Vodafone customer service

Azhrei

You know, I'd always heard that Vodafone's customer service was lousy, but I'd never had any issues with them and assumed that people were just irritated with the automated service - until just now.

I'm sharing an apartment with two friends in an area that can't get fibre, so the maximum we have and can get is 15MB adsl. Whenever we're in the apartment we are always on the 'net - whether browsing, streaming hd stuff (YouTube, Netflix on desktops, laptops, phone and consoles) or downloading games (three desktops using Steam and Origin, a Wii U with hard drive). One of us got a PS4 last month and he's been downloading games for it. This drove last month's bandwidth usage to 385GB, which is a fair amount I think we can all agree. Now, I knew Vodafone's "fair usage" policy had a limit of 300GB, but when we were with UTV we had the unlimited bandwidth option in the form of an extra payment of €6.99 a month - we surely at some point came close to or exceeded 385GB, and UTV never said anything because we paid for the extra bandwidth.

Enter Vodafone, who say we'll have exactly the same package as we had on UTV. I look around the 'net and see people saying that Vodafone don't actually charge you if you exceed the 300GB, they just call you to let you know you're going over. "Hmm", I thought, and watched as last month's bandwidth crept ever higher. Come bill time, we are indeed charged €10.31 for "broadband usage", which is fair. Realisation dawns that we are already at 174GB usage and the month has barely begun, and this week and next week alone will see us downloading games that will be at least 40GB to 50GB each (AC Unity and DA Inquisition, for the curious) and after talking to the other two, decide to call Vodafone and see if we can get some kind of extra bandwidth package deal with them.

Cue the endless waiting, which I've never had too much trouble with. The first guy who answered spoke in heavily accented English, and I went through the usual rigmarole of providing account details and such. I explained our situation to him and he was confused, saying we were already on the unlimited package. He eventually says no, there is no extra bandwidth option, but suggests that a business package might suit me. "Sure", I say, "Whatever works". So he takes a minute to transfer me to business, where I get through to a nice lady who is clearly Irish. After giving my details again, I explain the situation, and she says business isn't for me, and that residential will be able to do something for me. I sigh mentally, thank her for her time, and she transfers me back to residential.

A few minutes pass and I get onto someone in residential, and guess what? This person also has heavily accented English... my heart sinks as I yet again provide my details, explain the situation and how I got to him, and that the girl in business said that residential should be able to give me some option. There's an extended pause, and in a confused tone he asks me to repeat and not speak so quickly. Repressing a sigh, I go through it all again, speaking as clearly as I can. Finally he understands and, looking through my account, asks if he can speak to the account holder.

"I am the account holder."
"Sorry?"
"This is the account holder speaking."
"You are Azhrei?"
"Yes."
"...are you sure?"
Wtf... "...pretty sure, yeah."

Well, that's filled me with confidence that this guy knows what he's doing and that he's the one to help. He asks for my details again and, having to accept finally that I really am the account holder, he then tells me there's nothing he can do.

"There is no extra or actual unlimited bandwidth option? I can't pay an extra fee for extra bandwidth?"
"No, you are already on the unlimited bandwidth package. It is unlimited up to 300GB where you are then charged for downloading extra."
How in the actual **** can you say the bandwidth allowed is unlimited when you say it's UP TO 30-"Oh, I see."
"You would like to add landline calls?"
What?! "No, thank you. I think that's all that can be said right now, thank you fo-"
"Do you need help with anything else?"
"No, thank you for your help."
CLICK

Eighteen minutes I spent with those useless lackwits only to be bounced around from one department to another, to end up with what they told me to begin with - there is no extra bandwidth option. Residential thinks I should get a business package and business thinks that residential should have an option for me. I hope when the ESB dealie arrives that their 300GB allowance changes because that is totally going to change the way we use the Internet, and we already use it heavily here. In the meantime we're going to continue to download as we see fit and pay the €10.31 in lieu of an actual extra bandwidth option.

Damn. Anybody else have a similar experience with them?

nilhg

When I'm logged in here,

https://broadband.vodafone.ie/myaccount/internetaddons

I get the option of 150gb extra for €6 a month, You have to select your broadband number from the dropdown at the top, not your landline phone number.

Azhrei

Edit - Just spoke to Vodafone again (another joyous trip through their byzantine automated service! Joy! And will they ever change that fecking song...) and they said that since I'm already on the "unlimited" 300GB service there's no other option to go further than that. The lady I spoke to went off to speak to someone about possibly adding bandwidth but she came back with a negative. She did say I could continue to pay whatever extra we accrue.

Bah. As soon as FTTH arrives I'm picking a different ISP - she didn't seem too hopeful that the allowance would change once it arrives.

ED E

Azhrei wrote: »

Bah. As soon as FTTH arrives I'm picking a different ISP - she didn't seem too hopeful that the allowance would change once it arrives.

