Vodafone Roaming RipOff

LFCFan

check out the front page of http://www.ripoffireland.org and let me know what you think! It's about Vodafone roaming charges!

vinnyfitz

Thats classic - instantly suspicion arousing.

Which company was it that offered the cheap rates you cite?
Were the other US companies going to charge more than the new Vodafone tariff? Cos if so they could argue what you are comparing them with is just a temporary loss leader.

Anyway can you not still choose t o go with that US network by selecting it when you arrive if it is better value?

LFCFan

the company was Voicestream/T-Mobile. They were the cheapest overall of all the companies listed on the Vodafone website. Nearly all the other companies listed, though more expensive than Voicestream/T-Mobile were still a lot cheaper than these new Vodafone tariffs. Everyone one of them had a charge of .92c peak and .85c off peak for recieving calls. This is now 1.09 on the new tariff. By selecting a network other than a Vodafone preferred network the charges are even higher. It all smacks of a blatant ripoff to me and to say they can't access the old price list is bull because all they have to do is access a backup of the site from yesterday which is when I got the old prices.

dudara

I was in England at the start of April and just received my bill. Knowing how high roaming costs were I deliberately didn't use the mobile. but instead bought a calling card when over there.

However, I did have to use it sometimes, and one call caught my eye. I was charged 50c (NOT INCLUDING VAT, I may add) for an 11 second call.

Canyone beat that for rip-off?

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by dudara
I was in England at the start of April and just received my bill. Knowing how high roaming costs were I deliberately didn't use the mobile. but instead bought a calling card when over there.

However, I did have to use it sometimes, and one call caught my eye. I was charged 50c (NOT INCLUDING VAT, I may add) for an 11 second call.

Canyone beat that for rip-off?

God christ this is a hilarious thread. One group of people are complaining about the cost of roaming and the other are complaining how it is so confusing to use roaming and know what charges will be incurred...

So they role out a new option that pretty much averages out the cost of roaming in each region, in some cases the new charges are more expensive, in others they are cheaper..

Regarding roaming, you are not charged per second!!! This is down to the network operator you are roaming on. They littlerly bill your operator who pass the charge you. The foreign operator can change the charges whenever they want and do not have to notify other operators of this.

seamus

Tbh, although Vodafone manage to get standard rates in some countries due to having Vodafone networks or interconnect agreements, each operator must act as a separate entity in it's own country (i.e. Vodafone Ireland can't dictate what Vodafone UK will charge Irish customers for roaming in the UK), and the bulk of roaming charges go to the foreign operator.

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by seamus
Tbh, although Vodafone manage to get standard rates in some countries due to having Vodafone networks or interconnect agreements, each operator must act as a separate entity in it's own country (i.e. Vodafone Ireland can't dictate what Vodafone UK will charge Irish customers for roaming in the UK), and the bulk of roaming charges go to the foreign operator.

Exactly. I just wish people with good ideas like RipOffIreland would do a bit of research to gain an actual understanding of what they are talking about. At the moment this place is more sensationlist and less informed than the ****ing Sun.

I was in England at the start of April and just received my bill. Knowing how high roaming costs were I deliberately didn't use the mobile. but instead bought a calling card when over there.

However, I did have to use it sometimes, and one call caught my eye. I was charged 50c (NOT INCLUDING VAT, I may add) for an 11 second call.

Canyone beat that for rip-off?

Ro

I have to agree it's a blatant rip off - €1.59 to call Ireland from the US! You can get calling cards in the US that cost about 4c a minute on a standard phone line, so I don't know how they can justify the extra €1.55:

http://www.bigzoo.com/home/rates.asp?ccode=353

http://www.paytone.com/phone/cards/Ireland

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by Ro
so I don't know how they can justify the extra €1.55:

Why don't you go and learn about it and then you might know.

