Now you can get Vodafone BestMate On Account

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#85443 5-Sep-2007 13:48

ninjabear: I have been on a you choose plan 24 month contract.I have around 7 months now and am using a you choose 20

I wanted to switch to the other mega you choose plan and I didn't mind renewing a 12 month contract but vodafone told me I had to pay$150 to end the you choose plan to join the new one

That really P***ED me off .I have to pay a transfer fee

Why should I be paying a fee to change to a you choose plan when Im on a you choose plan?

That just doesn't make any sense

I don't agree with the way Vodafone have developed these new talk, txter and mega plans.

They are good plans but they shouldn't be charging current YouChoose customers a fee to change to them.

It seems that these plans are only designed to get new customers and renew the older YouChoose customer contracts into another 24 month contract.

spazz

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#85447 5-Sep-2007 14:25

It's absurd, I agree.

Moreover, there's the real possibility that call prices will drop significantly (e.g., more of this unlimited on-net calling) over the next 24 months, and yet us poor buggers on YouChoose contracts will be expected to keep paying an exorbitant amount of money for much less than new customers are getting - way to keep your existing customers happy, Vodafone!!

When I signed up to a 12-month contract for broadband, it would be absurd to think that I'd be expected to stay on that plan for the entire contract period, and yet that's what we're expected to do with our mobile provider? It's ridiculous. Why can't the contracts just be for the mobile network itself, not a plan which is already outdated?

Imagine if Telecom tied all those who signed up to their "Swift" (2mbps/10Gig/$69.95) plan to that plan for 12 months, while all the new customers are getting Adventure (Unlimited/10Gigs/$59.95) ... there would be a public outcry! So where's the media knife on Vodafone for this ruthless pricing? Coz I know they'd be all over Telecom in a shot..

http://walkingisoverrated.com

ninjabear

460 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#85451 5-Sep-2007 14:51

Well I hope there's a new 3rd network out soon as I'll be the first one to ditch vodafone

But of course I'll be leaving new zealand anyway at the end of next year so yeah nice way to give me an impression of what I will tell my friends in Hong Kong about the service vodafone offers

Zimsar10

210 posts

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#85457 5-Sep-2007 15:20

ninjabear: I am on a you choose plan 24 month contract.I have around 7 months now and am using a you choose 20

I wanted to switch to the other mega you choose plan and I didn't mind renewing a 12 month contract but vodafone told me I had to pay$150 to end the you choose plan to join the new one

That really P***ED me off .I have to pay a transfer fee

Why should I be paying a fee to change to a you choose plan when Im on a you choose plan?

That just doesn't make any sense

Whilst it's not ideal for you to have to pay an early termination fee, the T&C are quite clear about this & from my understanding they are:

If it's more than two months, then early termination fees apply.
Usually two months or less with an existing contract allows you to switch to another plan with no early termination fee.
You would of been aware of these conditions when you signed up for your You Choose 20 contract & considering you still have around 7 months to go, the fee does apply to you, if you want to switch now.

This is also clearly explained in this thread started by Paul Brislen:

Then we have the early re-sign process. Which has a similar sliding scale depending on the length of the original contract, i.e. If you’re within two months of the end of your 12 month YC contract you can re-sign (either to that plan or to another Vodafone plan) at no cost. If you’ve got MORE than two months left, however, again there’s a fee based on how long you have left and what plan you were on originally. On a 24 month YC contract no resigns are available in the first 12 months, a fee of $150 for 13- 18 months and free after 18 months. Again, this is to recover the cost associated with the original plan and to sort everything out before you move to your new plan.

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=40&TopicId=15550

Finally, this has nothing to do with Vodafone Service that I can see, you entered into a contract with clear T&C & now wish you hadn't, that is not Vodafone's fault by any stretch of the imagination as far as I'm concerned. This is going way off topic now in my opinion.....

c3rn

291 posts

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#85458 5-Sep-2007 15:34

piespiespies:
Dearest Vodafone,

I am a "You Choose" customer, and have been since Feb 06 (before then, a Get200 customer, and PrePaid). When I signed up, you made up some rubbish about how being on a term contract with Vodafone means that they will make a commitment to me of providing cheaper calling and offering deals etc if I signed up and made a commitment to you. So I did. Now you offer these Talker and TXTer “You Choose” bundles. Eager to save money, I wanted to switch my Choose 60 and Text 600 plan to the TXTer plan (saving me around $12 per month + free BestMate (worth another $6)). So I called up your Customer Service line (777), and asked you if I could switch for free, and of course I could, you said. You also said that my current contract (which has 5 odd months left) would NOT be extended for another 24 months. You told me to call 678 to change.

