Voda customers given green light by Ofcom to ditch contracts Thousands of Vodafone customers have been given the green light by UK comms watchdog Ofcom to ditch their contracts, after the mobile phone provider hiked international roaming fees to £5 per day. Earlier this year, Vodafone introduced a roaming charge for customers travelling in 60 countries outside of the EU. This means that …
@Ben1892
N.B. Drinking rum before 10am makes you a pirate, not an alchoholic
At first I didn't believe you, but this video (as far as I can make any sense of it) seems to confirm your claim.
"We were the first to abolish EU roaming with Roam Free which covers more destinations than anyone else. We offer 4G roaming in 125 destinations, including all Roam Further countries, and unlike others we do not throttle customers’ data or charge them more to make in-country calls.
They may well have been first to abolish roaming charges within the EU. However they only did that because the EU said they had to. Three with their feel at home were offering a service to more diverse places that allowed you to use your minutes text and data abroad for no extra cost. I looked into the Vodafone offering earlier in the year when I was reviewing which network was best for me. Chap in the Vodafone shop asked me a few questions and I asked a few back. One of mine (the last in fact) was about roaming and he produced a list of countries that you could roam free. I said those are mostly the ones covered by the EU directive aren't they?
"Oh well yes they are but then for a small fixed daily fee you can 'roam further' and use your minutes/texts etc. in more countries."
"So how much would say a 14 day excursion to the USA cost me above and beyond my allowance?"
<bit of maths later>
"£70 sir"
"How much!" which I said so loudly people had turned to look at me.
"It works out at only £5 a day sir"
"Oh wait are you PAYG or Pay Monthly?
"PAYG"
"Oh then it's <checks computer> 60p to make and 36p per minute to receive calls."
"That's just as bad."
"I think we're quite competetive sir"
"Well on Three it wouldn't cost me anything more."
"I'm not sure about other what firms charge sir"
"Then how can you say you're competitive?"
I then left the showroom totally bemused. Needless to say I didn't switch to Vodafone (or anyone else). Three aren't perfect by any means and if you're not in a feel at home destination it's wickedly expensive.
threes network isnt shite at all. I am sitting in rural cumbria right now on 4g. the signal starts to go patchy when i move coastwards but that is a coverage issue. when im in coverage i have no problems.
i moved from vodaphone who had plenty of coverage but actually using the phone for anything over than phone was bad in lots of places. vodaphone seem to have either over saturated masts or poor back haul.
Looking at the VF website exit fee is typically your monthly cost x number of months left to run. Most people have the cost of their handset included in the monthly cost so how does the walking away "free" bit work in that instance - surely this would incur a big loss for the company?
too late to edit. of course this is only of you buy direct. if you go through a broker such as buymobiles then they are quite clear there are two contracts. one with them and one with provider. in thise cases then YES you will need to pay for the phone. sometimes MORE since the phone is often funded via kickback.
Vodafone hit me up with the robbery below... They'd routinely take money out of a prepaid balance at random times, just not enough to get noticed:
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2017/1003/909486-vodafone-has-to-pay-2-5m-to-customers-over-breach/
Vodafone killed off direct email support, so you've to use outsourced Chat to get compensation. They in-turn claim they can't help, sending you back to the website to log a formal complaint for a call back, (unhelpful if you're away on business a lot or traveling etc). Regulator was indifferent also!
End result? Went back to the outsourced Chat service where after logging a formal complaint and bluffing at a Regulator case number, the Chat service magically managed to produce a refund. So it was possible after all. How long did that all take? Ages! To sum it all up in one word: M'fuckers!
Glad to see people can get out of this. O2 introduced a similar change last year (back when roaming applied to Europe). Used to be that you could send texts and make calls for a certain fee per text/call, and activate data for £2 a day if you had O2 travel. Then they sneakily changed it so that everything was included. Result? Going away on holiday for a fortnight and sending the odd text suddenly meant I racked up an additional bill of £26.
At least with O2 I could turn off the "O2 travel" option and go back to 4p texts again, and after querying my bill, they refunded the £26 without too much argument as a "goodwill gesture". Guess I wasn't the first person to complain!
and you didn't take the trouble to
1) read the texts that '3' send out to your phone telling you how much your calls etc will cost
2) Go to their website and see if SK is covered by their Feel At Home feature.
I regularly travel to India and Jordan on Business. I have a local SIM for each country. Jordan was easy but India needed a local to sign away their first born to get another SIM.
My dual SIM Samsung is great (bought it in Amman as that model was not sold in the UK).
If you prepare for your trip then you won't incur these charges.
As for Vodashite, the deserve everything they get.
I tried to be smart by overpaying my last bill by £0.01p. They still took a totally fraudient payment from my now dormant account. I got it back by threatening to take them to court.
Barstewards the lot of them.
Recently I also bought a Samsung phone ( in Indonesia) , an A5 2017. Dual Sim plus micro sd slot . I wonder why most if not all Samsung phones sold in Europe / UK are single sim phones. With the A5 the first sim up to 4G, the second Sim 3G only but that is ok for my purpose when travelling in countries outside UK.
I have been with Three for years because of the ' Feel at Home ' . have used it in Europe ( before the EU Directive June this year ), US, Indonesia, Hong Kong and at present using it in New Zealand .
If i want to call local number I can use my data and WhatsApp or data and Skype . I have less than £10 in my Skype account to call landline and local number that is not on my contact list for WhatsApp or Skype.
Friend took up the Three offer for a trip to the USA. Discovered that it only applied to calls home. Perhaps understandably, did not cover calls to numbers within USA. Three offered refund of sorts. Generally, Three seem less user-hostile than EE and (apparently) Voda.
"Generally, Three seem less user-hostile than EE and (apparently) Voda."
I signed up with Three back in the very early days of the Walled Garden around 2003-4
Their twisting to try and claim that what they were providing ("not an internet service, only web access") was not what their sale droids were saying it was ("Internet access") was rather telling - and that web access was limited to only a few sites in any case.
I see they learned from that fiasco (they had a very high customer churn), but 13 years later they still don't have any signal where I work (and nor do Vodafone, despite $orkplace having signed a large contract with VF) - so for the last phone upgrade I went with EE, who do. 8 months later EE were bought out by BT. I'm out of contract now but conflicted about who to go with.
Ah, Vodafone. The people who recently charged me a late payment fee on my cancelled and paid off contract.
When I requested and received the bill (cause they didn't bother to post it or email it, and their website doesn't work properly if you've cancelled your account), I found that I'd been charged this fee because I was late paying £0.00.
Needless to say I made sure they swiftly returned the funds (and amazingly they did with very little fuss!)
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