Carphone Warehouse loses Vodafone contract business

Link: Guardian Unlimited Business | Business | A software surprise for the man in the pub

Carphone Warehouse stood out in London’s markets today, losing all the gains achieved through yesterday’s acquisition of AOL UK.

Vodafone is pulling its contract business out of the company’s stores – and other independent retailers – in favour of an exclusive deal with Phones4U.

So if you’re hunting for a Vodadfone contract, you’re best to go to either one of the Vodafone stores or a Phones4U store.

This kind of consolodation makes sense for the operators — particularly when it’s well known that if you walk into a third party store, they’ll do their best to switch you to whichever operator is offering the best customer acquisition payouts at the time. If I was Mr Vodafone, that sort of behaviour would be extremely annoying.

I can’t quite believe that you won’t actually be able to get Vodafone contracts from Carphone Warehouse anymore. That’s quite a biggie, isn’t it? One of the major selling points of going to Carphone was that you could ‘get a full choice’. Will we be seeing the Vodafone pages disappear from their brochures soon then? Surely that relegates Carphone in the mind of the consumer… I wouldn’t have wanted to lose that deal.

Update: I understand that Vodafone may will rip their Pay As You Go business from Carphone too — more on this Reuters article. Oooh dear. Thanks A.