Vodafone rips off family phone errors

Ralu Ionescu, senior brand manager with T-Mobile, said: "T-Mobile offers fixed tariffs. The customer uses the number of allocated minutes then has to top-up in PAYG fashion to get more." T-Mobile has 3.5 million pay monthly customers and says its capped service is "a growing market".

Billing delays

Here's what Vodafone said: "We used to offer a limiter but unfortunately it proved inaccurate, primarily because there can be a delay in receiving billing information when customers are roaming, which created problems.

"There are currently no plans to reinstate this for voice/text use, but the EU has recently asked all European mobile phone operators to put in place a system to alert customers of high data use."

Actually the EU has ruled on this. It comes into force in July, according to regulator OfCom.

Vodafone said: "This is different in principle from a limit on calling costs, as it is based on the quantity of data being consumed, and an alert is flagged immediately on the device. We are still fine-tuning this."

The same delay from roaming would apply though, but Vodafone conveniently skates over this.

"Last summer Vodafone was the only UK operator to offer roaming to most European countries at customers' regular UK rates," it says. The regular UK rate my son was charged was 35p a minute.

Gesture of goodwill

Vodafone has offered to knock £50 off the bill as a gesture of goodwill - though I got cut off three times when they phoned me because I was on a train between London and Newcastle at the time.

They also suggested - and I have done this - popping a PAYG card in an old mobile and adding that number to my 'Friends and Family' so my son and his new-found love, given the new PAYG phone, can call each other for free.

I accept responsibility too. I took out the contract and should have monitored him and he should have taken our warnings that he was over his contracted minutes more seriously. But I think £500 in two weeks on a £15 a month tariff is a bit steep. I still feel narked.

Customer loyalty/customer service

I got my Vodafone in 1993 from my sister-in-law when she emigrated. Our family has been with Vodafone 20 years. In March 1992, the earliest year Oftel's (the then regulator) archive figures go back, Vodafone had 712,000 customers. It has nearly 20 million now.

The Oftel figures also show that in those days the average monthly usage was less than 90 minutes and the average bill for that was about £35. For £35 now with Vodafone you'd get 10 times as many minutes inclusive (900), unlimited texts and 500Mb of email and internet.

The latest OfCom figures (2008) show the UK average monthly bill was less than £18. Vodafone was above average. They show Vodafone made about £4bn from 17.7 million customers, or nearly £19 a month per person. So basically I have paid Vodafone over the odds for years.

Penalising mistakes

The 35p a minute penalty rate Vodafone charged my son appears greedy too. According the Oftel data, in 1992 Vodafone made £164m from 617 million minutes. That is less than 27p a minute. Today's 35p a minute charge is seven times the charge for my son's inclusive minutes.

Whichever way you add it up, it is disproportionate. Vodafone appears to be a greedy, money-grabbing, uncaring, avaricious monster when it comes to penalising a foolish mistake.

Curtain call

Vodafone says it does not know how many of its 712,000 customers from the early 1990s are still with it. But the Oftel report talks about the high "level of churn" with "subscribers disconnecting either to change networks or to stop taking any service". My customer loyalty to Vodafone has been unusual.

I reckon I am one of the last of those early customers yet to leave Vodafone. But leaving - and taking all four (now five) family mobiles with me - might be my only option.

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