Vodafone Rip-Off on Holidays!

crx===

Vodafone Rip-Off!

First of all I would like to say thanks for this wounderful online facility which I have looked to for guidance on various topics , little did I know I would be writing my own post one day.


Its really sad the way large multinationals can rip off ordinary individuals and get away with it , even tell you that it that its your own fault for falling foul of that small text written to confuse or mislead you .
I am writing this in relation to Vodafone of which I have been a customer for many years .While on holidays with my family in Spain last week, the first sun holiday in 10 years, I inadvertently checked the weather and aertel news and a couple of various pages online through my mobile phone – something I have done at home regularly costing me anything between 15 cent to 99 cent per day when used. After many failed attempts to get connection (gateway problems?) I received the information I needed. This I did on only two separate occasions cost me a staggering 38 Euro for less than 4 Megabytes in total!!!!!!!!!:eek:

I did not expect this kind of extortion as upon turning on my mobile after getting off the plane in Spain, I was greeted with a text from Vodafone Spain telling me my call cost were 59 cents (similar to home) and as there was no mention of text cost or the astronomical internet access cost thought no more of it – bad mistake.
I had fallen as so many other people have into ‘rip-off roaming’ - but at a new level!:eek:

After my arrival home and one last attempt to see if it had been some kind of mistake I contacted Vodafone ‘customer care’ who quickly pointed out that I had only myself to blame as I had not gone to their website and read through all their terms and conditions to find out that once I leave the country Vodafone charge what they like, ‘cause you have no choice - and they are going to take full advantage!
Feeling sickened by the careless treatment of ‘customer care’, I gathered myself and again contacted Vodafone (again paying for the privilege!) who after many questions finally told me that even though I had connected through a Vodafone ISP had paid 38 Euros for receiving less than 4 megabytes of information, a far cry from the 99 Cent I would have paid for up to 50 megabytes here at home. The reason I was given was because I had used Vodafone Spain network as opposed to Vodafone Ireland network – even though they are the one company – Vodafone Group …….. Silly me! :mad:

Feeling maddened I then asked for an itemized break-down to be sent to me of all cost incurred once I landed in Spain , it was then they landed a bombshell , I would need a solicitors letter to be sent first to Vodafone before they could release such information as I was a ‘prepay’ customer……. Again I was quoted ‘as it was in the terms & conditions’ ……… what are they trying to hide I ask myself?
Vodafone admitted that even though the cost was 'quite high' - it was still 'above board & correct'!????????????.

Could you imagine being in a supermarket with no prices displayed and after you’d paid exuberant cost for substandard groceries, ask the cashier for your receipt only to be told that you’d need a solicitors letter to do so and then been told by the manager(after you’ve payed to speak to him) that its you’re own fault for not reading their terms and conditions ‘online’ first before entering the shop …NO! They even go to the trouble of telling how much per kg an item costs or how much cheaper they are compared to their rivals …because they are regulated by EU laws which require them to do so.

My only wish from this bad experience is that other ordinary folks like myself unaware of the diverse legalities entwined in ‘terms & conditions’ of service providers such as my own do not fall into the same trap as I , especially while abroad on these so called roaming charges. :mad:

At least I can get up in the morning safe in the knowledge that I make an honest living.:)

Yours sincerely,
Dan.

P.S Still can’t find information anywhere on Vodafone web site to suggest that the above cost could be incurred ……..

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Links to topic:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/eu-gets-tough-over-ripoff-mobile-roaming-charges-781094.html


http://www.reuters.com/article/internetNews/idUSL0917492020080211?feedType=RSS&feedName=internetNews

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bbphone/article.html?in_article_id=418475&in_page_id=182

Gillo

Here's their roaming rates.

I get the idea from your post that you didn't check their rates, so in fairness it's your own fault.

quintron

Feck their t&c and their roaming "rates". This is 2008 for God's sake! 38 lids for measly 4 megs is daylight robbery and we're more fools for accepting it just because its listed on their site.
Just look at our European counterparts if you want realistic pricing on data and indeed roaming et al.
We are getting shafted in this country, and in typical Irish fashion, we don't do anything about it. Its no wonder we are paying these extortionate prices. The networks will continue to charge what they like.
End Rant.

theteal

mobile comm's t&cs are quite an interesting read. . .how many people out there think they personally own their mobile phone numbers?. . .think again.

regarding voda not giving OP the charges breakdown; i'm pretty sure that once they have verified ownership of the account (data protection) they must release any and all information on that account to the owner (although you may have to go through their head office there is definitely no need for solicitor intervention)

finally, although €38 is extortionate, i still reckon a wee glance of the roaming charges could have ended this situation before it began

mikemac

I hope you are are not a solicitor as you seem to sign up to things without reading the terms and conditions.

