Comments on: Vodafone fails to take advantage of Telecom woes

By: tmb

tmb — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 04:07:35 +0000

I went into a vodafone store and was told yes they would do the $400 credit on an iphone instead of the Nokia and it would come off my first account. I have my first account and do you think there is a $400 credit. NOPE and do you think anyone will help me at Vodafone NOPE, so at this stage they’ve ripped me off, not to mention the first iphone I got was faulty and I had to get it replaced which wouldn’t be such a big deal if I didn’t live 3hrs from the nearest store… I’m not a happy customer right now.

By: Raf

Raf — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 23:18:06 +0000

Just been trying to get one of my kid’s onto a plan. What a nightmare. The website is so frustrating to navigate..or as Gattung said “confusing”.

It’s so not customer focused.

So keep the pressure up..who knows :-)

By: Steevo

Steevo — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:34:17 +0000

@Dr – I didn’t know that about Slingshot – but have never been a customer of theirs. Outage + denial is unacceptable for any company.

I don’t agree with you about the tall-poppy syndrome.
That’s on old-dog way of thinking.

The press though – will criticise anyone on evidence. Unfortunately for Telecom they’ve had problems – and they can’t get into the blame game, because the problems are of their own making.

Back to my point though – if Vodafone want to be more successful and take more of the mobile market-share from Telecom, they should be more agile and aggressive to be able to do it – to become a Tall Poppy.

By: Dr

Dr — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:17:16 +0000

@Ash

I have tried out 2 degrees and wasn’t impressesd with cusomter service. I wasn’t able to receive pix messages. When I phoned up they weren’t helpful, and said that someone would phone back. They never did. I can also only get a 2G connection on my 3G phone, so call quality isn’t good.

By: Dr

Dr — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:14:53 +0000

@SteevoI don’t think it’s cheeky of Vodafone – I’m surprised that they didn’t get an offer like this going sooner. I mean – just take a look at Slingshots homepage message: The Notwork!

As a previous slingshot customer, that is the pot (slingshot) calling the kettle (telecom) black. When I was with slingshot, I experience a few days of slingshots own ‘Notwork’ with ADSL outages, and all they do is blame their suppliers, and don’t offer any compensation. Hence I switched to another provider. They too have outages from time to time, but haven’t been as bad,

The thing is, that all these networks have outages, the only difference is that the NZ media love to beat up telecom due to them being seen as the big bad boys. It is the ‘tall poppy syndrome’, where NZers don’t like people to get too successful, and will tear them down when they do.

By: Ash

Ash — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:15:29 +0000

I switched to Telecom because Voda didn’t give any compensation during their outages. Now with Telecom compensation, do you think I will switch to Voda? I am only considering between two degrees and staying with Telecom.

By: Steevo

Steevo — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 21:31:04 +0000

@the walker – nicely put. I think you’ve probably described the problem too. How to make the offer proposition simple and easy – yet capture every possible nuance at the same time.

Here you could quote Gattung’s “confusion as it’s chief marketing tool”

@Dr I don’t think it’s cheeky of Vodafone – I’m surprised that they didn’t get an offer like this going sooner. I mean – just take a look at Slingshots homepage message: The Notwork!

@Paul – I think if Vodafone want to really strike while the iron is hot – it has to be clearer that the credit is available for any phone.

By: Dr

Dr — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 10:54:59 +0000

Got to say that is pretty cheeky of vfone. Heck, these problems have only affected one of telecoms two networks. Their Auckland to taupo network has been fine. Sure they have had problems, but they will fix eventually, and they have offered compensation. The fact is, when it is all fixed, it does offer more coverage area and better speeds than vodafones, and they will only have a fraction of the customers on that network, than what vfone has on theirs. Vfone also has issues from time to time, which don’t get picked up in the media, and as a Vfone cusomter myself, I have had calls drop out, and texts never received, but to report the issue, it would cost me to call their customer service.

By: Paul Brislen

Paul Brislen — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 06:26:53 +0000

Number porting means you can indeed swap networks and keep your number.

Cheers

Paul

By: Simon Pound

Simon Pound — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 10:42:07 +0000

Hello sir

Very interesting series of posts, thank you.

One thing I don’t understand – - the bit about changing your number at the end.

With number portability as far as I understand you should be able to change network and hold on to your number.

So that should be one less impediment to switching.

(Although as a voda customer I must admit that when XT does work the data is astoundingly better than on voda. Damned if you do….)