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The Demise of Vodafone?

justinsherry
4: Newbie

 

I have been a loyal Vodafone client since 1991 when the company was widely considered to be the best for business users other than BT and Air Call.   Since 2007 I have noted a marked decline in Vodafone's attitude towards its customers, both corporate and personal.  I opened a business account in January 2007 with a data and voice allowance plus an upgrade package so that the contract and all phones contained within the package ran from year to year on a rolling 12 month agreement.  In 2010, after a number of issues with Vodafone and several client manager changes we decided to move to O2. We were advised that Vodafone had changed the terms of the agreement in line with the date of upgrades (in essence now all of the corporate phones had separate terms of agreement (a total nightmare to manage) this was done purely to advantage Vodafone and to prevent us from a wholesale move.

In 2015 my daughter was due an upgrade on our 6 device personal account. We went to a Vodafone store and were advised that the upgrade was free and that it was for a further 24 month period. The contract did not contain any reference to upgrade cost.  The next month I received a £120 charge for the upgrade.  Phones Vodafone and told sorry, it a matter between you and the store. Visited store and presented paperwork to be told I was a pest and lier.

 

March 2017, purchased a mobile data hub 30G with Euro roaming as advertised for £25PCM for 30 day contract.  Email from Vodafone confirmed 30-month contract.  Went to Vodafone store and was advised not to fulfil that order but to pay another £35 instore and get what I wanted.  Ordered 30G 30 day with roaming option.  Went to Portugal and France and yes, got a £30 bill for data roaming. Called Vodafone and told to visit store. Visited store and told to call head office as they cannot amend contracts instore. Call Vodafone and told to revisit store. Revisited store and told they would rectify the matter.  2 days and nothing, no refund as promised or change to the contract. Called Vodafone again and put through to complaints. They advised termination as they cannot and would not do anything for me. Contract terminated.

I have issued a lawsuit against Vodafone Group PLC for breach of duty of care and fiduciary duty and breach of contract. I am not worried about Vodafone or their inept management or legal team, in 2009 I sued Microsoft, Yahoo and Real Networks all companies far larger than Vodafone and won in each instance.

My real disappointment is for all of the good people that work for this company and their shareholders. Dealing with Vodafone is akin to dealing with Enron, they share many of the same top down management styles and corporate governance towards their customers and charges. They have the same smug 'go to hell' attitude if you raise a complaint such as the recent issue with billing or the loss on access to billing online. They were fined £4.6m by OFCOM for poor customer service, mis-selling and inaccurate billing. OFCOM have two further investigations into Vodafone which are likely to levy further fines. Put simply, Vodafone don't give a damn as these fines are a small price to pay when valued against all of the money they chisel from their clients annually.

There is a boardroom smugness that beset Ryan Air, Marks & Spencer and Tesco of late, the notion that they are too big and powerful to see a wholesale change in their fortunes. Time will tell but people are starting to vote with their feet and when Vodafone admit they have a problem, it may well have passed point of return.

Only the collective might of the large shareholders can prevent this from happening, One would urge them to call for an EGM to instigate a wholesale change of management and reconnect with the core values and listen to customers through focus groups. Your customers are shouting as loud as they can but you have installed sound proofing, you can only hide in Newbury and behind an inept Indian call centre for so long.

Vodafone is sailing ever faster into troubled waters and their relevance as a company is diminishing. 75% of all mobile data traffic is now short form video a market the carrier retains no share.  2020 will see 5G, which will deliver a massive boost in speed but at the cost of a lower per gig price point.  Vodafone's Bedrock (Flinstones) price plans are another example of how backward this company is, selling talk time (are you kidding me? No one uses their phone to call anyone these days and if you spend all year on it you probably wouldn't dent your monthly data allowance). Anyone can attest who uses publich transport, you see everyone staring into their phones like they have lost their souls in cyberspace and desperately trying to locate them

The fact remains that Vodafone has only one thing to sell, data and its getting cheaper.  A  single product offering in a world of emerging telcos such as  Huawei are progressing an aggressive expansion policy. They and run all backbone operations for Vodafone. I suspect they will eye Newbury for the position of a shiny new Huawei sign given they have the resources  Vodafone has all the ingredients for a few rough years ahead, economic uncertainty surrounding the UK and Brexit will fuel this position.   The UK now more than ever needs teleco providers to prevail and support SME business in a world that is rapidly becoming mobile centric. Vodafone needs to re-establish is core values and raison d'etra, rediscover its DNA and  support the UK and its business community and banish the open cheque book policy.

 

 

 

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Let’s hope Vodafone don’t up it back up to £35! Three has all you can eat for £24 and EE with their superior speeds and coverage gives you 20GB for £21 and all pay monthly customers now get free Apple Music Subscription on EE. That leaves o2 hmmm... I don’t think anyone cares but they still do 20GB for £21. Let’s not start on the VMNO carriers. Oh and EE and o2 has visual voicemail and allows you to share your data. 

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60 REPLIES 60

DRUIDDOODE
13: Advanced Member

Just in Case any one goes for one of the so called unlimited data packages offered by other networks.

They do say unlimited but when you read the small print they are throttled back when you reach a set amount and one of them starts when you reach 15 gig 

They are allowed to do this under the fair usage 

 when I looked into this when I got a new SIM to unlock my device  

I think it is misleading and insulting by the network  to say it is unlimited when it obviously it not

.

Spotify comes free with the red value bundle as I speak and is not only great for music and radio but there are hours and hours of podcasts and videos 

 There’s only 2 operators that offer “unlimited” data that I know of in the UK, Three (3) with “all you can eat” data and Giffgaff with “always on” data , which one throttles speeds at 15gigs?

 

Three allows you to use 1000gigs of data a month before they take notice and even then that’s only if you use your data for commercial use which is prohibited in their T&Cs, they have also “trafficsense” which prevents slowing down and allows a consistent and quality service where a lot of people are already using the network, everyone operator has some form of traffic management. Three also offers 30gigs and 100gigs data plans I’m not sure how customers would feel paying for these plans the find out they are being throttled after 15gigs and I mean unless the throttling is noticeable to their quality of experience which it never was for me and I use to use well over 15gigs a months when I had no broadband, was tethering and streaming media content, so I would consider myself one of those consumers who was a bit of a data junky.

 

Giffgaff which runs on o2s network throttles their “always on” data plans after 6gigs of usage to 384Kbps from 8am - midnight, they are upfront with throttling and they’ve also improved throttled speeds as it was 254kbps before I think.

 

You should really names names, it makes it easier for us to verify information. I think (I’d like to think) consumers who use and read the forums in the first place aren’t gullible and dim to vague information. I couldn’t find where Three mentioned throtlling after 15gigs so is there some other operator you are talking about or is your information a bit outdated? How long ago was it when you got a new sim?

 

Join Vodafone because you get free Spotify!... I think that’s the last thing a lot of consumers are thinking about. It’s a perk, it’s nice, I can do with YouTube, Soundcloud and Google Play Music which stores 50,000 of your tracks for free on their servers for you to listen to your music anywhere you have data connection.

I understand that Vodafone lost a substantial government contract recently which, I don't remember reading about or that Vodafone released an RNS.

 

that's going to hurt and I would suspect more to follow.

jeffkinn
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion
All losses hurt but there are 18 million Vodafone customers in this country and has the second largest number of connections worldwide after China mobile - nearly half a billion. It’s the eighth largest company on the London stock exchange and the shares are worth £60 billion. Not only is it important as a UK success story but is vital to all of us for our pension funds and insurance policies as fund managers will be heavily invested in Vodafone shares.

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The newly launched VOXI (by vodafone) brand is almost akin to unlimited data for the majority of under 25's who spend all day on social media

 

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/voxi/index.htm

schofield44
1: Seeker

Well done & well said !! Can only agree with everything you said.

justinsherry
4: Newbie

I received an email from Vodafone asking if I would kindly answer a few questions in a survey so that Vodafone can improve their services.  The brief survey was in fact around 50 questions all related to my use of mobile with international calls. The survey itself started with some nice icons but soon descended into a very prosaic affair asking questions about my landline use (international) vs mobile.  The crux of the survey was if I would be interested in a package where I could for £3.50 pcm +vat call 100 countries for 300 or so minutes or 700 minutes for £7.50 pcm. 

If you needed a more solid example of how lost Vodafone is, this is it. Why would I (or anyone for that matter) want to spend an extra £5 or £10 per month to call overseas (ex-Europe) from a handset when I can just press the WhatsApp or Skype app and speak without limitation for free using the vary data that I have already paid for?  In most cases the call quality is better on these Apps.  Why would Vodafone spend a fortune on a survey to gain the blindingly obvious? Trying to sell a tired old product offering in a world of digital innovation isn’t the way forward.

jeffkinn
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

As strange as it may seem, not everyone has Whatsapp or Skype and not everyone wants to call a mobile overseas. Vodafone International is a popular package and can be very cost effective. I've used it myself when my daughter was in Australia for quite a time and bought a local feature phone and didn't have a smart phone.

 

Also, the weird result of the new roaming rules is that it costs nothing to phone someone in Europe when you are roaming in Europe but it's quite expensive when you're in the UK.

 

Jeffkinn_Sig.png

Jeffkin, your argument,  not wanting to phone a mobile overseas from an app? Sorry, I'm not buying.  What you propose is that one uses a UK mobile to call an international landline and incur massive charges for what in reality you could get for free or for a modest fee for a SIP or pay the incredibly reasonable international offering from Vodafone ? I'm sure that these customers are exactly the type of individuals Vodafone wishes to help by emptying their bank accounts for something they could get for free, or nada or  gracia. Of course Vodafone doesn't promote theses technically advanced app businesses because it wants to protect its customers from this type of digital hysteria, best stick to tried and tested as Grandad always said.   Facebook and Google have in only in modest  years risen to be among the worlds biggest corporations dwarfing Vodafone.  Why? Because they are forward thinking, at the edge of digital development. Not languishing in the 1990's with tired old product offerings. Vodafone is a dinasaur, a relic of a bygone age,  a steam engine.  A yesteryear  telco that will always begrudge the fact that it could have owned a Facebook, Google  or the tens of thousands of tech businesses leading the digital field such as Hive. Etc The truth is that Vodafone was incorporated in 1983 a year before Mark Zukerberg was born. Simply, Vodafone lacked the talent, foresight and drive to recognise the the huge opportunity in the 1990's  Vodafone has one single product to sell, data and it's getting cheaper.

jeffkinn
17: Community Champion
17: Community Champion

What a load of utter nonsense. Your ridiculous argument could be levelled at every telco in the world. It also implies that none of us need to use our phones as phones. Why should your misguided theory only apply to overseas calls? We could all use data based apps to make phone calls to other UK phones as well as overseas ones. Let's tell BT to dig up all of their cables and sell the copper for scrap.

 

 

 

 

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