Tis your own fault,sorry if that's unhelpful but it's the truth

Sam Vimes

sorry mate, the internet on phones is expensive. vodafone has dozens of different prices for dozens of different services and they can't sit you down and run you through every one of them just in case you ever want to use them. it's your responsibility to check the price of the service before you use it

it absolutely is a rip off but they didn't try to hide the price from you. by using it you agreed to pay the advertised price


for future reference, 99% of those special offers like free texts or calls or in this case 99c internet are only valid in ireland

crx===

I admit that I was foolish not to check the charges before going abroad again I may not be as well traveled as you, that is not the point of this post. My opinion is that Vodafone group are exploiting us by charging us such costs in the first place, and in giving me a reply such as this lends me to expect you to think this is the norm. They are the same group, I have some knowledge of how large organizations work and on this basis cannot see why these huge costs can be incurred.
You’d be surprised how many people each year ‘get caught’ out in these similar circumstances!
Until people say NO things will remain the same .

Sam Vimes

crx=== wrote: »

I admit that I was foolish not to check the charges before going abroad again I may not be as well traveled as you, that is not the point of this post. My opinion is that Vodafone group are exploiting us by charging us such costs in the first place, and in giving me a reply such as this lends me to expect you to think this is the norm. They are the same group, I have some knowledge of how large organizations work and on this basis cannot see why these huge costs can be incurred.
You’d be surprised how many people each year ‘get caught’ out in these similar circumstances!
Until people say NO things will remain the same .

i wouldn't really be surprised. these threads are fairly common. one bloke posted because his daughter had ran up a €2000 bill using bebo on his phone. and that was in ireland.

the vodafone groups are completely separate companies that have the same name. as an example of this, a vodafone ireland sim won't work in a vodafone spain phone. as far as the network hardware is concerned they're no more associated with each other than any other network. but the real rip off is roaming charges in general. it costs them exactly the same to route a vodafone ireland call as it does to route an o2 ireland one (ie practically nothing) so all roaming rates should drop. i have it on good authority that it costs the network roughly 1c to transmit 1 MB of data.

crx=== wrote: »

Until people say NO things will remain the same .

i do say no. i never use it. as you say it'd be nice if others would follow suit

crx===

These rates you have shown me are for contract users , I would have no reason to check this .Even if Vodafone charged me these prices it still would only have come out at €18.75 ....... where are the correct charges ?????

Doctor DooM

crx=== wrote: »

These rates you have shown me are for contract users , I would have no reason to check this .Even if Vodafone charged me these prices it still would only have come out at €18.75 ....... where are the correct charges ?????

From Voda's website...

Get your roaming rate instantly

The quickest way to find out costs is to use our Info Text service to get your roaming rates sent to you instantly.

* Just text ‘ROAM’ followed by the name of the country you’ll be visiting (e.g. ‘ROAM France’) to 50221.

And you can check your rates anytime, even while you’re abroad - Info Text is always free.

Sam Vimes

having had a look at this page:

http://vodafone.ie/vlive/costs/faq/

i think you should have been charged the normal 99c

What about roaming and Mobile Internet?

Vodafone Mobile Internet is the same price when roaming abroad as at home. The service will be accessible from any country where we have a 3G or GPRS roaming agreement.

but it might be just for bill pay. call them and point them to that page


were you using the live apn if you know what that means?

Doctor DooM

Commander Vimes wrote: »

having had a look at this page:

http://vodafone.ie/vlive/costs/faq/

i think you should have been charged the normal 99c


but it might be just for bill pay. call them and point them to that page


were you using the live apn if you know what that means?

Would depend on which network he was on. I know he mentions voda spain but some phones float from network to network when you are abroad, and the wrong network will charge an arm and a leg.

Basically OP you need to talk to Voda and ask them the right questions (as mentioned above.)

crx===

Commander Vimes wrote: »

having had a look at this page:

http://vodafone.ie/vlive/costs/faq/

i think you should have been charged the normal 99c


but it might be just for bill pay. call them and point them to that page


were you using the live apn if you know what that means?

Hi Commander Vimes,

I used the Vodafone ISP to connect , the phone I was using was an N73 , so whatever the default application is on this was used to connect .
I hope this is what you mean , It does look as though the cost should be only 99c on the Vodafone web page , thanks for shedding some light on this.

Mimikyu

This post has been deleted.