So, I called 678, where after a lot of discussion you told me that I would need to resign onto another 24 month contract, and that these Talker and TXTer plans were bundles and COULD NOT BE MODFIED. So I have no idea what Paul Brislen is saying, because your supervisor told me that you could not modify them.

So... Despite the bundles having calling packages called 'Choose 60' they are not the same as You Choose (which also has ‘Choose 60’). So you can't simply just update your existing contract (and keep the same terms).

Personally, I feel pissed off at you Vodafone, not only being told the wrong information, but shafting me (as a You Choose customer) so much. We were told as You Choose customers that we would be given the best deals because we had made a commitment to you. I feel sorry for anyone who has just signed up for You Choose and can't switch without paying a transfer fee.

One of my friends who canceled his contract to transfer his number over to Telecom was offered three months free rental to stay. Why do you only care about connecting new customers or customers leaving? Why don’t you care about your current customers?

Your rude staff and ridiculous treatment of contract customers is shocking. When Telecom start to offer GSM/WCDMA (the only reason why I have stayed with you so long) you will lose a long term customer unless you seriously pick you game up.

Lots of Love,
piespiespies.

ps. sorry for the ramble.

PaulBrislen: Yes indeed - higher plans can do it (hence the "from" $39.95 bit). Once the site's up it'll have more detail on that.

Cheers

Paul

That's pretty unfair. It wasn't "Vodafone" that gave you wrong information it was a dumb as$ rep. All networks have sign up deals to entice people from other networks to join them. I'm sure Telecom "care" as much about their exisiting customers as Vodafone do.

Oh and finally... do you really think the CSR that picks up this email is going to beg you not to leave and appologise from the bottom of their hearts... lol they will probably think "pleanty more fish in the sea".

Ahh glad that's outta the system

piespiespies

3 posts

Wannabe Geek

#85468 5-Sep-2007 16:41

brad_p:

That's pretty unfair. It wasn't "Vodafone" that gave you wrong information it was a dumb as$ rep. All networks have sign up deals to entice people from other networks to join them. I'm sure Telecom "care" as much about their exisiting customers as Vodafone do.

Oh and finally... do you really think the CSR that picks up this email is going to beg you not to leave and appologise from the bottom of their hearts... lol they will probably think "pleanty more fish in the sea".

Ahh glad that's outta the system

Indeed they will think "plenty more fish in the sea", I mean, I'm only a light customer, (less than $100/month), but there are other pissed off Vodafone customers out there (just look in this thread) and the main point of my poorly crafted letter was to let Vodafone know that they need to stop treating customers like crap.

Paul Brislen (the External Communications Manager) said that these bundles could be modified to have higher Choose plans (as stated in this thread)... Hmm... Well, this is a complete contradiction to what the Vodafone customer services supervisor told me (that they are standalone plans and CANNOT be modified). So is Paul Brislen just a “dumb as$ rep” or is there some seriously bad internal communications within Vodafone?

That is all :)

love
piespiespies

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ninjabear

460 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#85469 5-Sep-2007 16:51

ZIMsar10:
ninjabear: I am on a you choose plan 24 month contract.I have around 7 months now and am using a you choose 20

I wanted to switch to the other mega you choose plan and I didn't mind renewing a 12 month contract but vodafone told me I had to pay$150 to end the you choose plan to join the new one

That really P***ED me off .I have to pay a transfer fee

Why should I be paying a fee to change to a you choose plan when Im on a you choose plan?

That just doesn't make any sense

Whilst it's not ideal for you to have to pay an early termination fee, the T&C are quite clear about this & from my understanding they are:

If it's more than two months, then early termination fees apply.
Usually two months or less with an existing contract allows you to switch to another plan with no early termination fee.
You would of been aware of these conditions when you signed up for your You Choose 20 contract & considering you still have around 7 months to go, the fee does apply to you, if you want to switch now.