Ripwave

Originally posted by Ro
I have to agree it's a blatant rip off - €1.59 to call Ireland from the US! You can get calling cards in the US that cost about 4c a minute on a standard phone line, so I don't know how they can justify the extra €1.55:

I can call numbers in Ireland from a standard Irish land line for as little as 1c a minute, yet people are paying 50c a minute to make mobile calls within Ireland.

€1.59.minute to Ireland from the US is probably less that AT&T, Sprint and MCI charge normally for land-line calls to Ireland (unless the customer has signed up for a "reach out world" type package).

dudara

Jesus_etc..

before you start giving out to me

1. My boyfriend used to work for Eircom in the international switching section, so I know about call routing from abroad.

2. when in england, i used vodafone reckoning that sticking to the one provider might help keeps roaming costs down. I do know however, that Vodafone UK and Vodafone Ireland are separate entities. But still, I was a vodafone customer on the vodafone network. That's what really got my goat about the call charges. I stuck to the one company and still got shaft*d.

seamus

Originally posted by dudara
2. when in england, i used vodafone reckoning that sticking to the one provider might help keeps roaming costs down. I do know however, that Vodafone UK and Vodafone Ireland are separate entities. But still, I was a vodafone customer on the vodafone network. That's what really got my goat about the call charges. I stuck to the one company and still got shaft*d.

But that's the whole point about separate entities. Although they might be one megacorp, about all that does is give a friendly avenue to begin price negotiations. The benefit of roaming with the same company is integrated services, such as voicemail and GPRS. Different countries have different economies and different costs, so each subsidiary must be completely separate - i.e. it must treat sister subsidiares as separate foreign companies looking for an interconnect.

Ro

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
Why don't you go and learn about it and then you might know.

I know Vodafone Ireland made €328m in profits for the last year, so they're obviously making some money out of it.

seamus

Originally posted by Ro
I know Vodafone Ireland made €328m in profits for the last year, so they're obviously making some money out of it.

The point was what Ripwave had pointed out. You can't compare the costs between Landline calls and mobile calls. 4c a minute is cheaper than calling mobile to mobile within Ireland.

Ro

Take Cingular as an example, if a Cingular wireless customer comes to Ireland it costs them $1.29/min (€1.05) to call the US. If I go to the US and use the Cingular network it costs me €1.59/min to call Ireland.

LFCFan

yet again I see people come on here and justify these charges. It's no wonder we are getting so screwed here in Ireland. So what if this new service averages out the charges for roaming. Actually, for roaming in the USA it doesn't average them out because all charges on the new service are higher than practically all the old charges. Like someone said. Vodafone Ireland made a massive profit last year so there is no justification for raising prices.

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by LFCFan
yet again I see people come on here and justify these charges. It's no wonder we are getting so screwed here in Ireland. So what if this new service averages out the charges for roaming. Actually, for roaming in the USA it doesn't average them out because all charges on the new service are higher than practically all the old charges. Like someone said. Vodafone Ireland made a massive profit last year so there is no justification for raising prices.

To be honest it is that attitude that has us in this postion. There is too many people (who know next to nothing about what they are talking about) making noise about RipOffIReland. The powers that be know these people know every little, thus ignore them. If you are going to change something, research and understand it, contrast it against similar services (comparing the roaming charges incurred by customer on a network with 20 plus million mobile customers against that of a company with 1.8 million customers is not relevent) and then put your point forward without using overused sayings and petty arguments.

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by Ro
Take Cingular as an example, if a Cingular wireless customer comes to Ireland it costs them $1.29/min (€1.05) to call the US. If I go to the US and use the Cingular network it costs me €1.59/min to call Ireland.

As touched on in my previous post. Cingular now have 20 million customers while Vodafone Ireland has 1.8 million customers.. Who do you think will be able to negotiate cheaper rates. Combine that with the number of landline customer they have and you have a fairly big company. As Vodafone Ireland is integrated more and more into the Vodafone group, the group will leverage its size. When this happens, things should start to change. However, integrating 20+ operating companies with 140 million customers is not an easy task and sometimes the smaller details are missed. When the bigger issues are ironed out, the smaller issues will probably be dealt with.

