Mobile Broadband

[dundee]

I have just bought a Pay you G Mobile Broadband Dongle  for part of my Daughters Christmas it was Advertised and  states on box that to top up its £15 for 3GB

From 1st Feb2011 Vodafone will only be giving you 2GB instead of 3GB for £15 top up. 33.3% price increase

Surely when you buy an item in December and its advertised Nationaly that you get 3GB for a topup £15 and to change it in Feb is WRONG

This must be against the Consumer Acts ....I personaly am contacting the .....The Office of Fair Trading

 I have my own Business and I know my Clients would not let me get away with this type of thing

Why has nothing been mentioned about this and why are they still selling them as Advertised all over the Internet, Asda ect at 3GB

Another case of a big Company doing what they like I have used my own dongle for two years and the thing goes at a Snails pace and I am in a good sigal area

 I have been a Vodafone customer since 1981 but not a minute longer

[dundee]

Sorry thats an extra Charge of £2.50 a GB .....What a BUNCH of Bandits Thats more like 50% Increase

[jarviser]

Absolutely. If like me you use slightly over the3GB that IS a 50% increase.  What kind of company exploits 10% of it's loyal customer base because "90% of the customers don't need it"?  Well I need it, and it's a disgrace. Total rip off.

Thanks a bunch Vodafone, it's bad enough you avoid UK tax when the rest of us are struggling without this insult.  You are saving enough  tax to absorb the VAT and keep the price static.

[craigiouk]

Just brought the 3Gig plan, within a week the allowance has changed, this is a form of misselling. Also very disappoited on the lack of support so far as i have 2 dongles they dont seem to want to co-exsist. I have registered a complaint, think thats all i can do..

[vodascum]

Cant' tell you how angry I am at Vodafone for this massive price increase - and to then have their press release suggest that this is almost a favour to the customer - what can you say.  I am drafting a letter to all relevant trading standard Watchdogs etc.

All other users of this service - be advised - you may find that your bandwidth has also been reduced.  I use to be able to watch streamed video (Utube, TED, Watch on demand etc) and recently find that i am consistently not able to watch the same feeds due to slow download speeds.

Vodafone - sort out your appalling and arrogant public relations.

[Firewind]

I must admitt that I have had my dongle for about three years now, and when I first got it, I used to average a download spead of about 3 .5 megs. Over the last year it has dropped to less than 512 Kb, and I have gone from 3G to 'edge'.

I put the change down to the upsurge in phones that acess the internet. After all, there is only a set amount of bandwith that Vodafone buys and it is now having to spread that limited amount over an increasing user base.

There was an article about it in one of the computer magazines the other month (Computer Shopper or something of that ilk). It's a problem shared by all providers, and with more internet capable phones being bought, it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

[jarviser]

Just to add insult to injury our mast is only 2G today. I asked for a voucher as compensation but he said they "only guarantee contract customers' service and would refund contract uses' "line rental".

 I said that was unfair as I pay more per GB.  And as the mast was down for the third day this month what chance was there that I would consider a move to contract?  

I then asked why the price was being hiked 50%.  He said "most people use less than 2GB" which is the rehearsed answer.

I said that I use 3GB at least and it was a disgrace, 

He then said that "they didn't want to do it but the people who own us will not listen".  

I said "I thought I was talking to Vodafone" He said yes. So I said who owns Vodafone then who made the decision, but he didn't know.

Anyone have any idea what he was talking about?  

[AJBVODAFORUM]

I do not normally bust the 1Gig limit on my little dangly thing, but I cannot help but wonder, is a 50% price rise legal? Anyone from OFFQUANGO care to comment? Maybe Pay As You Go could be replaced with Pay More For What You're Not Using?

[Wayne]

Hi Everyone

Thanks for everyones comments. I appreciate how frustrating this must be for you all. What we must bear in mind is that this will only affect 10% of all users. If you feel that you are in that 10% then please let us know and we'll be happy to suggest a more fitting mobile broadband package for you. Something like one of our contract dongles would probably suite you better.

Please let me know if you have any more questions and we'll be happy to help you further

Thanks

Wayne

eForum Team

[HHGTTG]

You don't honestly think that I'd enter into a Vodafone contract with a corporate that does this to its customers? Vodafone are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think that I'd enter a contract which I bet could still change the goal posts when they felt like it.
At least with my PAYG dongle I can take my busines elsewhere when it suits me.

[jarviser]

"

Hi Everyone

Thanks for everyones comments. I appreciate how frustrating this must be for you all. What we must bear in mind is that this will only affect 10% of all users."

Most crime only affects 10% of the population - doesn't make it acceptable.

This is NOT the moral or ethical approach. You should not force loyal customers of one package into a contract just because it's convenient for you (or your owners)

And please answer me this, why is it better for Vodafone for us to pay £15 a month for 3GB on contract than the same deal on PAYG?   On contract I would have to stop at 3GB whereas on PAYG I can give you even more money and go over in a planned way    

It's a poor business model forgoing more money for your own convenience. Or do you prefer the punitive fines for accidentally going over?

You already admit that 90% or us will be unaffected, the savings to Vodafone will therefore be a small percentage of 10% of total achievable savings. All it does is save a tiny amount for Vodafone but pee off thousands of us.

