Vodafone Prepay 'Deals' and disappearing credit.

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VirtualKiwi

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#272617 5-Jul-2020 19:50

I'm on Vodafone prepay, which each week offers various 'deals' which typically last a week.

It's not worth me going on a plan, as I mostly have a connection via wi-fi in my home office, with a fibre plan also from Vodafone, so it doesn't make much sense to pay twice for data.

Typically I check via the My Vodafone app, and if there is a deal I want I'll choose it, with the data 'deals' useful if I know I'm going to be out of the office for an extended period.

More than once I've experienced the situation where I'm almost certain I've chosen a 'deal' only to find my credit is exhausted as the 'deal' I thought I'd purchased has not been applied, and my credit has been used up at the casual rate.

It's possible it could be user error, so I'm curious to know whether anyone else has experienced this, as it seems if you're offered a 'deal' which you purchase with your credit, only to not get it seems a bit dubious.

I have data saver enabled on my phone, when I even have mobile data enabled and my usage is pretty light, so it's unlikely I should end up using up a data add-on.

I'm probably not Vodafone's ideal customer, as a $20 top-up can often last me 3 months, so the cynic in me tends to think any excuse to eat my credit would be convenient to force me to top up again, but as I say, I'm not discounting possible user error, so I'm curious to know other people's experience.

KiwiSurfer

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#2517788 6-Jul-2020 08:03

I have a dual SIM phone so occassionally when the data runs out on my main non-Vodafone SIM, I just fall back to using data on my Vodafone prepay SIM using the deals. It has always just worked for me. I don't even need to reset the data session etc.

The only gotcha is when I don't realise I have exhausted my Vodafone data allocation and it reverts back to casual data. But that only happens once the data I have purchased from the deal has run out.

Another possible gotcha is the offpeak deal which only deducts data during certain hours only? It won't start straight away if you activate it outside of the permitted hours.

Next time you get a deal, go back to the accounts screen in the app/website and click 'My Plan' on the account and check the deal has been loaded correctly. I usually have to scroll down the list of addons etc to find the deal (usually under 'Data') but it will always show the days left and MBs left.

Maybe a email to Vodafone is in order to see what happened?

VirtualKiwi

29 posts

Geek

#2523367 15-Jul-2020 10:26

I have an update on Vodafone's My Vodafone app and purchasing deals, due to a repeat experience, this time being more wary because of previous experiences.

I purchased an add on deal, checking my credit and data before and after.

The cost of the deal was deducted from my credit immediately, and under 'deals' the app showed that I had purchased the data deal, however my available data did not change.

(I had a few MB remaining from a previous deal)

I refreshed the app and still no change, and got a warning message that I was just about out of data.

(I took screen shots - unfortunately not before, but immediately after, to show what had happened to credit and data, and that the add-on deal had been purchased, so this was definitely not a case of me thinking I'd purchased an add-on and not having completed the purchase.)

About 30 minutes later after restarting and refreshing the My Vodafone app (after I'd had time to eat breakfast and write a 1 star review of the app to Google Play), the data credit finally showed up.

I was in a rural area where mobile coverage can sometimes be a bit patchy, however I was able to consume data (hence the low data warning).

I wonder whether there's some issue with the My Vodafone app where it doesn't respond well to intermittent connection loss, and whether it doesn't have the deduction of prepay credit and addition of credit for a deal properly wrapped up in a transaction (in a database sense of transaction), so that it's possible to end up with part of the process completing but not all of it. That doesn't entirely make sense though, as I did get my add-on credit in the end, but there was a long delay between having the credit deducted and the add-on data showing up, which could easily have resulted in prepay credit being used up if I'd relied on having data when it hadn't yet been credited to my account.

Linux

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#2523372 15-Jul-2020 10:38

The other issue could be PDP session not dropping, Next time you add a deal for data put the phone into flight mode and back out again

KiwiSurfer

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#2523375 15-Jul-2020 10:45

I've found the app and the web version of My Vodafone doesn't show the total data availiable but will only show data availaible from one specific plan and/or add-on. If, for example, you have more than one data add-on active at the same time (and/or a plan that includes data) it will only show one of these in the 'Account summary' screen. You need to go into the plan details and it will show you all the data available to you from your plan and/or add-ons.

How it is presented, also depends on which Prepay plan you are on. I have one VF sim on Pay & Go. My Vodafone will usually show the data on the 'Account summary' screen for one of the data add-on (I believe the oldest add-on is shown and then replaced by newer ones as they expire or run out). However for My Flex Prepay, it will usually only show the amount of data in the Flex plan (even if that is zero). You must click through to 'View plan' to see any data add-on amounts.

This is especially true if you have different types of data add-ons. I sometimes have both 24/7 data as well as off-peak only data. I believe only the 24/7 data add-ons are shown in the 'Account summary' screen (or it at least takes precdence over the off-peak data). I think this makes sense in some ways as the off-peak data can only be used at certain times so it is a good idea to keep that separate from 24/7 data.

The text to inform you of low data also does not take into account you may have another data add-on ready to take over once your current add-on or plan allocation runs out or expires. I will get these however I just ingore these. Their system will correctly roll over to the next availiable data add-on, making the 'warnings' just a harmless sheep in wolf's clothing.

It is very confusing if you have come from other networks which consolidates all data allocations into one figure, and send text warnings only if all your data is about to run out. I think Vodafone would do well to improve how they communicate this kind of info to their customers.