these changes?

Browsing on most sites was free and was certainly free up to 15mb per month (I think) Anyway I have been with VF for almost two years (recently re-signed up for 12 months) and have never paid anything for roaming. However I will now from June have to pay up to £30 per month just to check the news, weather and a bit of sport results daily. Scandalous.

I have written to the Managing Director expressing my disgust but as yet have not received a reply. (No surprise there really !) :mad: :mad: :mad:

toasterman

Its very sketchy.

Something else thats sketchy - when I had my Panasonic GD87 - I had one and my mate had one. He got his about a month before mine - both from Vodafone.
They'd both been modified by Vodafone - but had slightly different menus. When you went browsing the web, his had a counter that told you when online how many kb's you had used. On mine, they'd removed the counter so I had no idea what I was being charged.

I've never paid for data on Vodafone I don't think (except mms messages, etc) - the 3-4mb allowance per month covers me for everything I need.

The costs don't add up tho for anything data related.
Text message - 10p (200bytes maybe.. of data?)
MMS picture message of say 35k (~175times the size) is like 36p.
Yet if 1mb of data is charged at 7.50 (which is ridiculously expensive), then a picture message should only be 26p.

Needless to say as Vodafone's call reception has been a little sketchy around my area of late (no signal reported in Clifton Village and Farrington Gurney - at least 3 bars on my work Orange phone at the same time), I'll be off their network as soon as possible.
Vodafone must be by far the most expensive network for data now.

PeterPiper007

I must absolutely agree, Vodafone's customer service skills are an absolute joke. What was once considered an excellent company has now become an arrogant and totally inept one.

The mere fact that these charges have been introduced as a 'benefit' to customers:

vodafone wrote:

Good news – for the first time, we’re about to bring you everything you love about the Internet, wherever you want it, on your mobile phone."

...please how condescending!

But the icing on the cake must be:

vodafone wrote:

The £1 per day charge and monthly data subscription cannot be used for Voice Over IP services such as Skype, or Peer-to-Peer communication services such as instant messaging or file sharing. These services are charged separately at £2 per MB, with a 5p minimum charge for each data session.

Instead of embracing WiFi they are trying to dissuade customers from using it by charging extreme prices.

There is a huge gap in the market for any large broadband provider to step-up to the plate and start providing VoIP on phones via WiFi networks around the UK. Moreover, customers would love it if they just had to pay one fee per month for broadband access on their mobiles and home PCs.

GSM is old technology and the current network providers need to face facts.

toasterman

What I love about the internet is a wealth of information at my fingertips, msn messenger, mse, instant price comparisons, bbc listen again.. they're not giving me any of this....while charging me more for the same services they've been providing for ages.