Vodafone $1 a day for 10MB in court

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Vodafone $1 a day for 10MB in court

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#505472 12-Aug-2011 12:55

Here you go:

In this thread there is a post by PaulBrislen

http://www.geekzone.co.nz/forums.asp?forumid=40&topicid=23049&page_no=1

We're charging at the rate of $5 per megabyte up to $1, which works out at less than 1c/KB. Once you hit $1 there's no charging from there to 10MB. From there it's $1/MB until midnight and it's reset for the next day.

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sbiddle

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#505481 12-Aug-2011 13:09

I was lead to believe at the time this $5 charge is because of the way Vodafone bill per 10kb data session and the issues with rounding and billing values of less than 1c.

IMHO from what I've heard elsewhere it seems the ComCom have gone to court with a complete lack of knowledge of how things actually worked.

DonGould

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#505488 12-Aug-2011 13:16

sbiddle:
IMHO from what I've heard elsewhere it seems the ComCom have gone to court with a complete lack of knowledge of how things actually worked.

An interesting situation if that's the case.

Is the regulator spending enough on market understanding and hiring the right resources and are they unduly hindering market players and causing higher costs on consumers as a result?

Is this just an employment scheme for a bunch of tax payer funded people who are very hard to challenge?

On one had I don't have to much issue with them having a swing at the big international owned players while they're leaving the small guys alone to just get on and do some work.... but on the other hand... does this stuff actually help the country?

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jonb

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#505499 12-Aug-2011 13:47

oxnsox:
jonb: I think the fine is very harsh: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10744578

I personally got caught out by it a couple of times, but I wouldn't have even considered complaining about it. I did thing it was ridiculously expensive though,and stopped me using mobile broadband and facilitated moving to 2 degrees with it's pro-rata rate.

Seems like ComCom have an ongoing vendetta against vodafone in my opinion. I remember first moving to vodafone broadband because of the free broadband with a phone contract offer a few years ago, that got canned by ComCom and now Telecom are doing nearly same thing with Total Home Mobile.

This is a different case to the 10MB for a $1 of this thread,

Thanks, I was thinking it was the same case. The vodafone live 'free' offer was obvious to me, and other geeks, but guess not to normal folks. I agree there should've been a warning of some sort before leaving the vodafone Live freezone area..

I remember my sony erricsson was still showing vodafone live banner after leaving the main site

Skolink

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#505513 12-Aug-2011 13:57

sbiddle: I was lead to believe at the time this $5 charge is because of the way Vodafone bill per 10kb data session and the issues with rounding and billing values of less than 1c.

I don't know if they still do it, but Vodafone rounds up to nearest 10kB each hour (on Prepay anyway). We couldn't understand why mobile logging devices were getting such high data charges, since we were only transmitting a few bytes per hour.

mattwnz

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#505554 12-Aug-2011 14:29

I think from reading peoples posts, there is some confusion , and telcos need to be far more specific and give far more details on their pricing. Also monitoring data useage is incredibly difficult. The phone may have a monitor, but that can be fiddly to get to, and may not be accurate compared to the telcos metering. I also think that if it is $1 per 10 MB, then there is no reason why the second 10MB of use also couldn't be a $1 too, rather than being 10 times that price.

I have found that many adverts can be picked apart if you really take the time and look at how they are worded.

networkn

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#505936 13-Aug-2011 10:54

Yes I agree, I think where there is reasonably widespread confusion, it falls onto the seller to provider clear and concise, easy to understand parameters, I believe VF should have done better in this regard.

It's part of selling technology, the understanding you will have to cater for the lowest common demoninator (I don't mean that in a derogatory way).

LennonNZ

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#505942 13-Aug-2011 11:21

As far as I know...

Data is Charged at 5c/10kb and is capped at a Dollar for under 10MB

So you have to do under 190kb of data to be charged under a dollar.

Any data over 10MB is charged at $1/MB prorated

(or I may be wrong)

AviZ

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#505947 13-Aug-2011 12:02

it should be $1/10mb then after that another $1/10mb data on cellphones is just theft.

Hinko

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#509292 20-Aug-2011 09:06

AviZ: it should be $1/10mb then after that another $1/10mb data on cellphones is just theft.

I agree that if they can do $1.00 for the first 10MB, then the next 10MB should also be close to $1.00.

Instead they rortaceously demand $10.00 from consumers.

freitasm

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#526129 27-Sep-2011 11:33

And it happened... Vodafone lost the case and fined $400,000.

The commission had said Vodafone misled customers during its $1 a Day campaign between July and November 2008. Commission lawyer Nick Flanagan said customers thought they were paying "$1 a day" for 10 megabytes of data but they were actually charged $1 after using only about 2 per cent of the 10MB allocation.

Mr Flanagan told the hearing in August that three complaints to the commission suggested customers thought they would pay only a fraction of the $1 if they did not use all 10MB.

One complainant, Linda McCracken, told the commission, "I took this to be that if, for example, I used 5MB it would only cost me 50c and if I used 2.5MB it would cost me 25c."

Insane...

Judge Kiernan said today that the reasons for her decision would be released in writing later this afternoon.

She said she was "satisfied beyond reasonable doubt" that the company had misled customers.

Arghhhh.

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Tom_Rush

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#526153 27-Sep-2011 12:30

Doh!

I feel sorry for Vodafone (this time)

I can understand how people can be forgiven for not understanding packet and datagram encapsulation and data transmission headers.. but... really, what was so difficult about $1.00 for one day, capped at 10MB.

This is just sad.

networkn

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#526155 27-Sep-2011 12:30

Well they should know better and should by now have mechanisms in place. Usage has always been an issue in NZ, they know it's a problem, and yet they failed to make it clear enough. It's a 50/50 call at best, and the onus should and will always fall on the vendor.

PlatinuM195

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#526157 27-Sep-2011 12:33

What I don't understand is the customer who assumed it was free but was charged hundreds of dollars, was there some particular ad that mentioned free or something?

SteveON

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#526158 27-Sep-2011 12:38

People are just retarded (yes that should be an acceptible word mr admin) the $1 a day for 10 MB was painfully obvious to anyone. I just don't see where this kind of case is acceptable, we may see cases where telecom gets sued because people didn't use up all their minutes. "I get xxx minutes for $xx so I should only pay x"

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