Vodafone stopping auto topup on pre-pay?

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Vodafone stopping auto topup on pre-pay?

manaia

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#208962 7-Mar-2017 09:30

I have a couple of kids on pre-pay who are forever complaining that their mother doesn't top them up on time. I thought I would fix this by setting up an auto top-up. I could set up one (that didn't seem to work) but the other setup failed every time. I just called VF and was told "don't do that, nobody likes it & we're switching it off in a couple of days".

The advice to VF is to use the app but, although I see you can manage multiple accounts with the app, it is still manual & I'd prefer it to be auto. I tend to see making you maintain an electronic wallet manually as a ploy to encourage impulse purchases. I've always found the phone co setups to be over-complicated. Am I missing something here?

MikeHales

615 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1732283 7-Mar-2017 09:33

It's only the monthly auto top up, you can still use the automatic top up when the balance reaches a certain level or get a TXT reminder - more here.

dylanp

840 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1732313 7-Mar-2017 09:51

From memory the auto top-up triggered on the same calendar day every month, so every 28-31 days with most 30/31 days. The prepay plans auto-renew every 28-30 days. So over time the dates would drift out from each other, people would take it for granted for six months or so, then it wouldn't work in time and carryover balances got lost. Good to hear they're making changes to it, it's been coming for a while.

manaia

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1732437 7-Mar-2017 12:37

Cool - thank you both for your advice. I understand a lot better now what the call centre was trying to say and why the calendar auto topup is being discontinued. I was trying to set up a threshold auto-topup, which keeps failing on one while it works on the other. I think I'll have to go back to the call centre and ask again.

manaia

272 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1732479 7-Mar-2017 13:30

Just called back and was strongly advised to set up a calendar top-up :(

I pointed out dylanp's issue of out-of-step cycles and they back-pedalled on that advice. We then established that, even though I've been trying repeatedly to set up a threshold autopay, which always shows as failed, there is a txt-confirm autopay already set up. Have decided to leave well-enough alone. Thanks again for your advice.

falconne

10 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1745297 21-Mar-2017 17:43

MikeHales:

It's only the monthly auto top up; you can still use the automatic top up when the balance reaches a certain level or get a TXT reminder - more here.

The problem with this is that it doesn't let you change the threshold, the auto-topup will only trigger if the balance goes below $5. I am on a $20/month prepay plan and I need to make sure the balance is always above $20 to be safe. If my balance falls to $15, the auto-topup won't be triggered, but the plan won't renew. This means I have to always manually confirm my balance, instead of having a convenient set and forget method.

Granted the regular top up isn't guaranteed either, due to it not matching the billing cycle.

Vodafone should really fix the auto-top up, it just doesn't work safely for prepay.

Colossian

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1785132 20-May-2017 13:31

falconne:

The problem with this is that it doesn't let you change the threshold, the auto-topup will only trigger if the balance goes below $5. I am on a $20/month prepay plan and I need to make sure the balance is always above $20 to be safe. If my balance falls to $15, the auto-topup won't be triggered, but the plan won't renew. This means I have to always manually confirm my balance, instead of having a convenient set and forget method.

Granted the regular top up isn't guaranteed either, due to it not matching the billing cycle.

Vodafone should really fix the auto-top up, it just doesn't work safely for prepay.

Agree. The $5 trigger for auto top up is too low. Vodafone needs to allow users to decide what the trigger should be. In contrast, my AT HOP card for public transport allows me to choose whatever threshold I like at which to trigger auto top up.

A fixed $5 trigger is pointless for a monthly prepaid user who's monthly amount is over $5. For example this month, I had My Flex Prepay configured for $14/month but it only had $7 in the account so it couldn't renew AND the $5 auto top up didn't trigger so it switched to the 'casual' plan.

The only reason I can think of that Vodafone would not allow users to choose an auto top up trigger is so that they can trick their users into falling into the casual plan and end up paying more.

Vodafone please allow users to choose their own trigger for auto top up.

old3eyes

9120 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#1785149 20-May-2017 14:22

Why not carry a $20 buffer on the account just in case..??

Regards,

Old3eyes

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Dynamic

3869 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1785227 20-May-2017 17:05

If they make the change suggested above (which I agree with - setting our own minimum threshold at which the auto-topup happens as long as you get notified), I would like VF to allow the adding of a nickname to each prepay account. I top up the Mrds account, two teen accounts, and multiple 3G enabled alarms. it's a PITA to only see the mobile numbers and not be able to tag them.

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Colossian

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1785310 20-May-2017 19:34

Just having a "buffer" still means you have to manually top up the account periodically.

Allowing users to change the trigger point means that one can configure it so that you NEVER have manually top again!