Sure Signal - extortionate cost

[cookp]

Who else thinks that Vodafone are ripping off their customers by charging £100 for a Sure Signal device in order to provide a service to a paying customer where Vodafone themselves have been unable to provide a good enough 3G signal?

My guess is these devices probably have a manufacturing cost of less than £25 so Vodafone are making money from selling them even though the device is filling a gap in their own coverage and is utilising their customers' broadband facilities.

This really doesn't sound like good customer service to me!

[drey_p]

Hi there

Interesting that you have come up with a figure of £25 to manufacture the units - please could you explain how you have come to that figure?

[cookp]

No scientific basis to this; just a guess based on the prices and margins of other networking kit. That said,there's not much on the home networking market over the £100 mark and the Sure Signal unit doesn't sound like it should be in the same price band as a dual band wireless ADSL router.

What do you think?

[Retired-James]

Hi Guys,

With every Sure Signal we sell, we actually make a loss.

Each version 3 Sure Signal cost around £250 to make, which is why we can’t reduce the cost of them any further or give them away for free.

James

[psychopomp1]

Actually even at the RRP of £100, Vodafone are selling the sure signals at a loss as it costs more to manufacture them - i'm sure someone from Vodafone will confirm this. However they would rather sell these at a loss than lose customers. Yes, in an ideal world everyone would get 100% 2G/3G coverage everywhere but that's simply not possible. As for bandwidth usage our unit uses no more than 50-100mb data a month, hardly something to cry over.

[annybee]

Appreciate they may cost a lot to produce, but customers, incuding myself are paying a lot of money for a service which isn't 100% by any means, so yes, I agree with the original posting on this thread!

Here is why.....................

We have actually got one in our house which I currently cannot add my new sim card to, because it is registered to someone who no longer lives at our house and who is refusing to co-operate with me, so it is useless. After speaking to Vodafone, it seems the only solution is to buy another one, yes, another £100

Fuming to say the least! :manfrustrated: