The Demise of Vodafone?

[justinsherry]

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.

[justinsherry]

My post was specifically regarding international calling from Vodafone cellphones.  This is a Vodafone forum so please spare the need to defuse Vodafone's culpability by diluting the argument with an attempt to drag all and sundry telcos into the argument. It's a very frail and flimsy defence.

Moving forward, Your response is at best, an exposure of your gargantuan misunderstanding of the telecoms  sector..  perhaps you should study the official data? 75% of mobile data use is video streaming. That means in layman terms that a vast majority of the $400B  digital admarket is being paid to Facebook & Google and Vodafone gets zero from this sector..

With regard to apps, if you can use your monthly data allowance for the same means 

 (aka) calling overseas for nada then as predicted this is the future and official figures support this. Why try and sell a tired old 1990 international style package?

Selling all BT cable for scrap? Mobile Comms are only mobile to the base station. Thereafter, they are fibre until the reciver end. Same as your email, Skype or WhatsApp,.  Why would you sell all that copper as all the Sure Siginal customers who are paying Vodafone rack rates for calls while using their own broadband  allowance and service to sureup Vodafone's abismal infrastructure, and lack of investment 

[jeffkinn]

I'll see your gargantuan and raise it with a humongous - that being the size of the gulf between your view of how the world works and how it really operates.

[justinsherry]

As predicted, you make no counter argument and to be honest, I'm not sure what you could  add by way of mitigation on Vodafone's behalf.  As for your comments, regarding my view? I don't think so. The mobile telecoms sector in very mature in Europe, consumers are holding on to their handsets longer than before as new upgrades are only incrementally better.  The apps market is surging forward with WhatsApp releasing updates every few months.  One of the reasons for WhatsApp's success is that it succeeded where MMS failed miserably. Vodafone and other telcos eyed MMS as a Money pit , charging 14p per photo sent. WhatsApp (Korum) spotted the opportunity and that is why WhatsApp is worth $19B and Vodafone only £8B. Had it not been for the fat smugness in Newbury, Vodafone could have seized on the opportunity and developed the trend in media messaging in the very same way rather than to seek to chisel is customers with sky high prices thus forcing them to look elsewhere (which they did) and ending the life of MMS as quickly as it had started.  Now it wants to sell me an international call package? Oh my word, do you never learn?

[justinsherry]

I want to correct an error in my previous post above. I meant to say Vodafone market cap is £60 billion and WhatsApp sold for $19 billion.

Sorry for the mistake. 

[jeffkinn]

I make no counter argument because, in my experience, it isn't useful to try and persuade someone who has extreme views of the error of their ways as they aren't receptive to an alternative thought pattern.

And as you are so mistaken and so wide of the mark, this will be my last post on the subject.

[justinsherry]

I have no extreme views, my experience as a customer has been made over 26 years, that a long time. I am always receptive to new ideas, just not tired old ones.  Or being told that cost parity of European calls was anything other than imposed on the company. I am sure that there are many people that are very satisfied with Vodafone and its offerings. Given that there is a large swing into cheaper sim only deals there can be little to complain about for 20G of data, unlimited text and countless hours of talk time for £20? My original point was based on the long-term relevance of Vodafone as a business facing a future with only one product to sell, data. Vodafone doesn't own any of the backbone which is BT and Verizon et al. Therefore, it is becoming a data aggregator and with data prices dropping where to for Vodafone? AT&T bought Time Warner for a reason, the same reason Comcast bought Universal, they needed other product offerings.  Vodafone has value, millions of customers and that would be valuable to a business wishing to spread its wings such as Alphabet Media or perhaps Liberty Media. My point is that Vodafone's relevance as a standalone mobile telco is ebbing and if you think that is extreme or unfairly biased then please feel free to show the errant of my ways.

[rio_w]

I do hope Liberty Global and Vodafone come to a deal in the future, virgin mobile has some good deals and the ties with their broadband service could bring more to the table for existing(which I am with their cable broadband) and new customers. Vodafone and their fanboys might think they are doing ok now, but the majority of consumers in this market will always go for the better deal in the long run. It’s a competitive market atm and it looks like Vodafone are just hanging in there it. Let’s see how the upcoming 5G auction pans out.

[justinsherry]

Hopefully Vodafone et al will have learned their lessons from the 3G auction. In the end, it gets passed to the customers and the world is a whole lot more mobile centric these days. Another issue the huge investment in infrastructure that is going to be needed to run 5G.  In essence 5G and 4G LTE will sit together because they are in essence similar technology. 5G will benefit from added support for new codecs such as MPEG-H and intelligent demand switching for UHD and less than 2ms latency.

In fairness and this is my own opinion, I think that Liberty Media could be a good move for Vodafone because it will bring the best of both worlds and deliver real value and option for the consumer.

[rio_w]

What’s this? Vodafone’s IoT boss Ivo Rook has been poached or moved to USAs Sprint operater. Surely not a good look, keep up the slowness and you are sure to get left behind. 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/12/vodafone_iot_boss_us_sprint/

[mickdrip]

I know that this reply, but hay ho! I have been a loyal Vodafone customer for over 15 years. I have sworn to end my contract with them over many years because of the extremely poor service and high prices but I have been silly or lazy enough to stick with them. My contract was due to end in late august so I contacted Vodafone in early august because to see if I could get a decent plan for the next year. I was told to look on th eweb site at what was on offer. I did but unfortunately I ordered a new sim only contract instead of upgrading my existing contract. My mistake I know. But I had 30 days to cancel so when the new sim arrived in a couple of days I phoned again and asked to cancel the order. I also asked about upgrades and was offered a 40% off deal - result!! Iwas adivised I could go to the local Vodafone shop and they would sort out the cancelled order for me. I did and they cancelled the order and took back the sim. Less than two weeks later I noticed I had two contracts when I looked at the Vodaphone site. I phoned them and they said they would cancel the sim contract that I believed had been cancelled in the shop. All else seemed ok. I explained my mistake again and was assured I now only had one contract - with my old number. All seemed well untill I got an email informing me that I had a bill to pay which was far in excess of what it should be. I phoned Vodafone again, explained things again. after an hour or so it was all sorted and I asked the rep to repeat what we had agreed - namely that I had an upgrade to my contract I had had for the last year at a cost of about 50 pence a month more. The next day I checked to see that my upgrade had gone through and found I had been cut off. I had no contract.  I phoned again and was passed to one person and another about 5 times - I lost count. after over 2 hours on the phoneI was told I had cancelled my contract - I never did, but they insisted I had. The only thing I had cancelled was a sim only contract ordered by mistake which was rectified - or so I thought - a month earlier. I eventually told them to stick Vodafone where it fits, cancelled my direct debit, told them I'd see them in court if needs be and went to my local 3 three provider's shop and set up a contract with them - a far better deal than Vodafone offers - I should have done it years ago.