Over the last few weeks I’ve been away a fair bit and because I run my own web-based business (Shed) I need to have fast, reliable broadband whilst I’m away. At the beginning of the year I went back to Vodafone (after leaving for T-Mobile a few years back after getting sick of the often unpredictable and always high monthly charges) and signed up for a 12-month mobile broadband contract at £15 a month for 3 gigabytes of data.
Before I left I checked in on the Vodafone website to see what the costs of using the dongle abroad (in Portugal as it happens) would be and much o my frustration, it wasn’t really clear. There was (and still is) also much talk of these costs coming right down for roaming data charges so I thought I’d call Vodafone customer services to make sure everything was 100% crystal clear and I was set up to pay the least amount possible.
After lots of discussion on the phone (there were lots of pauses and moments of uncertainty left, right and centre about mobile broadband in the UK, let alone using it abroad) I established that the best thing for me to do is as follows:
1. Change my contract temporarily for an extra £10
2. Pay £10 (£8.50 + VAT) for every 24 hours of use
3. Don’t go over 50MB in that 24 hour period
But – that came with the big caveat – you have to make sure that you are using the Vodafone Portugal network otherwise you will be charged at £10.28 per MB! Now I’m using the dongle on a Mac and somewhat predictably the software that comes with the dongle in a bit flakey – meaning that to access my modem I click on the app icon a few times, watch it bounce but not open, then open the network connection via network preferences. So, a question: “How am I supposed to know what network the dongle is connecting to?” Answer – “Take the sim out your dongle and put it in a mobile phone to see what network it connects to”. Response: “But, I am on T-Mobile and my phone is locked so I can’t check”. Answer ” Call T-Mobile and ask them for an unlock code”. Fail. In the end I used my wife’s phone (she’s on Vodafone) to check when I was out there.
Just to cover my back, because I’ve seen loads of issues with data before (including Ian’s CPW debacle), I asked for a confirmation email from Vodafone and this is what I received.
From: Customerservice@vodafone.co.uk
Date: 1 August 2008 10:45:14 BST
To: hopkins.jonathan@gmail.com
Subject: Vodafone Customer Services
on preferred network, vodafone potugal telecel the charges for using your mobile bb abroad is 9.99 p 24hrs as ive changed your pp to mobile bb roaming @ 30 p m. if you wander onto a different network the charges will be 10.28 p mb from vodafone
Yes, that’s official communication from Vodafone to its customers. No Dear Jonathan, Dear Sir, Dear customer. No email signature. No helpful links. No ‘have a great holiday’. Just the words. The absolute bare minimum number of keystrokes. And to make matters worse, despite trying to get off the line, I had to sit and listen to it being typed.
Anyway, appalling email aside, I get to Portugal, check that the network is Vodafone Portugal and fire up the dongle. Nothing. Absolutely nada. So, I call up Vodafone and because I recently changed contracts, a bar has been put back on my contract preventing me from using it abroad. Doh. I called to change contracts to a roaming one and they put a bar on. Ok, onwards and upwards, the bar gets removed and everything works fine. So, I use my mobile broadband and feel all good about mobile broadband again and the fact I can sit in the mountains of Portugal by the pool and do all my favourite web stuff.
Then, I get home. Everything is still working fine until yesterday my dongle stopped working. It wouldn’t connect to a carrier and I called Vodafone. After a big long winded explanation about the problem, I found out that my account was suspended and the person on the other end of the phone went a bit quiet. She said she needed to check something and need to put me on hold. So, there I am on hold for what seems like an eternity, I actually started to wonder if she’s hung up on me but then she came on the line and said very sheepishly “I’m sorry to have to tell you this but your current bill stands at £2579.77″. Yes, that’s right. I owed Vodafone over two and a half thousand pounds. It was surreal.
I then obviously outlined the whole situation and explained I’d done absolutely everything as instructed and she disappeared again. More hold music. More waiting. She then comes back on the line and tells me that ‘as a goodwill gesture’ Vodafone is crediting my account and reducing the bill down to £45.44. I then ask for an email to confirm everything discussed on the phone, partly for peace of mind and also to see if it’s from the same mickey mouse school of email that the last one came from.
Which it was:
From: Customerservice@vodafone.co.uk
Date: 25 August 2008 20:40:14 BST
To: hopkins.jonathan@gmail.com
Subject: Vodafone Customer Services
Dear MR Hopkins This is a confirmation email reg what we have disscuessd on your call earlyer to vodafone. there were charges accourde on ur broadband usage while you were roaming in Portugal. The charges where 257.977 but then that have been reversed and 2434.88 has been taken from that bill. the out standing balance now is only 45.44 and your price plan has been changed back to mobile broadband 3GB 12 month contact for 15. Thanx Vodafone
This time at least I got a ‘Dear MR Hopkins’, some more punctuation and a ‘Thanx Vodafone.’ But still no signature, horrendous typos and a glaring error on the first amount. Just for clarification, that figure was £2579.77.
THe reason Vodafone gave for the error was that the network in Portugal had charged them for the data and they had passed that charge directly onto me. Or something like that. Once I had confirmation that the charges were to be dropped, I wasn’t that interested. Vodafone screwed up, they didn’t even really apologise for doing so and to make matters worse, if my two emails are anything to go by they’re communicating with their customers really badly.
So, Vodafone, if you’re listening, here’s some feedback:
1. Sort out your website so the charges are made explicitly clear for using mobile broadband abroad and what the process is for doing so.
2. Make your charges as low as possible. We know you can do it. So do it, before another network beats you to it.
3. Improve your Mac dongle software. There are loads of us using Macs these days. Including a disproportionate number of bloggers and journalists.
4. Think about using Google maps to showcase network coverage in different countries more effectively. I knew exactly where the villa was I was staying, down to the postcode. Your maps don’t work on a Mac.
5. Use email signatures! Include useful links – I might even think about buying something from you or using one of your services when abroad
6. Be human. In both cases the call centre staff were really friendly, this didn’t come across in the emails. Also – apologise if you screw up. The fact I was told that it was a gesture of goodwill really wound me up. Let people in call centres use their names.
7. Train your staff how to use email and don’t be afraid to use it. Most people want confirmation that isn’t sat on your system and it represents a great chance for engagement with customers.
8. Just like the banks do – don’t let huge abnormal bills run up on people’s accounts. Call them (or email them!) to ask them if everything is OK before those thousand odd pound bills happen and you create unhappy people like me.
9. Train more of your staff on mobile broadband/data. Or have a crack team that all calls get passed over to, if so make that team big enough for the number of people now using it.
10. Listen, using social media and simple things like Google Alerts. We’ll see whether or not I’m right on that one. Over to you, Vodafone.
Using Vodafone 3G mobile broadband abroad? My £2,579 experience
Over the last few weeks I’ve been away a fair bit and because I run my own web-based business (Shed) I need to have fast, reliable broadband whilst I’m away. At the beginning of the year I went back to Vodafone (after leaving for T-Mobile a few years back after getting sick of the often unpredictable and always high monthly charges) and signed up for a 12-month mobile broadband contract at £15 a month for 3 gigabytes of data.
Before I left I checked in on the Vodafone website to see what the costs of using the dongle abroad (in Portugal as it happens) would be and much o my frustration, it wasn’t really clear. There was (and still is) also much talk of these costs coming right down for roaming data charges so I thought I’d call Vodafone customer services to make sure everything was 100% crystal clear and I was set up to pay the least amount possible.
After lots of discussion on the phone (there were lots of pauses and moments of uncertainty left, right and centre about mobile broadband in the UK, let alone using it abroad) I established that the best thing for me to do is as follows:
1. Change my contract temporarily for an extra £10
2. Pay £10 (£8.50 + VAT) for every 24 hours of use
3. Don’t go over 50MB in that 24 hour period
But – that came with the big caveat – you have to make sure that you are using the Vodafone Portugal network otherwise you will be charged at £10.28 per MB! Now I’m using the dongle on a Mac and somewhat predictably the software that comes with the dongle in a bit flakey – meaning that to access my modem I click on the app icon a few times, watch it bounce but not open, then open the network connection via network preferences. So, a question: “How am I supposed to know what network the dongle is connecting to?” Answer – “Take the sim out your dongle and put it in a mobile phone to see what network it connects to”. Response: “But, I am on T-Mobile and my phone is locked so I can’t check”. Answer ” Call T-Mobile and ask them for an unlock code”. Fail. In the end I used my wife’s phone (she’s on Vodafone) to check when I was out there.
