Anyone need any advice relating to Vodafone and there products..
 

Iv got some great advice from this site, covering all aspects from our hobby , to even normal everyday things. To repay the favour.

If i can help any others regarding Vodafone products, be it current handsets, prices, special promo deals, phones to avoid, contract issues, insurance, mobile broadband etc etc the list goes on.

Drop us a pm, and we can go from there.

If anyones contract is due for renewal, need advice on what they can ask for come renewal ( i dont deal speciffically with this but can make you aware of what you can roughly expect ) again i will advise.

Col.

That's a decent gesture to make, good man. Do Vodafone do any 'sim only' packages?

Yes, they have 30 day rolling contract sims, which basically tie you in for 30 days, and mean that you can have them for as long as you like, and only need to give 30 days written notice to cancel... Payable by direct debit, like a contract, but as mentioned, can cancel at any time and it would revert to payt.
Few pack available but the popular ones are..

£10 month - 100 mins xnet anytime and 500 texts,
£15 month - 300 mins xnet anytime and 3000 texts.

Hope this helps.

Pm, if you need any more help or anything...

Ps - theres also some promo offers that arent advertised, if anyone needs anything, i can let you know how to haggle etc..

What sort of mobile broad band packages are available?

Theres a few at the mo..

Depends on what you want.

For example,

usb High speed modem 7.2 mbps speed, 3 Gb data (approx 100 hours a month surfing etc) Free modem, £15 a month for 18 months, ( however if anyone is on Vodafone ) pm me and i can tell you how to get it cheaper lol.

In my department, i get involved with promotions, so what i can also do is offer mobile broadband as above at a discounted rate.

For example..

A new mobile phone contract of 24 months at a normal cost of £25 month,

600 mins xnet anytime
+ addiotional unlimited landline calls ( fair use policy 3000 mins every month )
or
unlimited voda to voda calls ( fair use policy 3000 mins )
+ additional unlimited texts ( fair use policy 3000 texts every month)

As mentioned, normal price of £25 a month, if Voda dont supply a phone, I can discount rentals down to £12.50 month and i can do that for a max of 21 months.

I set this up for a lot of customers, but i can also then do a promo offer on mobile broadband, and offer that for £10 a month rather than £15 etc for the full duration of 18 months..

Ie £12.50 + £10 for a contract and mobile broadband

I can do things like this on most products, post here or pm me and i can advise.

Col.:lol:

My contracts up for renewal in 10 days, ive had a business contract with 2 phones with vodafone for 13 years (about £60/month and £30/month), and they never seem bothered to have me as a customer, my deals never get any better, ive always been on direct debit with them with no probs, the phones ive had are pants so i'm about to leave them and go to O2 - unlimited txts, 700mins, unlimited download and a 16gb iphone for £36+vat/month, voda equivalent is more like £60. Even when i phoned up to leave they just said fine, i thought they might even have tried to keep me !
Sorry rant over, its not your fault! But any thoughts on my grumble!?

when are you doing pay as you go sim only deals for blackberry?

I have a spare BB storm that I would like to get at least a little bit operational

Do voda have a pay as you go broadband (not monthly) like some other providers?

Yeah no probs...

Like i say, anything that i can advise on...

Iv asked similar questions on sky etc etc.

Right, as everyone knows mobile phone market is ultra competetive. The problem i suppose is, when you ring up. Your not speaking to the right people. Voda is massive and has call centres all over the u.k.
As with any company , you might just not be getting a person that can and is willing to help you evern though its there job..

If it was me, i try and tailor 2 packages, so that

1) your not spending over the amount of talktime or mins you need. i.e if you ring land lines over mobiles, why choose 900 mins xnet, when 600 mins and unlimited land lines is cheaper and allows more talt time etc.
2) show customer loyalty and allow them a second line on there account. I.e as mentioned. Depending on if your happy with handset, choose a tarif that meets your needs, and give you 50% line rental discount.
3) Get you phones that you actually want, i.e not some flash Armani phone thats got flashing lights and mood led's when in fact you need a Blackberry etc..
4) listen to the customer, match there needs ezacly. Make it nice and simple without baffling them, 9 times out of 10. Customer will be glad etc etc.

On your case, i'll be honest i work at voda, i myself have an iphone 3g 16gb, a Nokie e71 which is a really good phone. And all the staff use a communal storm etc .

I phone is fab, but be aware that it has no flash ( for pics ) and you cant bluetooth pics, messages etc pr even contacts. At one point you cant even send mms or even receive them, you have to do it web based. But i can quite happily live with that.

