SO MANY PEOPLE, SO LIMITED SERVICE!!! (Vodafone Network)

Member Name: hugnluvable

Product:	Vodafone Network
Date:	10/03/01 (652 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good Coverage, Selection of Tarrifs, Helpful Helpline!

Disadvantages: Very Limited Service at times, System Crashes, Not very good to use during Christmas, charged for Voicemail, All Calls - very dodgy tariff,

Christamas 2000 - over a million people decided to buy a mobile phone as a present for their loved ones, the majority of them buying a Vodafone pay as you go phone!!! So what did his mean for the present Vodafone customers who had problems sometimes when the network was "OVERLOADED"???? Answer - even more problems!!!!

Thats right! Vodafone had so many new customers it's system couldnt cope with the millions of people wanting to phone their friends and family to wish then a Merry Christmas, and even worse still - A Happy New Year!!! So many people wanted to use their phones for these reasons and Vodafone's system was cram packed resulting in what? "Error tones" "Not Connected" "Network Overload" and when people tried to phone Vodafones up what did they get? Yep thats right - "The Vodafone you are calling is currently unavailable - please try again later" HA! how longs later? we all asked to ourselves... a few minutes? an hour? well when my Dad tried phoning me he couldnt get hold of me until two days later!!! This meant that the system crashed and hardly anyone could use it - but rather than telling us the customers that this was the case (that they didnt plan or have anything organised just in case something like this happened) the helpline assistants blamed it on other networks or the Network being "updated"(well so I was told). UDATED???? HA! it should have been updated well in advance before the Christams rush when its obvious that people want to phone loved ones up over the Christmas/New Year period!

And Text messaging was a complete nightmare! Just when I needed to send some CRUCIAL (AND I MEAN CRUCIAL) text messages to people they either NEVER got sent to the recipients or they recieved them like ELEVEN hour later! This was a time when I started to date someone who lived a few miles away from me and we were text messaging each other alot - the conversation seemed to fade as
it took longer and longer to keep in contact through phoning or text messaging! So now we no longer keep in touch :-( And it isnt just during the holiday season - its also at random times when the Network is busy and people dont recieve my text messages until up to eleven hours later!

During the Xmas period, topping up for Phone Credit was a nightmare as well. The Top-Up line system crashed leaving those with no credit with no means of contacting anyone through their mobile phone etc etc! I had to go into a shop to top-up my phone credit one day and it took over an hour for it to be processed!

Although I'm moaning on about all this rubbish I had to put up with this Network I'm still a Vodafone customer.... why? you ask? Well the coverage is extremely good up here in Hull where I live during semester time but I'm originally from a village where the coverage isnt that fantastic (around three bars in the best areas - when you're lucky!), but its still good when I'm in towns/cities etc where the coverage is expected to be good! I like the helpline and find the people at the end of the line very friendly, helpful, enthusiastic, knowledgable and easy to talk to.I'm on their pay as you talk "original" scheme, which means for a cost of 17p per day I get charged 35p peak*6-6*, 5p weekday off peak and 2p weekends. I think this is the cheaepest tariff I can get at the moment if I want the coverage etc - plus its cheaper to phone friends cus most of them are on Vodafone! However - you cant choose to get the original tariff anymore - you can choose out of two main tariffs now; All Calls (NOT ADVISED - No service charge, 10p off peak, 35p peak *7-7*) and Smartstep (No service Charge 25p for the fisrt 3 minutes and then 5p therafter - a bit like one2one!) The selection possibly made Vodafone the more popular choice as a present (dont ask me why!) but if you are on the Original scheme its advised not to change, theres a £5 changeo
ver fee (although it probably doesnt cost vodafone anything really to swap your tariff over!) and really the amount of money works out the same depending on your mobile phone use pattern. Plus I love my Siemons SL10 handset which isnt in manufacture anymore and can only be used on the Vodafone network (pay as you talk!). So I'm not sure now whether I'm going to change networks (and have to get rid of my old phone and buy a shiny new one!) or stick with Vodafone and tolerate the "Network Overload" signs that are constantly displayed on my phone status screen! Oh... and I forgot to say Vodafone charge you to get hold of your voicemails! (but you can choose not to have a voicemail box - but very inconvenient if you dont have one!)

I'm sorry if you never had these same problems with Vodafone over the Christmas and New Year period, or even ever! (I see that quite a few of you love Vodafone and are very satisfied with it's quality), however, I and many others did, and still do, and thats enough to fume, rant and rave about in this very opinon!

:-) xxx

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