Hobart

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
To be honest it is that attitude that has us in this postion. There is too many people (who know next to nothing about what they are talking about) making noise about RipOffIReland. The powers that be know these people know every little, thus ignore them. If you are going to change something, research and understand it, contrast it against similar services (comparing the roaming charges incurred by customer on a network with 20 plus million mobile customers against that of a company with 1.8 million customers is not relevent) and then put your point forward without using overused sayings and petty arguments.

I think it is actually you who are missing the point. The articile linked to a discussion on why the charges had gone up. When the person enquired as to why, with vodafone, they were told that they (vodafone) had lost the previous tarrif list.

Now why don't you do some of your own "reasearch" and read the opening paragraph of the thread before you try to impress us all here with you superior level of knowledge with regards to roaming and call tarrifs.

jesus_thats_gre

Originally posted by Hobart
I think it is actually you who are missing the point. The articile linked to a discussion on why the charges had gone up. When the person enquired as to why, with vodafone, they were told that they (vodafone) had lost the previous tarrif list.

Now why don't you do some of your own "reasearch" and read the opening paragraph of the thread before you try to impress us all here with you superior level of knowledge with regards to roaming and call tarrifs.

I am not trying to impress anyone, I gave up doing that a few months ago.. I just hate to see valid arguments and valid causes like RipOffIreland or IrelandOffLine be diluted by petty arguments or just plain crap.

Now why don't you go and read it again. Nowhere does it suggest that "they had lost the previous tarrif list". Maybe they just don't store old tarrif information? I assumed you are aware of what a knowledge base is and that keeping out of date information in your knowledge base serves no purpose other than to cause confusion.

LFCFan

Originally posted by Hobart
I think it is actually you who are missing the point. The articile linked to a discussion on why the charges had gone up. When the person enquired as to why, with vodafone, they were told that they (vodafone) had lost the previous tarrif list.

Now why don't you do some of your own "reasearch" and read the opening paragraph of the thread before you try to impress us all here with you superior level of knowledge with regards to roaming and call tarrifs.

Thanks Hobart. I'm sick of people coming on with all their 'superior' knowledge of how the world works and use it to justify something that at the end of the day is a blatant attempt to rip us off again. This discussion isn't about the ins and outs of how mobile companies negotiate deals with other mobile companies. It's about the fact that when Vodafone were confronted with this they fobbed me off and were unable to give me a satisfactory explanation as to why their new service was more expensive even though they were trying to advertise it as a better, cheaper service. If Vodafone Ireland had just scraped by last year with a tiny profit I might understand an increase in roaming charges but the fact that they made over €300,000,000 profits makes it pure profiteering and greed.

LFCFan

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
Now why don't you go and read it again. Nowhere does it suggest that "they had lost the previous tarrif list". Maybe they just don't store old tarrif information? I assumed you are aware of what a knowledge base is and that keeping out of date information in your knowledge base serves no purpose other than to cause confusion.

The tarrif information I got was on a Monday. The new Tarrifs were there on the Tuesday. Are you telling me that a whole section of a website just disappeared overnight and there is no backup at all? Bull****! They are trying to pull the wool over our eyes because they probably figure that people wouldn't even notice. If they had given me an explanation like you have tried to explain I might have understood but they tried to tell me it was because roaming was now more trustworthy and you could get a better signal. What complete and utter crap.

Hobart

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
I am not trying to impress anyone, I gave up doing that a few months ago.. I just hate to see valid arguments and valid causes like RipOffIreland or IrelandOffLine be diluted by petty arguments or just plain crap.