If you want me to have a good look on what voda, might be able to for you, pm me, with what you want or need and i will see whats poss. In honesty Vodafone might not have offered you deals, but im sure when you request a pac code they will. Pm me if you want me to look into this for you.

Col. :D

Can do payt sims, or indeed the 30 day rolling sims as mentioned above. However as your prob aware, the blackberries use Data apllications.

Blackberry email service to send and receive emails live is chargeable at £5 month ( vodafone actually pay Blackberry for this service ) Coupled with the fact that you need internet usage ( charged as Kb's) which can work out expensive so they need to ideally be on a free internet use pack as well. Pack for that is £5 month for 12 months or £7.50 monthly for on or off use.
As you can see, £10 extra or £12.50 pm for the benefits of having the phone for additonal net use can be expensive.

If you just want to make calls, payt or indeed the 30 day rolling sims, would be ok.

Hope this helps.

Col :lol:

Yep, they sure do, its quite good value as well,

Modem is £39 one off, and it even comes with 1 Gb data usage ( approx 30 hours browsing ) of credit.

£15 top up (whenever ) and 1 Gb for that.

Col.

OK, that all makes sense, thanks for the explaination.

I basically wanted to get it up and running for PIN to PIN messaging, but it seems there would be charges in that, looks like its a shelf queen then :p

Ps - if anyone wants anything, pm me and we can take it from there.

Col.:lol:

Ha ha, just re reading what i typed. If that made sense with all the words and spelling mistakes in there... You did a good job of interpreting it ha ha.

Col.

I can even understand Ashley sometimes, I am quite good at deciphering code

James, I kn ow what you mean but Col is right, ask for the PAC code tens to get a response.

I have been with Vodafone for 19 years now on the same number, have had many upgrades along the way and several tariff changes too. But last May they wrote to me to tell me the tariff I "was" on had now been obolished and they would not honour it any longer, but instead would choose the closest and most suitable one to what I had.

Well..... I "did" have 225mins/ 2 month rollover/ Xnet plus 250 texts for £20 month which suited me fine, never rarely went over the minutes and if I ever did I normally had rollover ones from months previuos to bail me out, when they changed they put me on 150mins plus 50% minutes FREE (an extra 75 - taking me back to 225 mins) with no rollover and 500 texts (yet I had NEVER used more than 120 texts in any month before!!) but the tariff went down to £17.50 which was great until I started straying over the minutes without the back up of rollover and the bills started to hit £30/40. Then after 3 months the phone bills all started hitting £75/95 per month yet I was not using it anymore than normal, a swift phonecall to Vodafone CS led me to find out that the 50% extra mins I was given was only for the first three months!!! The last 75 mins I was now using each month was shafting me over on higher than high call charges.

Furous at this I spoke to the accounts department since I was not happy. I informed them that this mess was only becasue "they" withdrew my tariff not becasue I changed it, they tried to tell me at first I could not leave since by using the phone on the new tariff I had started a "new" contract for another 18 months, they also tried telling me I could not have an upgrade for another 18 months (even though I had not had one for over 15 months already) and to top it off when I suggested I just switched the phone off, lowered my tariff to their lowest possible with no minutes/no texts for "very little" was told I could only lower my tariff by 1 level per month and to reach the lowest tariff would be in 11 steps over 11 months!!!

Now I was extremly p***** off so hung up and got straight on to the "thinking of leaving VF" departmnent and requested my PAC code (even though I knew my "original" 18 month tariff had not expired, but I thought it was worth a go). Long and short is the woman on the other end ended up giving me a tariff of 500mins/Xnet/anytime (no rollover though) 1000 texts (still never have gone over 120!!!) all for £25 PLUS she waived the last two bills I had recieved (£93 and £78) and placed a huge credit of £171 on my account which I am still eating away at now some 4-5 months down the line, plus I can upgrade the handset if I wish in a couple of months time and not late 2010 like the knob tolf me in the accounts department.

Moral, it defo helps to speak to the "PAC no"/"Im off" department to get somewhere!!!

Bang on... I suppose its a bit like buying a car, you wont get the best deal straight away.

As with all networks, its also the person you speak too.... and there attitude. Most sales staff can customise or even discount products at there discretion. Some departments cant. Some will be hard sell, some like me, would go that little extra.

Dont forget Darren as well, when the contract is due for renewal, you might not always get the best deal on upgrades, sometimes new deals are equally as good. Only downside is poss losing your number.
As mentioned,

£12.50 gets you 600 mins anytime x network, unlimited texts, unlimited land line calls as well.

Col.