[HHGTTG]

When I left Orange last year and bought a Vodafone PAYG mobile phone with 3G facility,  I was able to surf for 50p/day/25MB and lo and behold, within a few weeks of ownership, they doubled the daily rate to £1 and hence I never press that 3G button on my phone now, to do the occasional search. They really are greedy, beyond belief.

[vodascum]

I have sent Complaints to :

Consumer Direct

http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/contact?action=complain

My local Trading Standards

trading.standards@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Ofcom

Contact@ofcom.org.uk

Of course, the more of you guys that complain as well - the better.

[rattydarren]

speaking via live chat i was given the impression even if i moved to a contract with 3gb for 30 days that this also was dropping to 2gb ,and not only that your chat person was extremely rude and cut me off .i for one will be moving to 3 as they do a 3gb dongle for £15 afor 30 days !!!

[jarviser]

That's just typical ignorance. I reckon some of those guys are issued only with wax crayons so they don't hurt themselves. There is no 30 day contract, shortest is 18 months. No way will I commit to that kind of contract with current network performance. If indeed the 18 month contract for £15 goes to 2GB then there's no reason to take one out anyway!

[chopsey96]

Check out this link to an Australian newspaper, turns out Vodaphone are consistently ###### be it this side of the world or the other.

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/vodafone-customers-to-sue-in-class-action-20101227-...

I will be lodging a complaint with all appropriate channels and will not be paying more money for such poor service, time to go shopping.

[jarviser]

---

vodascum wrote:

I have sent Complaints to :

Consumer Direct

http://www.consumerdirect.gov.uk/contact?action=complain

My local Trading Standards

trading.standards@brighton-hove.gov.uk

Ofcom

Contact@ofcom.org.uk

Of course, the more of you guys that complain as well - the better.

---

Sorry to say Vodafone are doing nothing that Ofcom or Trading Standards can remedy. Got this from Contact@ofcom.org.uk.

"

19 January 2011 

Dear Mr xxxxxx 

Thank you for contacting Ofcom on 17 January 2011 about the changes to Vodafone’s fair usage policy. 

I understand it must be frustrating that Vodafone has lowered its data cap to 2GB. I should explain that providers are able to make changes to contracts as long as notice (at least one month) is given to the consumer. This should be explained in your terms and conditions. 

However, if you believe that the change in the data usage cap will cause a substantial increase in the cost of your bill (and thus a ‘material detriment’), you should raise this with Vodafone. They should consider this complaint and, if they agree that it will result in material detriment, should allow you to leave the contract without penalty. If Vodafone refuses to offer this and you still believe material detriment will occur, you should follow their complaints procedure at:....etc etc"

The PAYG "contract" lasts 30 days. They also gave a month's notice. The next time you top-up you start a new contract under the new 2GB rule. Nothing to complain about - they followed the rules.

Of course if you had a 3GB per month 18 month contract and they reduced it to 2GB per month that would be a material detriment and you would be entitled to an early get-out of the contract as above .  (Raising the price according to the VAT rise is perfectly legal too and does not allow a get-out.)

It stinks but it's legal and there's no gain to be made by complaining. Probably worth emailing them though just so they get the message that we are not happy.

[AJBVODAFORUM]

Thinking about this, it does seem bizare that in these times of austerity, cut-back, highter taxes, lower wages, Greece, etc, that a company should be seeking to 'Ryan Air' it's customers?

I suggest the executives who make these bleeding-edge decisions assume their network competitors will do the decent thing and not cash-in on their self-inflicted placement disaster by grabbing market share from disgruntled customers. This is probably because the network operators appear to operate as a free-market cartel, allegedly. So like with airlines, were one introduces a charge for breathing, others follow suit.

Okay, so this change will only affect 10% of PAYG customers, who probably represent a minor fraction of the core income model. But not all of these customers are teenage gaming freaks or corporate power users. Some are real people living in rural not-spots, without access to even a BT Open Zone.  People who still need internet access, whilst being budget conscious.

If I was a Vodafone exec, I would *increase* the allowance to 4Gig, or maybe increase the expiry period from one to two months; just to encourage uptake in these austere times. But then I'd be upsetting the balance-of-competition, allegedly.

AJB

[jarviser]

Spot on AJB!

The 10% thing is a wierd one, and no mistake.  On that basis they could just as easily decided  "As only 10% of users exceed Vodafone's comfort zone in our usage model, and if they do so they pay for the extra immediately by buying more credit, we have decided to make no changes"

Unfortunately I might disagree about the cartels. In times of austerity cartels can just as easily crank up the pain on customers and this is seen today in the supermarkets' cynical self-imposed food inflation, withdrawing all those BOGOFs and offers that temporarily hid the underlying increases.. I expect Three to follow Voda's example very soon.

As a former BT ADSL customer I saw the package reduce from £18 to £12 and the allowance rise from 5GB to 10GB and more as technology improved and the typical web page size and hard drive size rocketed.  Without broadband and it's typical download allowances, web pages are unusable as I found in my recent 5 days on 2G. Laptops are stuck with full size web pages and Windows updates, and we don't have access to mobile web versions that phones can access. It makes no sense to go backwards like this.

Let's pray for return to war - price war - in the forthcoming year.

[chopsey96]

If I ran a business and sold 3 liters of water to a customer but only had to give the customer 2 liters of water I would be happy. I would be even happier when the customer accepted my water even though it was stagnant and tasted like 5kbps.