Vodafone online bill service

wobble

I do not trust Vodafone’s billing system. They have gotten my bill wrong a number of times. And I only check it if it seems oddly high.

For this reason I would like to be able to copy my online bill into an excel sheet and do my own math on it. This way I can work out how my free mins were used and the like.

Unfortunately this is not possible at the moment. The online billing records that they provide are not in a compatible format which enables copying form the web and pasting into an excel spread sheet.

All other service providers (that I use: AIB, BoI, BillPay etc.) which have online information display their records in a compatible format. Why not Vodafone? My online bill is displayed as a html page using <div></div> tags. However it would be just as easy for them to use <table></table> tags. Had they used the table tags I would be able to copy and past my bill into an excel sheet.

So I pose the question: Does Vodafone display the data in this manner purposely so that people like me cannot check their bills every month in a simply, fast and efficient manner. Do they realise that they get it wrong and do not want us to be complaining every month to their customer service teams?

To be honest if the answer to my 1st question is correct I am sure that it is not done for monetary purposes but rather a simple mistake (i.e. the bill could be wrong to my advantage also).

So if anyone knows if they ever plan to ever have it in a better format let me know.

Also if anyone knows of a way to copy it into an excel page now I’d be really grateful if they told me how.

:w)

Victor

Can you show us a sample of what you mean (take a screen shot or whatever)?

Try copying into MSWord and use tabs to separate items (tedious I know). Then copy into spreadsheet (spreadsheets interprete tab as 'next cell').

sunbeam

For what it is worth you can copy your current calls on 'account details' to a spreadsheet and calculate calls, providing that you remember to add on VAT. They do have a running total on the 'vew all calls' option, but this usually isn't very accurate as it doesn't take inclusive monthly minutes into account.

Not much help if you want to recalculate old bills though...

wobble

It is not as simple as copying and pasting and then adding in tabs
see images...

Online bill


copied to word


copied to excell

jesus_thats_gre

The problem is that they have tried to provide a mirror image of the paper bill you get in the post. This was obviously done to minimise the confusion of customers switching to online bills.

wobble

Okay but looking at the code thay use they could still use tables. They could have two main tables one for right one for left of page. Then within the table they could have a table for the data. This way I could copy the tables(data) into excel. but they did not do this.

jesus_thats_gre

To be honest, the way of displaying the tables was decided by Compaq about 3 years ago when Vodafone introduced their web based customer care application. Reusing it for this has obviously saved money and time. The same method has been used in a few applications.

On that, its not gonna change soon.

MadsL

This should/might get you what you want.

1. Cut n paste into word

2. Record a new macro in word.

3. Put yr cursor at the end of the first line. Press delete. Then Tab.
Repeat until you have the top header row. Hit return. Stop recording.

4. Run the macro until all your text is lined up under the header row.

5. import into excel.

Victor

wobble, thanks for all the code I only needed the actual data. Also some of the entries seem to be incomplete - maybe you just started the selection at a random point.

You could use the sort function in Excel.

When you have the information in the format of:
http://wmernagh.sdf-eu.org/vodafone/vodExcel.jpg

Add a new column "A". Number each cell a1=1, a2=2 ...a100=100, etc. ("Tagging")

Sort (under the Data menu) column B. Label each item in column "C".

Move the blocks of Cost, Date, Time, Duration, No. Called, etc. from vertical blocks into horixontal blocks.

If any block is out of sequence just sort it using the tagging.

sceptre

It used be handy for filing purposes when the things were in pdf format. I miss that.