Vodafone 360 Woes: "Nothing's changed.. things are changing for the worse"

I was having a look at the referring traffic from Vodafone’s 360 forum today and saw quite a few clicks coming from this forum post.

The three links that Jay.B posted were all to Vodafone 360 articles on Mobile Industry Review (the links have since been removed by the Vodafone moderators which shows a very, very low tolerance for dissent).

It’s fascinating to watch just how Vodafone as a company deals with 360 and the consumer reaction to it.

Here’s Jay.B’s original post:

And this is how it looks after the moderator’s been through it:

Heh.

The posts Jay.B were linking to are:

– Vodafone 360: An Absolute Failure
– This week’s newsletter: More about Vodafone 360

I particularly like how Jay linked to the final link:

and finally quite a good read that really describes what I would like to experience and what I am experiencing when using H1

– Vdoafone’s Lukewarm 60-degree Offering

Jay finishes by asking:

I find the content of the above articles quite alarming and would like to know what is Vodafone opinion about what is stated in these articles?

Ah you’ll never know Jay. Vodafone’s position is not to get into a (potentially uncomfortable) conversation.

It’s a real shame. It’s highly ironic that whilst Vodafone 360 is a service that’s fundamentally based on communication, there appears to be next to nothing coming from Vodafone about 360’s issues or any indication about what’s on the road map. Perhaps I’ve missed it.

When you’re producing a service that can be upgraded remotely it is acceptable for there to be bugs, problems, issues. I didn’t for one second think that the photo issue (the limitation of only being able to post to Facebook) would hang around for more than 30-days or more before some bright spark at Vodafone fixed it with an update. But it appears this hasn’t happened.

Twitter integration was promised — it’s not quite materialised either.

Back to Jay.B again — here’s what he’s thinking:

The really scary thing is that not much have changed since then. No firmwares released addressing the issues. No known dates when the firmwares are going to be released. It’s 3 months since I have this phone and the only thing I can hear is that someone somewhere works really hard to get things sorted out. In my opinion nothing changed or things are changing for worse in certain aspects.

There have been one or two firmware updates that I’ve noted but not sufficient or frequent enough to placate Jay.B or the rest of us.

Jay goes further:

The bottom line is that the product (goods and services in the shape of H1/M1 phone and 360.com website) do not work as advertised. In fact I feel that I have grounds to ask for my money back. It would definitely be the case with any other product (TV, car, even MS Windows OS). The only reason it is not happening is because the smartphones and cloud computing are quite new concepts and they are not really clearly defined.

It gets worse as Jay.B explains:

But it is enough to use common sense and decency to admit that there is a problem and that most people who bought H1 phone wouldn’t buy it, if they only knew that most of the advertised features/services are not going to work.

It’s painful reading:

And I really wanted to have something else/better than iPhone and H1 was sold to me as a phone that can outdo the iPhone (and hardware wise it is better than iPhone). I had all the reasons to believe it. Then I had all the reasons to believe that things are going to get fixed.

This isn’t difficult to manage. It’s all about communication. Something you’d expect the 360 team — or the executives screwing it up — to understand.

If the next update is going to fix a lot of the problems, brilliant. But don’t sit there in silence. Post an update! Tell people what’s happening! Even if it’s coming in March, so be it, people can stop getting frustrated.

One of the newbies reading the post visited a little bit late and found the links posted to Mobile Industry Review removed:

I Want to read the articles but I can’t see the links a nymore… Is it only happening with me?! Any reason for the disappearing?

It’s laughable, it really is.

Vodafone does allow links to external sites — just not ones that aren’t entirely supportive.

Simply fascinating.

I write this post as yet another addition to my look-at-the-stupidity-of-the-mobile-operator pile. I can’t quite believe they are still screwing it up.

It could all be managed much, much better.

Meantime the more I watch 360, the more I see the customer complaints going unanswered and the negative commentary removed, it’s very clear that to see this is a department in total and utter chaos.

Poor Lee, the Vodafone eForum chap who’s taking all the flack from the Vodafone consumers, is doing his best with what he’s got to work with.

Here’s one forum contributor, Paul, who’s not been having a good day:

Am on my 2nd Samsung H1 in less than 2 months… on my first handset VF pushed the firmware update to my mobile there and then but apparently the 3 VF folks I have spoken to since don’t know how to do this for my new handset

I too got stuck unzipping but as soon as I opened PC studion as administrator (using Vista) it worked!

Paul’s referring to the firmware update process. You can’t quite do it over-the-air it seems. Instead you have to arse about with the Samsung PC Studio and unzipping of stuff. Still at least it’s a solution.

Paul continues:

What i find laughable about this whole saga is the lack of official response/update from senior folks at VF at the number of faults present in both the handset and 360 in general – Lee is doing a grand job fighting the flames but when will it get to a stage where top brass at VF admit they have F#*$ed up and should remove this handset and service until it is fixed once and for all.

PLEASE CAN WE HAVE AN UPDATE FROM SOMEONE SENIOR AT VODAFONE!!!

Lee is doing his best to placate the hordes:

I know how frustrated you are, believe me, I’ve had the same issues as everyone else and I know we are working as hard as possible to get these issues sorted.

Jay.B points out that this isn’t really helping:

You are working so hard for so long and not much is really happening. I am reading this forum on regular basis and nearly everyone here has some kind of problem with this phone

He finishes with a suggestion that appears to front-of-mind for many a Vodafone 360 user:

I suggest that if problems are not sorted out by January you get us all an iPhone as a replacement phone till problems with this phone are sorted out.

Barry concurs:

I have waded thru 7 pages of how to update, I have switched on and off twice while connecting to PC Studio, I have taken the back off, removed the sim and repeated the above, I have stood on one foot in a bucket of water while repeating the above and still it will not get past attempting to unzip the the downloaded update. I can’t get emails, I can’t sync with Outlook. The phone in its present state is not fit for purpose but will Vodafone admit this and give me an Apple I-pod?

I don’t think Barry will get very far, alas.

I doubt I’ll have anything specific to tell you about Vodafone 360, beyond the litany of problems, in the coming weeks.

One highlight is the upcoming Vodafone 360 developer conference at Mobile World Congress. I would take the camera in there to interview developers but I understand Mobile Industry Review — and yours truly in particular — are most certainly not welcome on account of our rather direct Vodafone 360 coverage. So we won’t be doing that alas. There might be an opportunity to capture some hilarious footage of me being turned away at the door, perhaps. That would certainly be interesting.

So if you’re a 360 developer and you’d like some coverage, do contact me directly (ewan@mobileindustryreview.com) and we’ll sort out a profile.

Meanwhile I’m going to try and upgrade my Samsung H1…