I have a query,

I am looking to get a dongle so i can surf the net while im out and about. My iphone is great but when im abroad i incur charges.

Are there any companies that do not charge you extra to use mobile internet abroad?
And if they all do, which is cheapest?

Hey Col..

I got one of teh Dell Mini 9s with built in 3G for when im out and about - its all good but I was under the impression that it worked abroad (albeit with fees) but when in Germany and Anmsterdam recently it could not even find a signal (GPRS or 3G) yet my phone was next to me working fine so no issues with phone signal...

Let us know what I need to do to use it abroad would ya?

Pete

All companies charge for international data use. As unfortunately the network who you temporarily use whilst abroad, will in turn charge Vodafone uk.

I need to confrirm these charges, from memory its expensive, £9.99 for 24 hours use, but i will confirm.

On a late shift today, so will be back later on..

Col.

Pete.

I too was under the impression it would work abroad immediately with no extra settings, i set a lot of these up for customers and never have had the problem come back to us that they couldnt be used abroad.

I'll have a chat today, see what the opinion is.

Will come back to you on that one.

Col.:lol:

Cheers Col - I thought maybe it was just signal at first but it wasnt having it anywhere..

Thanks dude..

Colin,

I've been with Vodafone since the old analogue days (about 95 IIRC) and the signal has become totally nonegistant in my house (have to go down the road to get texts) or at work. General signal strength has gone through the floor and I am sure my current phone (Samsung Tocco) isn't helping any of this, also it need rebooting about 4 or 5 times a day as the touch screen freezes.

Had no luck talking to the local store (even after showing a guy the phone with no signal in his Vodafone shop) on either issue and deciding if to

a) leave vodafone all together (still got about 11months on latest contract though)
b) force feed the phone to the sales guy who was so helpful
c) give up on the phone and buy another even though I know that won't cure all the issues and I can not afford to get a decent one.


If I was a customer coming to see you what would you do to help me and try to keep me loyal to Voda?

A colleaugue was going to confirm this via email, he hasnt got back to me as yet pete..

Will notify you when i get the answer.

Col.:lol:

Hm quite a few things on this one... Lets start at the top.

90 % of handset probs are with the software on the phone. Deffo back all the data up via the pc, check what firmware you are using on the phone, and im more than sure that it will be way out of date. Compare obviously on the samsung website, and upload new firmware to the phone.

Once running and everything good, restore all info and contacts etc, and if poss de clutter all old unwanted messages etc, and see if this has sped things up and also keeps the phone on rather than re starting.

Stores for Voda and indeed any mobile store are more focused on selling, imagine taking your 2 year old bmw back to bmw, telling the sales men that its crap.... not much that they will do fo you, apart from mention how good the latest model is. Action needs to be with customer relations. All phones have a warranty, if phone is still not how it should be, mention that you want to send it away for repair as it has numerous faults.. Make the biggest list you can as each item will be checked.

Voda would send this away for you, however stores like the carphone warehouse offer repair retail stores where they repair the phone on site if its something small.
Be aware though as with any repair. If the phone has the slightest bit of moisture in it for whatever reason... i.e you had a bath 3 months ago and the phone was in the bathroom absorbing the moisture. They can tell, phones have the equivalent facilities like litmus paper which turns red once moisture is detetced....... THIS IS THE GET OUT CLAUSE... so please make sure its all ok.

Signal strength is also check able on the voda webite, browse around and you will see the facility to see what signal you should get in your area. Just enter the postcode etc ( map shows signal for phones and also mobile broadband), let us know what the results are..

Lastly also try another handset and see how signal is affected with that handset, sometimes masts do go down or indeed are turned off when they are upgrading the facilities .

Let us know if this helps at all, and come back to us on how your getting on too see if there is anything else that i can do.

Col.

I once dunked my phone in a pint of lager for a laugh (I was pissed :D) and all it did was vibrate its tits off once I took it out :lol::lol::lol::lol:

I turned it off and put it in my pocket. the Next morning I took it in bits, sprayed everything with motor cleaner and put it back together. I worked perfect until the battery died ages later :blush::blush:

I do not reccomend anyone trys it though, but I thought it was quite funny :p

G

Ha ha good effort, i remember id been on a night out, come home abso blasted, and had my phone in my shirt top pocket. Off to the toilet Dropped my trollies did my business, flushed the loo, and realised my keys had fell out of my pants pocket...

Turned around, bent down to pick it up beside the toilet.... plop, 1 phone in the bowl looking at me ha ha.. Good job i had just flushed i suppose..

Col :blush: