The Carphone Vodafone Arse

Is this the beginning of the end of having third parties sell your contracts, now? As a few people have already commented — how long before Orange, T-Mobile, o2 and Three follow their lead?

In one action, by taking its new contracts business ‘in house’ and exclusive to just one national supplier, Vodafone has crippled Carphone Warehouse — and potentially the industry in general.

Whilst losing the ability to sell only Vodafone contracts isn’t a huge biggie for the Carphone — it’s the message that’s the problem. They’re no longer comprehensive. They can no longer help around 1/5th of the mobile market who currently use Vodafone. Another problem is the market in general — is it safe to assume that the market for independent mobile phone stores will be drying up pretty quickly. If Orange or o2 were to do the same to Carphone, where does that leave the business? Surely Carphone’s whole reason for existing is to serve contracts (and PAYG) to customers — and Vodafone is a critical part of that.

It’s like going into a sports shoe shop and finding that they no longer stock Nike.

In fairness, Carphone has always been on the cheapo end of the scale. Agree? I mean, if you look at any of their stores at the moment — and compare them to Phones4U or the network’s own brand stores, they look appalling. The vast majority of Carphone stores that I pass are in dire need of freshening up. They didn’t keep pace with the palaces that the operators have been opening up.

I wouldn’t buy my Vodafone contract from Carphone. I’d go to Vodafone’s shops — they’re everywhere. Same with Orange and so on.

Vodafone have always been one of the most expensive networks. So I wonder if, in reality, this won’t actually change things much. Are Vodafone’s customers automatically avoiding the dirty, boring and old Carphone stores anyway?

Ah it’s all very interesting.