You are. Your attitude stinks. You use condescending comments like "Why don't you go and learn about it and then you might know." My limited experience of you in these boards has been of a user mad to jump on another at the slightest op, and drag the argument down to a level of total farce, while burying the same argument in (sometimes inaccurate) technical details. the reason I know they are inaccurate (sometimes) is because for 5 years I worked as a technical product manager for Logica MN, now LogicaCMG. I do some consultancy for them now. I have no intention nor desire to get further into a argument with you about the minuta of technical details with regard to roaming or mobile telephony in general.

Now why don't you go and read it again. Nowhere does it suggest that "they had lost the previous tarrif list".

*sigh*. Maybe you need to read the link again. Here, tell you what. Here is the quote " I rang vodafone to ask about this but they had conveniently lost the old call rates.]

Maybe they just don't store old tarrif information? I assumed you are aware of what a knowledge base is and that keeping out of date information in your knowledge base serves no purpose other than to cause confusion.

See what I mean about inaccurate information? Of course they keep a record of old tarrifs. they are legally bound to.

jesus_thats_gre

Yes companies are obliged to keep them, and I would imagine it is in their interest to do so. However, they would not keep them in a place that is instantly accessible, especially in a customer services area. Having last weeks call charges available at the click of a button serves no purpose in such an environment and this is why you would have been told they do not have access to it. If it was important, I am sure any company would be able to provide it.

I have no interest to get into an argument either. I wouldn't feel comfortable arguing such a cause, nor do I have the time. However, bold statements as this is Rip Off regarldless of the facts or reasons is nonsense and this is why I jumped down his throat. This annoyed me alot, and still do. Shouting about a companies profits does not in itself justify claims for Rip Off.

Now, can someone from Vodafone please explain to me how this new service is going to save people money? I rang vodafone to ask about this but they had conveniently lost the old call rates. Seems to me they are trying to shaft the Irish public yet again. If this information annoys you, ring Vodafone and demand to know why this new service is more expensive. They told me it was because it's all more reliable now. Does this sound like a proper explanation? Ask them!

This quote is directly from the website. I attempted to explain the possible logic for the new service. I would question the accuracy of the "lost the old call rates" statement also.

I did jump down his throat and was arrogant about it, apologies!

LFCFan

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
I did jump down his throat and was arrogant about it, apologies!

Don't worry about it. Sure aren't we all on the same side

Ro

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
As touched on in my previous post. Cingular now have 20 million customers while Vodafone Ireland has 1.8 million customers.. Who do you think will be able to negotiate cheaper rates.

I'd say the number of Cingular customers travelling here would be fairly similar to the number of Vodafone customers travelling to the US. So they'd be buying a similar amount of minutes from each other.

Also it only costs €1.29/min to call Ireland on the Cingular network in the US if you're a Meteor customer. So how can Vodafone with their 1.7 million extra customers not negotiate a cheaper rate than Meteor?

http://www.meteor.ie/services/roaming_where.html

Kobie

I saw something similar on the O2 website the other day. They recommend that for the best value when roaming in the Netherlands you select Telfort as your carrier (mainly because O2 own them I suspect). However on another part of the site they show the breakdown of charges from the various Dutch carriers and Telfort come out as one of the most expensive. T-Mobile are far cheaper in every case.

Goes to show you should never believe a word they tell you.

HelterSkelter

Originally posted by jesus_thats_gre
they would not keep them in a place that is instantly accessible, especially in a customer services area

So what happens if I phone customer services to query my bill last month. How is the person on the other end of the line supposed to explain how the charges were calculated if they don't have the tarriffs at the time to hand?????

MadsL

So what happens if I phone customer services to query my bill last month.

You'll get Jesus_t_g on the line.

Typedef

Ladies : Hobart jesus_that_gre, you are quite free to gore each other *anywhere* but, where I have to tolerate wasting my life reading it.

Hobart

Originally posted by Typedef
Ladies : Hobart jesus_that_gre, you are quite free to gore each other *anywhere* but, where I have to tolerate wasting my life reading it.

And the award for clarity in a single post goes to..........:rolleyes:

You were a lot clearer when you typed in Latin Typie.