Oh Vodafone, Vodafone, Vodafone, how do I love thee? Not a lot, really.. yet

Do you remember when I phoned up Vodafone’s press office some time last year to ask what mobile handset Arun Sarin used? And they wrote back reasonably promptly declining to tell me, probably, one imagines, because they a) couldn’t be bothered and b) well, when you look at it, it could possibly really get up the noses of Nokia if he said he uses a Samsung or whatever.

I’ve always had a problem with Vodafone. I think our relationship really hit the rocks when I ran up a 1k data bill unwittingly whilst sitting mobile-working in Cannes. That reaaaaaaally got up my nose. It was a misunderstanding due to price plans and responsibility.

I took it in the neck, like a cow sat at the abattoir. It was ultimately my responsibility for not checking that they’d changed the terms of the price plan. I never forgot it though.

Never.

Which is quite interesting. I’m having a one-sided love/hate relationship with them and I have been doing so for, well… years, actually. Obviously having that sort of relationship with a ‘brand’ — a faceless entity — is perhaps slightly unusual.

Good network. Talented people. Stupid prices. Phenomenally perceptive marketing (to keep X million people paying stupid prices).

I’m pleased I left as a customer though. It took a lot to surrender my account. Eventually after yet another billing issue which I simply couldn’t be bothered to explain to their usually helpful customer team, I jumped. Jumped far. Very far.

I jumped into the wilderness of prepay and got hold of a Carphone Warehouse ‘Fresh’ account. Vodafone recycled my number and within weeks i was getting enquiries from colleagues and friends wondering if I had a new girlfriend because ‘some girl keeps answering your mobile’.

Arse.

I was surprised though, with Fresh. Shit billing system, shit customer service.. but the network worked. I mean, you could usually make calls. And text messages arrived pretty quickly.

I think I had been operating under strange illusions with Vodafone. I did actually walk around the place as a Master-of-the-Universe (Bonfire of the Vanities style, if anyone’s read it) lording it over T-Mobile users and scoffing at their dropped-call-rates.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that other mobile phone services were reasonably good.

I haven’t looked back.

Ok well, that’s not exactly true. I have, frequently been back in the Vodafone stores to have a poke around. Now and again I’ve actually taken out my credit card and growled ‘HIT ME’ at the sales person.

I just can’t take the rates though.

It’s still THIRTY FIVE pence a minute to another mobile network. If you work on the basis of 5-10p (MAXIMUM) termination rates, that’s just a ridiculous, RIDICULOUS rate.

I can’t get over that.

BUT I have resolved to look upon Vodafone more positively.

Six people forwarded me the announcement the other morning about Vodafone’s new mobile broadband offerings. I actually caught the news via the Independent newspaper 6 hours earlier as I’d been up late and a little too enthusiastic. However I didn’t get it from the horse’s mouth, as it were. On the bottom of the release was the contact details of, what I assume to be Vodafone’s PR agency, Tavistock.

So I have dropped an email to Tavistock’s Lulu Bridges and asked her to include me in their distribution for next time. That way, perhaps I can rehabilitate my Vodafone coverage. I’ll start, by the way, with a look at their new UK website which is excellent. It’s the website they always should have had. Open, visually appealing and fast. I’m sure it’ll be converting more customers already.

Anyway, more on Vodafone soon. I’m just off to listen to some podcasts on my unmetered-data 3UK X-Series…