This is also clearly explained in this thread started by Paul Brislen:

Then we have the early re-sign process. Which has a similar sliding scale depending on the length of the original contract, i.e. If you’re within two months of the end of your 12 month YC contract you can re-sign (either to that plan or to another Vodafone plan) at no cost. If you’ve got MORE than two months left, however, again there’s a fee based on how long you have left and what plan you were on originally. On a 24 month YC contract no resigns are available in the first 12 months, a fee of $150 for 13- 18 months and free after 18 months. Again, this is to recover the cost associated with the original plan and to sort everything out before you move to your new plan.

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?ForumId=40&TopicId=15550

Finally, this has nothing to do with Vodafone Service that I can see, you entered into a contract with clear T&C & now wish you hadn't, that is not Vodafone's fault by any stretch of the imagination as far as I'm concerned. This is going way off topic now in my opinion.....

I still have the contract sheet with me when I joined vodafone 12 months ago.No where does it say anything about a transfer fee

paradoxsm

3000 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#85475 5-Sep-2007 17:34

Here is the reason why you are subject to a resign or termination fee.

Existing Vodafone Customers who are subject to a minimum term will be liable for early termination or resign charges.

The 3 new plans are NOT standard Choose core plans but a set of 3 totally new plans hence resign or early termination fees are charged.

Choose60+ Talkpak -or- Txtpak
Choose20+ bonus deal

General You-Choose terms which might be of use to all the people here...

After the first 6 months of your current term, you are free to switch to any You Choose plan without incurring a fee. (Remembering, Mega, Texter and Talker are NOT You Choose plans but totally seperate bundle offers.)

NOTE, if you cannot resign, you can still pay the termination charge applicable to your plan and sign up to any one of the 3 bonus deals.

RE-SIGN details for You-Choose standard CORE plans.....
Resign means you can then transfer to a different plan that is not in your current plan group.

12 Month Contracts - Early re-signs are not possible in the first 10 months. Early re-signs are possible in months 11 and 12 without charge.

24 Months - Early re-signs are not possible in the first 12 months. An early re-sign fee of $150 will apply from months 13 to 18 if you choose to re-sign onto a NEW term. Early re-signs are possible after 18 months without charge.

36 Months - Early re-signs are not possible in the first 12 months. An early re-sign fee of $150 will apply from months 13 to 24 if you choose to re-sign onto a NEW term. Early re-signs are possible after 24 months without charge.

If you were to transfer to an open term plan like motormouth etc, you cannot resign, instead you need to pay the early termination charges applicable to your plan.

Hope this helps.

ninjabear

460 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#85481 5-Sep-2007 18:24

Oh so the new plans are you choose plans but part of you choose

Sounds confusing....

This is why i URGE everyone not to join a 24 month contract or 12 month contract because they release a new plan later during the year then tells you if you want to change you must pay $$

Kickass

292 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#85483 5-Sep-2007 18:56

I have just had the same problem , with vodafone about these new plans.

i was told by a CSR that i could apply add ons to one of the new plans, and later by another CSR told me i could not!

its called Choose 60? but its not a you choose plan? very confusing.......

Im currently on You Choose 20 (which i signed up to on the release of the choose plans 24months contract), which when i signed up recevied 30min free video calls minutes every month for buying a 3G handset. When the new billing system came out , i lost these free minutes. I called Vodafone over 3 times about this , each time the CSR "lodged my problem" explaning to me that they would contact me within the next few days with a fix. I never recevied a phone call back. Ever!

I can't be bothered with vodafone anymore , i have given up on calling them up its just like talking to a wall...

sbiddle

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#85496 5-Sep-2007 19:32

ninjabear: Oh so the new plans are you choose plans but part of you choose

Sounds confusing....

This is why i URGE everyone not to join a 24 month contract or 12 month contract because they release a new plan later during the year then tells you if you want to change you must pay $$

Therein lies the problem. You can't signup as an On Account customer and not sign a contract. ARPU for On Account customers is significantly higher than prepay yet Vodafone are doing their best to actively force customers onto their prepay plans by failing to do even basic things like taking your number with you. Prepay users on one hand are regarded as the "poorer" customers despite making up 75% of the customer base. Looking at them and working out how to make them spend more money should be Vodafone's Number 1 priority.

