£3.00 less?Posted by Jeff on July 13th, 2008
Sometimes I feel like I am living in the bizarro world when I am dealing
with the mobile operators in the UK.
My first foray into this bizarro world was around two months ago when my wife’s mobile contract was up and she wanted a new phone. Off we went to the Vodafone store and somehow walked out with a new Blackberry 8110 and an £85.00 credit on our bill, all in exchange for merely renewing her 18 month contract. Coming from Canada, the world of over-priced cell phones and 3 year contracts, we would have been happy with just the free Blackberry, so to add onto that an additional £85.00 credit was flat out bizarre.
This surprising outcome was not an isolated incident – Yesterday, I contacted Vodafone to find out what it would cost to get a higher monthly data allowance on my Blackberry. From my experiences in Canada, my expectations were set that for one reason or another there would be nothing they could do for me – whether it was because I had the wrong phone, or it cost too much, or I needed to sign my life away to a 16 year contract or whatever else, something would make this relatively simple request turn into an impossibility. Imagine my surprise when the Vodafone rep. offered a package including 150 additional voice minutes, a near 100x increase in the amount of data (up to 500MB/mth), and all for the outrageous price of £3.00/mth less – yes LESS – than I was already paying. No new contract to sign, no new device to buy, just a change of service that takes place at midnight.
As a point of reference, this same request to the three Canadian operators would be met with the following options:
- TELUS Mobility: $60.00/mth additional offers a change from 8MB/mth to 1GB/mth.
- Rogers: $75.00/mth additional offers a change from 4MB/mth to 200MB/mth. (The limited-time 6GB plan is only available to non-Blackberry Enterprise users).
- Bell: $60.00/mth additional offers a change from 8MB/mth to 1GB/mth.
No doubt the locals here in the UK have their fair share of complaints about the mobile operators, but it is all relative – and relative to the Canadian marketplace it is a breath of fresh air. My natural state, when it came to dealing with mobile phone companies, had always been one of skepticism and a general feeling that in one way or another they were out to either screw me around or present service plans that were simply not viable to anyone but the top 1% of users. These experiences will definitely ensure that when we do head back to Canada, our expectations of what we should get in return for what we pay, or the contracts we sign, will be much different than when we arrived here.
Related posts:
- Waiting for wireless high speed data in Canada, means waiting for competition Why does Canada lag so far behind places like the...
- WIND Mobile – Government Policy Meets Job Creation Looks like one of the winners of the fairly recent...
- If by open you meant closed.. Recently two Canadian communication companies, MTS/Allstream and Quebecor, have requested...
- RIM’s lost opportunity – Instant Messaging? Years ago, RIM made a very important realization about data...
- Rogers: Counting their Way to Success with the iPhone Rogers came out with their iPhone price plans last week...
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
July 21st, 2008 at 7:40 pm
What drives me around the bend (along with paying too much for data plan – as a Canadian) is having to regularly call to re-negotiate to get the deals the advertise to NEW customers. Recently they lowered data plans at Rogers due to iPhone intro. . . instead of automatically lowering their current customers plans (which would have made hundreds of happy and loyal customers) we had to call and change our package (if of course, we weren’t stuck in a ridiculous 3 year contract!)
July 21st, 2008 at 9:33 pm
After I got off the phone with Vodafone I actually said to Kim that the only thing I could really fault them for is that they didn’t call me pro-actively to say there was a better plan available. However, since the rest of the experience was so simple, un-eventful, and they met my needs I found myself happy enough with the outcome. Albeit – I definitely agree – the pro-active approach would definitely be a very customer-friendly way of doing things. I still can’t believe the 3-year contract aspect – it’s practically a mortgage!