The continuation of the Vodafone frustrations

As mentioned previously, I got a text message telling me I hit 500MB of Mobile Data usage on my phone this month. I was bored in hospital, hence the usage. I tweeted and blogged about it… and today it resulted in a phone call from Sukhi on the Web Relations Team at Vodafone UK.

We did the usual going over the complaint and a few important things came out:

• Vodafone did have a communications plan for the change. However, it centred around an insert to go in with the bills. Which, as I’m not on paper billing I didn’t get. Therefore, I had zero communication of the change. Sukhi agreed with me that it wasn’t acceptable that I had to go find out on a forum that the Twitter guys linked me to just to find out the detail of the change. I should of got a formal communication.
• There is a training issue around how customer services deal with people calling up after receiving these text messages and she will notify the relevant managers to get that addressed.
• There ‘was’ an iPhone app – it’s still in development which allows iPhone customers to get details of their data usage. There are no current plans of an Android app. However, I have now found an app called NetCounter which appears to do at least a rough estimate of usage.
• Sukhi was able to tell me how much usage I had. However agreed with me that there is no way to easily find out as a customer. She actually logged in to see her own unbilled usage to verify that it not possible to get a summary – which it isn’t.
• A request to get the data usage added to the unbilled summary has been put forward and we’ll see where that goes. At least they’re trying – I know it’s hard for a large corporate to move forward on this sort of stuff.
• I will NOT be billed for this extra usage. The text message is the beginning of a 3 month process of warnings which ends up leading to being charged when you go over the 500MB.

Overall I felt it was a productive call. Vodafone, or at least their web relations team, are happy to admit where there are failings. That’s one up on a lot of companies – like Orange UK – who will just tell customers they are wrong.

Sukhi followed up with an e-mail after the call. A nice professional touch that. She, after the call, found that you can CSV export your unbilled usage. With a bit of macro trickery in Excel, it would be feasible to get one’s total usage. Still not ideal – but hey, it shows initiative on her part and thus was appreciated.

Griping on Twitter DOES work. Vodafone is one of a growing number of customers that actually has a social media plan that isn’t centred around making money but more about improving themselves. They should, seriously, be congratulated on that.