Sam Vimes

crx=== wrote: »

Hi Commander Vimes,

I used the Vodafone ISP to connect , the phone I was using was an N73 , so whatever the default application is on this was used to connect .
I hope this is what you mean , It does look as though the cost should be only 99c on the Vodafone web page , thanks for shedding some light on this.

ah i see. Then i'm afraid you were charged correctly. That 99c offer only applies on the live apn. That really should be made more clear to customers. The fact that you were abroad didn't make that much of a difference. It probably would have only be 5 euro or so less if you were in ireland.

SDooM wrote: »

Would depend on which network he was on. I know he mentions voda spain but some phones float from network to network when you are abroad, and the wrong network will charge an arm and a leg.

Basically OP you need to talk to Voda and ask them the right questions (as mentioned above.)

that would make sense but it says the price is the same on any network they have a gprs agreement with. It doesnt say anything about only vodafone networks

GUIGuy

Well one of the big problems is that phones are pre-configured to use Vodafone ISP rather than Vodafone live. To me that is 'baiting' They advertise a reasonable rate (on live) but then configure their handsets to use ISP so that the user will incur higher charges.

MiCr0

which phone comes with isp as the default apn?

failsafe

GUIGuy wrote: »

Well one of the big problems is that phones are pre-configured to use Vodafone ISP rather than Vodafone live. To me that is 'baiting' They advertise a reasonable rate (on live) but then configure their handsets to use ISP so that the user will incur higher charges.

Really? That's never been my experience, sure they always have the live button defaulted as the shortcut key on most phones!

Commander vimes pointed it out correctly though, the 99c (home and abroad) is for the live apn. If you said you only get charged 99c at home, then you must be using live here. Did you switch it around when you were getting failed connections?

GekkePrutser

The vodafone ISP roaming charges are very expensive indeed. But even in Ireland they are 2c/kB on prepay which adds up to about 20 euro per megabyte :eek: Note that this is a lot more than what you will pay when roaming (5 euro to 6.90 per megabyte in Spain depending on the network). So apparently it's cheaper when roaming Edit: Or did I read their roaming charges page wrong?

But I do have to say: If you do use the live APN at the 99c/day, they are one of the cheapest around when roaming. There's not many providers that give the same rate for data as at home, even if you are not on a foreign Vodafone network. And 99c for 1 day or 50MB is pretty decent I think. Too bad it's just web access though.

Also for voice roaming their passport offer is one of the best. For me it works out a lot cheaper than any other network.

I just wish they'd ditch that stupid old ISP APN and its price plan, and give the live APN full unproxied internet connectivity. It's a shame that crx=== got caught out by this.

quintron

GekkePrutser wrote: »

I just wish they'd ditch that stupid old ISP APN and its price plan, and give the live APN full unproxied internet connectivity. It's a shame that crx=== got caught out by this.

Hear Hear! (Chances are bob hope and no hope btw). Its how they make money see. :rolleyes:
Excuse the sarcasm but they will continue to shove proxied data through their portal and charge through the nose for anything outside of that. Their price plans don't reflect todays usage trends al will with regard to all access data.

3 mobile broadband is about as unfettered as you will get in this country despite all the whingin' and moanin' from people (myself included on occasion) and its cheap (read realistically priced!).

They don't do roaming (big let downs there), but if you want a simple billing plan and straight up data, 3 is about as straightforward as it gets.

Bluefrog

Voda and O2 only introduced anything approaching a reasonable data plan when Three appeared on the scene. Who can blame them for only giving what they can get away with - that's business. However, it's a pretty short-term view.

Three are clowns when it comes to customer service and technical implementation but they understand something that consumers are just becoming aware of - there is only ONE internet - there isn't one on your phone and another on your computer. The day when telcos could claim that it is significantly more expensive to serve mobile bandwidth than it is to serve it down fixed lines and thereby justify extortionate fees and bizarre restrictions are coming to an end.

Consumers are slowly realising that they want to be able to interact with the internet from their phones the way they do from their PCs and will not accept being ripped off for the privilege. Manufacturers are accelerating this by pushing more data functionality on to the handsets and to keep people upgrading that process can only continue.

I'm guessing that Three still don't have a firm plan as to how to moneterise or develop their services in the future but at least they are exploring their options - the rest are like dinosaurs looking up at the meteor bearing down on them from the heavens.

As an end note, if the telcos really wanted to act ethically regarding their customers then surely it's not that hard to require authentication on the apns to prevent 'accidental' access as described above. If they can track you to bill you then they can track you to authenticate as far as I'm concerned.

Premium number services like Irish Psychos Live are obliged now by law to tell you when your spend passes a threshold - why not have the same system for data access at least.