On that, any word if magnet are applying their FUP? Because if they are eircom are suddenly becoming more attractive.

Its Only Ray Parlour

Several people have been complaining about their FUP of 300GB and how sly they are for hiding it. Just leave them when your contract is up and tell all of your friends to stay away from them.

Sky and Eircom do not have FUPs.

warap1

Azhrei wrote: »

I look around the 'net and see people saying that Vodafone don't actually charge you if you exceed the 300GB, they just call you to let you know you're going over.

Thank you very much for confirming I'm not crazy. I've registered with Vodafone (what a mistake) in May, and I know I specifically asked "Are there any limits/do I pay extra for usage?" - I was assured I won't.
And I know I did find on their website something saying exactly what you mentioned - If I go over 300gb, they'll just give me a call and ask what's going on.

Of course I didn't get any call but have been billed for going over 300gb, and when I called to ask what's going on, I've been treated like an idiot.
Vodafone: Internet is unlimited but there is the FUP
Me: So it's not unlimited
Vodafone: Yes, it's unlimited
Me: So it's unlimited but not costing what I already paid for.

And I cannot find the page anymore with that "we'll call you if you go over" thing. If anyone can post the link it would be great, even if it's not valid anymore. I can use page snapshot sites to look at the history of a website, and hopefully will find it.

braddun

you will get charged charged 1 euro per GB over


300 gb month is huge

1gb surfing the web 44 hours


1gb facebook 55 hours

1 gb watching tv 30 minutes 10 episodes



1 gb youtube 69 videos

1 gb emails 34,000


1gb Skype 30 minutes chat 4.5 hours

1 gb music streaming 256 songs

1 gb Netflix 1 hour of streaming


Netflix

Adjusting the data usage settings for your account is the easiest way to reduce the amount of bandwidth used while watching Netflix. There are 4 data usage settings to choose from, each estimate below is per stream:
•Low (0.3 GB per hour)
•Medium (SD: 0.7 GB per hour)
•High (best video quality, up to 3 GB per hour for HD, 7 GB per hour for Ultra HD)
•Auto (adjusts automatically to deliver the highest possible quality, based on your current internet connection speed)

To select a setting that works best for your Internet plan, navigate to Your Account page and click Playback settings in the Your Profile section. It can take up to 8 hours for these changes to take affect.

warap1

Hi braddun,

Thanks for the comparisons but honestly, it's 2014, 21st century, Internet driven world, and you're telling me 300GBs is too much and I should watch Netflix on low quality
That's a bit odd. Anyhow, the things which can be done with 1GB (either stay online on mIRC for 1 year or watch 8 minutes of 4K streams) are irrelevant to the problem.

braddun

from voderphone website




Out of bundle broadband usage
€10.00 per 100GB used over 300GB allowance.


which is better than them slowing your speed to 1mb

warap1

not quite, it is not "better" either way. point is they changed the rules or blatantly lied/failed to tell the truth when I enquired about these scenarios.
my current intentions are not to debate about what they now say on their website or wether one's traffic usage is too high or not, but to simply find out more about what the OP mentioned -> V will just -call- to check if you have a virus or smth if you go over 300GBs (which is what I read too on their website before subscribing).

efb

Do you not think €10 for 100GB isn't good value? That's €45 for 400GB - that's €15 each.

warap1

no, I surely do not believe that is good value. If I would have known this from the start, then I would've steered clear from V.
how can you state that to be charged more than what you were told can be considered good value?
please, again: I do not want to win a debate over this or to convince you otherwise, you have your points of view and that's fine. I want to know more about the aforementioned statement from V, so if you know more about that, reply on topic.

Thanks.

efb

warap1 wrote: »

no, I surely do not believe that is good value. If I would have known this from the start, then I would've steered clear from V.
how can you state that to be charged more than what you were told can be considered good value?
please, again: I do not want to win a debate over this or to convince you otherwise, you have your points of view and that's fine. I want to know more about the aforementioned statement from V, so if you know more about that, reply on topic.

Thanks.

Did you read your contract? If so you should know it is 300GB
If not, you should have

warap1

It was a phone sign up. They don't send copies or if they do, I did not receive one.
Stating on their website, in plain sight for customers that one thing equals x, but redefining in T&C between hundreds of lines that the same thing equals z, can be safely considered a lie.

efb

warap1 wrote: »

It was a phone sign up. They don't send copies or if they do, I did not receive one.
Stating on their website, in plain sight for customers that one thing equals x, but redefining in T&C between hundreds of lines that the same thing equals z, can be safely considered a lie.

Then pursue it with Comreg. Can't see you winning tho

Avada

This whole use of the word unlimited needs to change imo. And not just with Vodafone. 300gb is not unlimited, it is 300gb.

warap1

"It is unlimited! we just charge you when you go over " -> is what a V rep would say, omitting the 2nd part.

