Vodafone GPRS shenanigans

ironape

This happened a couple of weeks ago but I thought I should share it with you lot.

At the end of December, just before christmas, I became the proud owner of a shiny new nokia 7650 from vodafone. I dished out the handsome amount of about E500
for the privilege and got hooked into a contract (it turns out the ready to go version wasnt much more expensive in the end, ah well). During the purchase foreplay the shop employee informed me that GRPS transfers were free. Alright! yet another reason to buy this overblown toy. So I went ahead handing over my hard earned cash and toddled off home a happy camper. I played with the GRPS a lot. Emailing myself stuff from the phone, using it to transfer games, pictures and videos. Browsing the web with the cool web browser I got from my-symbian.com. Lots of fun.

Now, to say that I was suprised by the E560 bill that vodafone sent me is more than an understatement. I was enraged. I don't easily get angry, I would consider myself a fairly easy-going guy. They had charged me for all of the GRPS transfers at a rate of 2c per kilobyte. If you work that out folks its E20 PER MEGABYTE and I had transfered 25Mb! The next day my legal representative (my girlfriend
who has a law degree) was on to them. After a couple of days of to-ing and fro-ing they finally caved in and just forgot about the GPRS. I just had to pay for voice calls and sms.

To her credit I think the vodafone people were a bit scared to talk to my girlfriend after all the hassle she gave them. They called me directly to tell me I didn't have to pay the GPRS charges (the one time her arguing skills (which are far superior to mine) have benefitted me :P).

The vodafone guy that she was talking to was really in a tough situation - I totally sympathise with him. The girlfriend was telling him that I didn't have to pay the GPRS and his supervisor was telling him that I did. So if there are any lower rung helpdesk people out there I sympathise. I worked in a place with a lot of dealing with public myself so I know what it's like to bare the brunt of customer complaints and not be able to do anything for them because of apathetic management. I'm probably going to go back to that when I go back to college next year.

Also, they tried to tell us that they wern't responsible for what a person working in a vodafone shop said. Apparently they aren't direct employees of vodafone or something. This is the big red shop with the giant vodafone signs splashed all over it! and yet the people who work in it aren't vodafone employees? probably some legal loophole so that if they ever really get in trouble they can
disassociate them selves.

So, anyone had any similar experiences?

I heard through a friend that 02 were planning to start charging for GPRS in january but didn't because because vodafone wern't charging (to be competetive and all). So is this backtracking or just employee error?

IronApe

MiCr0

as an aside
access to live.vodafone.com (one of the gprs apn's) is free until the end of january
all the other apn's have been charged for since around september or so

talla

The only GPRS traffic that is not charged for is when retrieving and sending MMS messages. After the end of January MMS will be charged for when sending but not retrieving messages. All other GPRS traffic, (apart from vodafone live) e.g. web surfing or using wap will come out of your monthly data plan, which when you go over you will then be charged per kb downloaded. The big difference between the two networks is vodafone only offer 1mb data plans, costing between 5-10 euro(correct me if im wrong), while o2 offer 1mb, 5mb and 10mb with 10mb plan costing approx 25 euro. Data plans on o2 are the one area that o2 definitely have an advantage over vodafone.

rob1891

The only GPRS traffic that is not charged for is when retrieving and sending MMS messages. After the end of January MMS will be charged for when sending but not retrieving messages. All other GPRS traffic, (apart from vodafone live)

This seems to be what the bloke in the shop was none too clear about it. Fair enough that they eventually let the charges slide, but how can they not be responsible for what their staff in their shop says!! (If this is not the case then shops should not be branded "vodafone".) Sounds like they'll take your money if you dont stand up for yourself against such nonsense.

talla

I agree with you totally, and 9 times out of 10 vodafone would have gotten away with this. U were lucky to have a g/f with law degree to fight your corner for you

The_Conductor

Similiar re-actions from the Customer Service People in Dundalk over mis-selling information by Vodafone Shop staff on Grafton Street. I was sold a phone, and connected to a service that the phone was simply incapable of using. It took fully a year, I'm not joking, to get disconnected from the service, and I was only refunded the charges when I threatened legal action. If you are dealing with them make a note of exactly who you are talking to, and point by point annotations of exactly what they say. Let them crucify themselves with their own comments.......

Even so thank God they are better than the O2 crowd.........

trap4

Originally posted by talla
The big difference between the two networks is vodafone only offer 1mb data plans, costing between 5-10 euro(correct me if im wrong), while o2 offer 1mb, 5mb and 10mb with 10mb plan costing approx 25 euro. [/B]

Jeez, these GPRS rates are incredible!

[Aside: I'm only now looking at them with a critical eye as I will soon be buying a phone for mobile web browsing, email and IM]

A friend of mine in France pays €6 for 10Mb per month. He uses MSN IM on his Orange SPV quite alot and I was IMing him today from my PC. It was amazing how fast he could type with T9 precitive text and you'd swear he was on a PC.


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http://mmsmemo.blogspot.com

daveJAM

The big difference between the two networks is vodafone only offer 1mb data plans, costing between 5-10 euro(correct me if im wrong), while o2 offer 1mb, 5mb and 10mb with 10mb plan costing approx 25 euro.

O2 also do 25mb and 50 mb with the 50mb costing €50.
With no gprs tarif on O2 it costs €7.50 a meg. I think i'll get GPRS1. As I understand it your first meg costs €7.50 but if you go over that its only €2 a meg.