Congratulations are due to the team at Vodafone UK. They’ve been working hard at getting their subscriber-led data cost management systems operational. There is nothing worse than bill-shock for a mobile operator. In the past, mobile operators have had to spend millions on customer service agents to placate seriously annoyed subscribers phoning up about ridiculous phone bills.
Vodafone, like other operators, has been aiming to try and fix this particular issue by keeping subscribers updated on their data usage.
Long term reader and mobile industry genius, Ilicco Elia (top mobile man at interactive agency, LBi), is a Vodafone customer. I think it’s fair to say he’s been pretty impressed with this new service. He recently tweeted this screenshot:
As you can see Ilicco has a data allowance of 1GB. That’s more or less standard for most contract users.
He’s a big data use, so he’s reaching his limit. Cue a nice helpful text for Ilicco from Vodafone — including a call to action.
Ilicco then sent an ‘accept’ response to Vodafone asking to be charged £5 for 500mb.
If he didn’t do anything, he’ll be charged £5 for 250mb by default. That’s a little bit annoying I think. But at least Vodafone has given him the choice.
The problem?
His text didn’t seem to register… have a read of this:
Uh oh. A bit of a disconnect.
Cue a phone call to Vodafone’s customer services 😉
Still… at least they’re almost getting there…