I was asked that question by an SMS Text News reader this morning:
"Any response from them? On the big data bill?"
He was enquiring as to whether I’d have a response from Vodafone about my outrageous data bill (see the original post).
You have to be kidding. It’ll be a cold day in Hell, as the phrase goes, when Vodafone implement a blog tracking and response strategy similar to the new one Dell have implemented. I’ll happily eat my hat if someone emails me this afternoon. I’ll be here on the blog right away to tell you the shocking and wicked news — ‘yes, someone is listening!’
Back to reality. The correct response by Vodafone would have been to realise that charging someone £1,000 for data access in France is just patently ridiculous, given a) the 300-400 a month spend on the account and b) the EU Commission busy checking out rip off European romaing charges.
The fault, of course, is mine. I knew exactly how much data charges I was incurring. I monitored it carefully. I thought that I had 100 meg inclusive because the account was on the top rate when the card and contract was setup. Vodafone since changed the service plan configurations to ‘unlimited’. I naturally assumed that they swapped us to ‘unlimited+100meg international’.
They didn’t. Who’s fault is that? Well, mine.
It’s outrageous …but what can you do? The hotel’s internet connection wasn’t working. I needed internet access for work. It’s a cost of doing business.
Obviously my animosity toward them as a company is overflowing. I’m at 12 on a scale of 1-10 about how much they’re annoying me.
It wouldn’t have been difficult to have spotted that I was using a stupid amount of bandwidth and running up a stupid bill, would it? Someone from their data team could have made a call. Sent an email. Whacked off a text message.
Something like:
‘Mr MacLeod, you, er, should be using the Unimited+100meg tarrif? Can I swap you over to that right now? Can I sell you a block of international data at a cheaper rate as it looks like you’ll have an expensive bill, sir?’
Obviously not. It would be a pure delight to get that sort of service.