| Product: |
Vodafone Business |
| Date: |
16.04.08 (85 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Quality call centres and good service
Disadvantages: Bill errors, payment charge, limited to office hours
I have to admit that over the years, I've been a customer of pretty much every mobile phone service provider in the UK. None of them have ever really inspired me to stay loyal to one brand, with their varying degrees of customer service, ever changing tariffs and generally over-complicated business practices all resulting in one provider dropping in and out of favour very easily. I've been with Vodafone Business now for around eighteen months. It's probably been the least problematic contracted period that I've ever experienced and I'm in no hurry to move, but don't let this fool you into thinking that it's all been plain sailing.
Although I fund it privately, my contract with Vodafone is considered to be a business line, because their business customer service team looks after the Blackberry customers. This *may* be one of the reasons that the service is generally better; service providers tend to prioritise business customers over personal customers on the basis of the potential to lose a lot more revenue if they piss off the former. This makes for an interesting loophole; I don't pay any more than most personal customers, but I manage to get what appears to be a better level of service.
Compared to other providers, Vodafone's system of price plans at face value strikes me as fairly simple. You have to decide whether you are a texter, a talker or both and then select the kind of minutes / texts that you think you might need. There are, however, around 21 combinations, with fairly unattractive prices (£29.79 per month) that aren't rounded off to appeal in the same way that tariffs for personal customers are. In reality, this all becomes quite complicated on your bill, with a variety of abbreviations and acronyms indicating what you've got. A friend of mine has exactly the same call / text allowance, but it appears completely differently on our two paper statements. The price plans are pretty competitive; but then few of the providers stand out against the others these days with similar offerings across the board. I pay £40 a month for 750 anytime minutes and unlimited texts, which seems pretty good.
Billing is via paper or online, with a monthly payment charge if you opt not to pay by direct debit. I can't guarantee what this is, as it has been quoted and charged at £2, £3.50 and £4 on separate occasions, according to who I speak to, but I believe the official charge is supposed to be £4. I hate direct debits and prefer to pay the monthly administration charge, as it prompts me to scrutinise my bill, identify errors and get the bill corrected (if necessary) before payment is taken. Think I'm being overly suspicious? I don't think so. My highest record to date was to get a bill of £168 reduced to £33 after I identified £135 worth of errors, incorrect charges and missing credits. When I originally connected to the network, I had to pay a £100 deposit, as I was living in a new post code that wasn't identifiable on their system. Advised that it would be returned after three months, I had to chase at month three and four, before being advised it would actually come back at month six. I challenged this, and was subsequently granted the refund at month four. Soon after I connected to the network, I started to receive texts from an 8-prefixed number with smutty messages clearly prompting a reply. One month later, I found that I was actually being billed £1.50 a throw for these texts (not itemised on the bill). Vodafone promptly refunded the money and arranged for the text subscription to be cancelled, but I still sporadically get the odd text, which means that I have to phone up and repeat the process.
All this means that it's a good job that the business customer service centre is excellent. Connection to a (UK-based) agent is generally very quick, with minimal queuing times, and the advisors are always able to deal with the query themselves, without referring around (except to ask for authorisation, perhaps). For Blackberry users, they also offer a technical helpdesk, which generally sorts your query out pretty quick (although they have a tendency to over-simplify things). The downside to being a Business customer is that these services are only available during office hours. Out of hours, you find yourself swamped with calls from personal customers and the standards of service offered in the contact centres drop markedly. But this is OK; I can cope with restricting myself to business hours. Although the contact centre is advertised as an 0845 number (chargeable) there is a speed dial from a Vodafone handset which is an 07 prefix number, meaning that the call comes out of your free allowance. This can measure up to quite a saving if you have to sit in a queue.
It's a good job that the business contact centre does a good job though, because the stores are rubbish. It doesn't help that they are targeted almost primarily at personal customers, but the knowledge of the advisors about business products is very poor. On a recent visit to a store, the "cool" R & B music being played to pull in the street kids was so loud, I literally couldn't hear what the advisor was saying and given that she seemed generally rather disinterested anyway, I told her to forget it and vowed never to return. If you want to talk about picture messaging, colour-co-ordinated covers and free music downloads, go to the stores. If you want to talk about phones and price plans, phone the service centre. The website's not bad either. It's a fairly busy affair, but you can pretty much find what you want if you try hard enough and there is a lot of information on there that might prevent a call to somebody who can't help.
The network coverage seems pretty good. You suffer from the usual network black spots (don't expect to make calls on Virgin trains) but otherwise, reception is fine. I occasionally get "Network Failed" or "Unable to Make Call" messages, but simply redial and get straight through. I'm not sure whether this indicates capacity issues or is just a glitch but pales in significance to the lack of signal available on Orange, where whole towns and villages seem to be out of reach.
I get mailed an awful lot by Vodafone. Curiously, they keep mailing me about online billing, even though I'm registered for it. I'd prefer them to email me things or send me messages to my online account, but any attempts to stem the flow of paper mail seem to fall on deaf ears. That aside, they do bring some interesting things to my attention; I'm currently thinking about their mobile broadband offering and they also prompted me to get new insurance this way, something you can't normally do after the first 14 days of the contract.
If you read through reviews of mobile service providers on this site, you'll struggle to find a praiseworthy one. They are notoriously unpopular businesses, stiffing everyone for every penny going and making it really difficult to get in touch to resolve problems. I couldn't say that Vodafone is head and shoulders above the rest, but put to the test, they're basically coming through for me, which is encouraging. They need to sort their billing out and I almost certainly wouldn't imagine that personal customers get a particularly good deal, but I've been quite impressed with what I've seen, so I'm inclined to give them a good rating overall.
Summary: The best mobile phone provision I've had to date
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