Just to cover my back, because I’ve seen loads of issues with data before (including Ian’s CPW debacle), I asked for a confirmation email from Vodafone and this is what I received.
Yes, that’s official communication from Vodafone to its customers. No Dear Jonathan, Dear Sir, Dear customer. No email signature. No helpful links. No ‘have a great holiday’. Just the words. The absolute bare minimum number of keystrokes. And to make matters worse, despite trying to get off the line, I had to sit and listen to it being typed.
Anyway, appalling email aside, I get to Portugal, check that the network is Vodafone Portugal and fire up the dongle. Nothing. Absolutely nada. So, I call up Vodafone and because I recently changed contracts, a bar has been put back on my contract preventing me from using it abroad. Doh. I called to change contracts to a roaming one and they put a bar on. Ok, onwards and upwards, the bar gets removed and everything works fine. So, I use my mobile broadband and feel all good about mobile broadband again and the fact I can sit in the mountains of Portugal by the pool and do all my favourite web stuff.
Then, I get home. Everything is still working fine until yesterday my dongle stopped working. It wouldn’t connect to a carrier and I called Vodafone. After a big long winded explanation about the problem, I found out that my account was suspended and the person on the other end of the phone went a bit quiet. She said she needed to check something and need to put me on hold. So, there I am on hold for what seems like an eternity, I actually started to wonder if she’s hung up on me but then she came on the line and said very sheepishly “I’m sorry to have to tell you this but your current bill stands at £2579.77″. Yes, that’s right. I owed Vodafone over two and a half thousand pounds. It was surreal.
I then obviously outlined the whole situation and explained I’d done absolutely everything as instructed and she disappeared again. More hold music. More waiting. She then comes back on the line and tells me that ‘as a goodwill gesture’ Vodafone is crediting my account and reducing the bill down to £45.44. I then ask for an email to confirm everything discussed on the phone, partly for peace of mind and also to see if it’s from the same mickey mouse school of email that the last one came from.
Which it was:
This time at least I got a ‘Dear MR Hopkins’, some more punctuation and a ‘Thanx Vodafone.’ But still no signature, horrendous typos and a glaring error on the first amount. Just for clarification, that figure was £2579.77.
THe reason Vodafone gave for the error was that the network in Portugal had charged them for the data and they had passed that charge directly onto me. Or something like that. Once I had confirmation that the charges were to be dropped, I wasn’t that interested. Vodafone screwed up, they didn’t even really apologise for doing so and to make matters worse, if my two emails are anything to go by they’re communicating with their customers really badly.
So, Vodafone, if you’re listening, here’s some feedback:
1. Sort out your website so the charges are made explicitly clear for using mobile broadband abroad and what the process is for doing so.
2. Make your charges as low as possible. We know you can do it. So do it, before another network beats you to it.
3. Improve your Mac dongle software. There are loads of us using Macs these days. Including a disproportionate number of bloggers and journalists.
4. Think about using Google maps to showcase network coverage in different countries more effectively. I knew exactly where the villa was I was staying, down to the postcode. Your maps don’t work on a Mac.
5. Use email signatures! Include useful links – I might even think about buying something from you or using one of your services when abroad
6. Be human. In both cases the call centre staff were really friendly, this didn’t come across in the emails. Also – apologise if you screw up. The fact I was told that it was a gesture of goodwill really wound me up. Let people in call centres use their names.
7. Train your staff how to use email and don’t be afraid to use it. Most people want confirmation that isn’t sat on your system and it represents a great chance for engagement with customers.
8. Just like the banks do – don’t let huge abnormal bills run up on people’s accounts. Call them (or email them!) to ask them if everything is OK before those thousand odd pound bills happen and you create unhappy people like me.
9. Train more of your staff on mobile broadband/data. Or have a crack team that all calls get passed over to, if so make that team big enough for the number of people now using it.
10. Listen, using social media and simple things like Google Alerts. We’ll see whether or not I’m right on that one. Over to you, Vodafone.