Vodafone starts charging customers for browsing Live!

James_p_2

I'm currently on vodafone, about 6 months into my 18 month contract and I was thinking this might be a good opportunity to get out of it before my discount runs out(6 month 1/2 price line rental).

I've started using the web, only the vodafone website, a lot more over the last month or two but I'm not sure this will be enough to claim the new charges will cost me an extra 10%.

What do you think? What am I best doing?

Thanks

ajh1980

To keep this brief...(although i'm furious enough to go on and on!)

Signed 18 month contract with Vodafone approx 14 months ago...£30, 250 free texts (incl.picture msgs) and 250 anytime minutes.+ free vodafone live!...this was affordable on a tight budget.

Last September was informed (by text i must add!) that i would have to pay extra to send picture messages! .....i contested this heavily and got nowhere, basically it was a case of pay up or pay off the line rental of your contract.

Now its vodafone Live! .....and guess what....the same unhelpful response!

Does signing a contract mean nothing? I work in the accommodation letting industry for students where utility bills are included in the rent and if i decided to say to my tenants that they had to start paying extra for utilities mid-contract, i'm sure they would have quite a lot to say about it!...and have a leg or two to stand on!

Can anyone tell me the difference?

Any advice? or do we just have to keep doing what vodafone say and do as and when they say it?

By the way, havnt sent a picture message since September and doubt i'll be using the internet again on my phone.....hardly worth having a phone with all these nice functions on is it?! :mad:

ajbaker

ajh1980 - don't put up with what Vodafone tell you. In the T&Cs it states if they make contractual changes that would increase your bill by more than 10% then you are entitled to leave your contract. If you can show in writing that they are increasing your bill by more than 10% with the changes you are making, send your calculations to them and request they cancel your contract.

ajh1980

ajbaker wrote: »

ajh1980 - don't put up with what Vodafone tell you. In the T&Cs it states if they make contractual changes that would increase your bill by more than 10% then you are entitled to leave your contract. If you can show in writing that they are increasing your bill by more than 10% with the changes you are making, send your calculations to them and request they cancel your contract.

Thanks ajbaker, It appears that the only way i can do this would be, with me spending approx £32 each month basic, to spend an extra £3.20 on picture messages and then send in a letter showing the extra 10% costs?

Alternatively, wait a couple of months for my contact to finish, then get the hell out of there!

Does anyone know if the other networks have crafty contract t&c's, or are we all subject to picking the best from a bad bunch!?

think ive been with vodafone almost 10 years now.....time for a change, they clearly don't have any regard for loyalty.....bit like HSBC but thats another story! :mad:

Alfie_E

ajh1980 wrote: »

Thanks ajbaker, It appears that the only way i can do this would be, with me spending approx £32 each month basic, to spend an extra £3.20 on picture messages and then send in a letter showing the extra 10% costs?

If you hardly ever use the mobile data connection for anything other than looking at Vodafone Live!, I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult. Something along the lines of...

I currently make moderate use of Vodafone Live! each day. This is currently free. My current month bill is around £32. With the announced change in pricing for the Vodafone Live! service, I estimate that this use will incur an additional charge of around £1 each day – around £31 each month. This amounts to an approximate 100% increase in charges. I therefore wish to end my contract immediately under the provision of clause 8(a)(i) of the Vodafone Terms and Conditions for pay-monthly customers.

You’d need to amend that so it contained a realistic estimate of how much more the changes would cost you. Put this in a letter, and send it recorded delivery to Vodafone’s registered offices. If you want to take your mobile number with you, also request your PAC code in this letter.

toasterman

Finally. Just got into the online billing for Vodafone.
"Wed 11 Apr 11:08 Mobile messaging + data : GPRS WAP 12KB £0.000"
Then a tick to say I didn't get charged as its included in my price plan.
Weird thing is, my price plan is this:
"18month Anytime125 STC +250Txt"...theres no mention of inclusive data at all.

Either way - they haven't been charging me for it, and from the sounds of the leaflet I received and the details online - they're going to be from now on.
So I've added up the amount of GPRS I used for the month of April.. excluding their new connection charges to gprs..so just purely amount of data per day. It doesn't go over 500k each day, so I should be charged at 0.2p per kilobyte under the new charges. I used 2212 kb throughout the month using gmail, google, bbc news..etc.
2212kb x 0.2p per kb = £4.42 (and 0.4 of a penny)

As my price plan is only 19.99 a month, that puts me over the 10% increase threshold...
So I can leave, but do I get to keep the phone?
Also, has anyone who is getting the new charges phoned to see if they offer you a deal to stay? A couple of months free line rental perhaps...?

Although if I could keep the phone, get a new one free on a new contract, sell the old one.. I'd probably end up better off.
Envirofone are offering £56.40 for the k800i... theres only one small scratch on mine and they're Ebaying for over £100 at the moment!

toasterman

I'm just looking around other networks at data charges. All very confusing as no-one charges the same way anymore.

Looking entirely at sim-only options to try and get a better comparison:

-Three- have a system of charging you 50p per hour or £1 a day on a flat rate basis. That's not going to work for me as I dip in and out and check my email at random points throughout the day.

-O2- have worse plans than Vodafone (50mins and 125 texts for the same price as I get 125mins and 250 texts for) but give you 1mb inclusive allowance. After you use it (judging on last month, I would), its then charged at £3 a mb thereafter. From a quick maths estimate in my head, that results in me getting charged roughly the same amount I am with Vodafone's new charges, but with less minutes and texts. Although I don't use all the ones I have at the moment, so it probably wouldn't make much difference.
O2 want you to sign an 18 month contract for this too.

-Orange- give you 125mins and 300 texts, for £20 a month with 2 months unlimited inclusive data. However, I can't find anywhere listed on their site, what they charge for data, after that...they simply say:
"You may use GPRS on a pay as you use basis, in which case you will be charged for data you use on a per KB basis. The charges will appear on your monthly bill."
One month contracts available though.

-Tmobile- have a flat rate data tariff. Cheapest is £27.50 a month which is flat rate internet and £34 allowance per month to spend across other various phone/text services...which I've no idea how much I'd use without doing some long calculations and dragging out past bills to see how much I spent on calls, texts, etc.
12/18month contracts too

-Virgin Mobile- is 200mins and 500 texts for £20 a month. Data charged at 0.5p per kilobyte. As I don't use my inclusive minutes or texts at the moment though, I'm no better off.
I will say kudos to Virgin though for having a very simple page detailing exact prices for everything.. without making you hunt around clicking "more info" here and "full terms" there.. to find what the thing actually costs.
And they do one month contracts.
I live in a house with Virgin phone and internet, so I can probably get this cheaper as a bundle (my sister got it on a bundle for £10 a month), but I live in a shared house and the bill isn't in my name so it'd be a bit complicated.

As you can see - you might be able to get out of a contract with Vodafone.. but if you're a light phone/texter but use GPRS, you're probably not any better off going elsewhere. Best I can hope for is probably to phone Vodafone and tell them I'm not happy about the new charges - and see if they offer me anything not to cancel.

Failing that, I might look into PAYG. As I have the phone now, I might be better off on PAYG

p1an0player

Just to add that T-mobile PAYG is £1 a day for unlimited* browsing, and you can top-up £10 online and get £2 free. So effectively about 84p a day.

For calls and texts I'm on an O2 contract (but was stung by very expensive browsing) and use a separate phone with a T-mobile PAYG for browsing.

*(subject to fair use)

toasterman

p1an0player wrote: »

Just to add that T-mobile PAYG is £1 a day for unlimited* browsing, and you can top-up £10 online and get £2 free. So effectively about 84p a day.
*(subject to fair use)

Lol. Yeah - I thought tmobile's pricing wasn't quite complicated enough. Good to see they've added that in just to confuse people a bit more and make it a bit harder to compare prices.

April on Vodafone cost me £20.35.
Under Vodafone's new, apprently fairer, apparently cheaper, pricing scheme, it would have cost me £24.73.
On a virgin mobile sim-only 1-month contract it would have been £31.36.
And it would have been £34.53 on virgin mobile payg.

It's the data charges that do it.
My 2.2mb I used in the last month would cost £4.43 on Vodafone, and would have been £11.06 on virgin mobile because their data charges are 0.5p a kb and vodafone's new ones are 0.2p per kb.

I've just found this -> http://www.coolsmartphone.com/news3228.html which states Orange have come out with some flat rate tariffs. Will work out more for the amount I use.

Seems I was looking in the wrong place on o2's site too.
100mins, 500 texts, is £20 a month.
Gprs is £3/mb.. which is about 0.29p a kilobyte..with the first 1mb a month free.
Means my bill would be £23.76.. BUT o2 charge 20p for accessing voicemail each time, and I did it 7 times, so it would have been 25.16 in total.

All very marginal anyway.
I should just get a payg and tell people I'm never phoning them again

James_p_2

Please forgive me if I'm being really stupid but the only data I can find on my online bill for WAP/Internet are items where I'm being charged. i.e. None Vodafone Live websites

How do I find out my usage of the Vodafone Live website? This would really increase my usage for when I send the details in my cancellation request.

Thanks