Azhrei

It definitely needs to go, and I can't believe braddun really thinks that 300GB is a lot of bandwidth. Maybe it is if you're just using the 'net lightly but we're not - we're always on it, always browsing, streaming, gaming. Then there are games, which account for more bandwidth usage here than any others. Wii U games may be small, but PS4 and PC games are now up to 50GB as standard and that's not including patches. Even Smash Bros. on Wii U takes up 17GB, which is far and beyond Nintendo's other games, coming in at a miserly 1.3GB for something like New Super Mario Bros. U.

As Warap said, this is 2014 and watching Netflix on low quality is really not on. The Internet is ever evolving and it's requiring much more bandwidth as time goes by - when we switch over to fibre when the ESB network is up and running our bandwidth usage is going to multiply exponentially beyond the 300-450GB we're pulling down now. We have a media pc where I have copied all of our dvd's onto the hard drives for immediate access. Those drives are bursting to the seams - instead of stuffing more drives in there, or instead of replacing them with bigger ones, we could possibly upload all our media to cloud storage, and stream everything from there. I'm not saying that's what we're going to do, but with such incredible speeds, such things are a possibility.

And even without our own media streaming is going to rapidly take over from television anyway - and then there's games. Streaming games online instead of installing them to your hard drive will become commonplace. I'm sure Vodafone will up their bandwidth allowance accordingly but going by how stingy they are today when we are on a mere 15mb adsl connection, I don't see them being very generous with it and I expect we'll see many more people complaining in here about constantly pushing up against their "unlimited" bandwidth allowances.

300GB is probably plenty for the average customer, but we are not the average customer, not by a country mile, and Vodafone is not willing to accommodate us even for the little we do go over their "unlimited" allowance.

Hank Scorpio

Did you try posting on their talk to forum? http://www.boards.ie/ttforum/1270

Might be worth a shot. I agree 300GB shared between multiple people can be used up rather quickly

warap1

I found the message which I initially read on their page. It said:

"Unlimited usage allowances are subject to a fair usage policy (FUP) of 300GB. The service is truly unlimited and there is no charge and no service degradation of any sort that takes place for exceeding the 300GB* FUP. The FUP only exists to allow Vodafone to contact a customer if we notice something unusual - like usage that is driving very high internet traffic volumes, such as a PC virus."

I cannot find a link to it however.

guil

I'm on 17mbit adsl and when Vodafone rang to offer it I specifically asked was it unlimited and would there be any extra charges. I was assured so and got a €10 discount for having a phone with them.

I rang them sometime in October to query it again and was told no limit and no extra charges for downloading 8-900gb in a month. Can this be used to break contract with them when I do start found over the FUP?

warap1

Maybe. They'll tell you they have to check the conversations you had with them and they'll call you back. I'm still waiting myself for that call.
I don't know what happens if you indeed are found to be right, provided they admit to it. Probably nothing.

Avada

warap1 wrote: »

I found the message which I initially read on their page. It said:

"Unlimited usage allowances are subject to a fair usage policy (FUP) of 300GB. The service is truly unlimited and there is no charge and no service degradation of any sort that takes place for exceeding the 300GB* FUP. The FUP only exists to allow Vodafone to contact a customer if we notice something unusual - like usage that is driving very high internet traffic volumes, such as a PC virus."

I cannot find a link to it however.

They changed that recently, its now €10 per 100gb over on new packs and €1 per gb on legacy packs

warap1

Random_Name wrote: »

They changed that recently, its now €10 per 100gb over on new packs and €1 per gb on legacy packs

And they can just do that without letting customers know? I mean sure, contract says there is FUP, but they also advertised that going over FUP means something totally different than being charged.

Today is 10eur, tomorrow maybe 100eur. Is it that simple for this almighty company?

Nollog

Azhrei wrote: »

How in the actual **** can you say the bandwidth allowed is unlimited when you say it's UP TO 30-

ComReg™

They've been allowing the advertising of "unlimited" (with fair usage policy) for years.

Avada

warap1 wrote: »

And they can just do that without letting customers know? I mean sure, contract says there is FUP, but they also advertised that going over FUP means something totally different than being charged.

Today is 10eur, tomorrow maybe 100eur. Is it that simple for this almighty company?

They reserve the right do charge in their terms & conditions

kknox

Here's my online experience with Vodafone. Purchased phone on Dec 8th, expected delivery Dec 9th. Dec 12th still no phone. Tracking Status "Being Processed". Dec 14 Tracking status updated "Order Cancelled". No email or text notification and no refund yet just online tracking status changed.
I rang to inquire and was told I'd get a refund within 10 days - that's almost 3 weeks after paying. No offer of a replacement or any recognition that they did anything wrong. I said ... "So you're basically telling me for feic off" - response - "not in those words".