You Choose should be both a cycle based "prepay" plan for those who don't want a contract with the option of paying using Vodafone Topup cards. You commit to your BestMate core plan and addons up until the day your billing cycle kicks in and then can't make changes until the next billing period so you've essentially got a prepaid On Account plan. Use all your included minutes? No problem, these will be charged at the normal rates along with SMS's and international calls. If your balance runs out you'll be limited to your You Choose included minutes until the end of the monthly cycle.

Both Vodafone and Telecom's approach to customers retention is is abysmal. Give people a plan with no freebies but give them freebies if they're willing to sign up for 12 months or longer. If you look at the Australian market a large % of customers are in contract simply because you can join a $49 cap plan on any of the networks for 24 months and get a free phone worth ~$700. The choice however is yours - if you want a free phone it's on offer but you will need a contract. This makes the cost of customer acquisition very high. Here Vodafone have a very low cost of customer acquisition because all they give you is $50 off a phone that's $300 overpriced compared to everywhere else in the world and free bestmate or txt2000 which effectively costs them $0 per month. People on "prepaid You Choose" or a no term You Choose plan wouldn't get perks or handset discounts yet those who commit to a term receive freebies.

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paradoxsm

3000 posts

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#85504 5-Sep-2007 21:03

It's a totally seperate plan range from the standard "You Choose" which does include a "Choose core plan" along with a "bestmate" and some other stuff

It's not actually a "You Choose" plan but actually "You Choose+" which is something totally different and comes eith some extra value built in, You cannot therefore just "move" to the MEga, Texter or Talker free of charge as it's not actually a "You Choose" core Plan.

While it's not a "You Choose" plan, it is "compatible" with the addons with the exception of mega which cannot have any Voice addons.

But Talker, Texter and Mega are NOT YOU CHOOSE PLANS...

Still confused, No wonder..... it's been quite a mission impossible. I'm now on "Mega" 12 month connection with 3 Bestmates (One "bestmate" and two machines for bridging calls about to be precise.) The disconnection fee is only $40 which is nothing.

paradoxsm

3000 posts

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#85506 5-Sep-2007 21:10

Here is the breakdown of what shows in Knox MYA (the vodafone customer interface on the website)

Plan, amount left, real-world plan name

VF2VFSec 12 06/09/07        (Anytime on-net 200)
On-Net SMS 128 06/09/07        (TXT2000)
Free one-off minutes 20 n/a     (Some CSR given minutes)
Anytime 5 06/09/07        (Choose 20 core)
Free Anytime MBs 25.61 06/09/07    (200MB dataplan)

MY billing date is midnight tomorrow

By the way I do not work for VF and have no involvement with the company but have an extened knowledge of billing systems and telco's in general

ninjabear

460 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#85517 5-Sep-2007 21:37

paradoxsm: It's a totally seperate plan range from the standard "You Choose" which does include a "Choose core plan" along with a "bestmate" and some other stuff

It's not actually a "You Choose" plan but actually "You Choose+" which is something totally different and comes eith some extra value built in, You cannot therefore just "move" to the MEga, Texter or Talker free of charge as it's not actually a "You Choose" core Plan.

While it's not a "You Choose" plan, it is "compatible" with the addons with the exception of mega which cannot have any Voice addons.

But Talker, Texter and Mega are NOT YOU CHOOSE PLANS...

Still confused, No wonder..... it's been quite a mission impossible. I'm now on "Mega" 12 month connection with 3 Bestmates (One "bestmate" and two machines for bridging calls about to be precise.) The disconnection fee is only $40 which is nothing.

I must admit that was a very good explanation.lol...it is a clear explanation yet in a confusing way

nzbnw

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#85518 5-Sep-2007 21:48

piespiespies: ... I mean, I'm only a light customer, (less than $100/month)...
piespiespies

[Trolling] I'm sure Telecom would love your business

[/Trolling]

Some pretty tough T's & C's here through...

nzbnw

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