Vodafone doesn’t want new customers

Vodafone – how hard can it be to become a customer of yours? So hard I almost gave up, that’s how hard.

It all started about a month ago — a month away from the end of my contract with O2, who didn’t have the phone I wanted. Vodafone does, so I planned to switch — in spite of the company’s current poor reputation for avoiding paying £6bn in corporation tax in the cash-strapped UK.

Around that time, I got a call from Vodafone’s ‘Win Back’ sales team — as a previous customer I’m cheaper to acquire than a brand new one, so they wanted to know if I would come back to Voda. I agreed to a deal, and expected to get a call nearer the time confirming this. Score one point for Vodafone.

But a week before the contract expired, I’d heard nothing so I called the sales number. They’d no record of the phone call or of the good deal (£10 a month cheaper than any advertised price plan) that I’d agreed to. Strike one point for Vodafone – score now zero.

So I tried to cut a deal there but I was told my name would be passed to the Win Back sales team’s list. Four days later I got a call — this from a company that’s reportedly keen to expand its customer base after a long period of decline. Strike one more point for lack of urgency – tally is minus one.

In the end, I got a deal slightly better than the one I’d agreed a month before (one up for Voda, score now zero). I carefully spelt out my address, bank account details and the porting code (PAC) that O2 had given me, to allow my old number to be carried over. The PAC would be activated two days later, I was told.

Next day I got a text confirming that a phone would be sent out the day after — though the abysmal spelling of my address suggested a high degree of illiteracy or lack of attention to detail, or both, and gave me cause to wonder if the phone would actually turn up at the right address. Hmm, nul points each way, I think, score still zero.

The phone turned up on the appointed day — so a grudging point there, score one — but two days later there was no sign of the PAC being activated, so I emailed Vodafone. They’d no record of a PAC. Minus one. They suggested I send it and other details to a specific Vodafone email address, which I did in a hurry, since at this point I’m paying for two parallel phone contracts, and the PAC has a 30-day expiry limit that’s approaching fast.

I got a email back instructing me to enter the same details into a web page — this would be the third time of providing the code. Subtract one point, score minus two so far. An email arrived within a few hours complaining that the details I’d provided didn’t match what they held — I suspect that’s because the address I’d originally given them had been transcribed so poorly. Score: minus three.

So I provided the details for the fourth time and now, at last, have confirmation, and a date and time that the PAC will be activated — one day before it expires. Add one point, and the total so far is minus two.

If the PAC works as Voda claims, no change in score as that’s expected behaviour. If it doesn’t, you’ll hear about it.

If Vodafone wants to gain customer loyalty, it really needs to sharpen up its act. As it is, if another company offers a reasonable deal at the end of this 18-month contract, I’m off.

Filed under: mobile, customer, mobile phone, pac, poor service, porting authorisation code, vodafone

iPad? Just say no

If the world needed an iPad, why hasn’t one been invented before? Oh look: it has. Called the Newton when Apple launched it in 1992 – there were a couple of others released about the same time but the Newton got the headlines – it died in 1998 as not enough people bought it.

Will the iPad be different? Do you care?

Amid the inevitable hoopla and swooning going on in Applista diasporas at media outlets such as the Guardian and the BBC, let’s be clear: the iPad is a blown-up iPhone. And already we hear calls for there to be a cut-down version of the iPad so that you can carry it in your pocket. Thought that’s what an iPhone was…

The iPad’s remit seems to be more limited than the Newton’s. There’s no handwriting recognition for a start but it is very shiny, has bright colours and maybe the battery life is long enough to make it useful enough to carry around all day. I await review samples for verification. There’s no talk of local connectivity to either Mac or Windows, no talk of open access to all the applications you want, no talk of opening up the OS so that others can develop extensions or applications.

And for all of Jobs’ sneering at netbooks, mine works for hours on a single charge, runs Ubuntu quite happily – though I suspect that Windows 7 might actually be easier to to use in terms of getting everything working, but at least I have the choice.

As one blogger has already pointed out, this closed-world mentality could be the fatal flaw in the iPad’s shiny armour.

iPad? I don’t think so.

Filed under: Laptop, mobile, operating systems, Product launch, apple, ipad, launch, netbook, ubuntu, windows 7

What’s the prognosis for true high-speed mobile data?

The mobile industry confuses its customers and doesn’t deliver what it promises.

We all talk much about the latest technology, and how it will transform this that or the other element of our personal and/or working lives.

I spent quite a bit of time yesterday talking about LTE — also known as 4G by some, but not everyone, in the mobile industry. It’s known as 4G because it succeeds 3G, today’s iteration of mobile broadband technology. Even though, confusingly, some of it, such as HSPA which can give you as much as 21Mbits/sec is known as 3.5G.

And LTE isn’t 4G technically, because it doesn’t quite meet the definition of 4G laid down by the global standards body, the ITU, according to one analyst I spoke to. So you’ll find LTE referred as 4G or as 3.5+G, LTE-Advanced — which does meet the 4G spec — or just plain LTE. WiMax, incidentally, is 4G according to the ITU. No wonder the mobile industry confuses its customers. There’s a pithy piece about LTE and 4G here.

But that’s all by the by in some ways. The important thing about LTE is that it promises 100Mbit/sec download and 50Mbits/sec upload speeds. If you know anything about the technology, you’ll know that in practice some 25 percent that is likely to be eaten up by protocol and other overheads. You’ll also know that a further 25 percent is likely to be lost to distance losses, cell sharing, and clogged up backhaul networks.

All this is due to arrive over the next ten years. Yes, ten years. Roll-outs are unlikely to start happening in the UK before 2012, more likely 2015.

Except that this is so much hogwash.

I was in the middle of London — yes, challenging conditions due to the concrete canyon effect, but the kind of area in which the mobile industry has to demonstrate its best technology. And the best mobile data rate I managed inside or out was a standard GSM-level 56kbits/sec. This is early 1990s technology.

So if 20 years after its invention and 15 years after its introduction, that’s the best I can get in the middle of one of the world’s leading capital cities, I suspect it’ll be 2025 before I see LTE speeds.

You know what? I’m not sure how much I’ll care by then…

Filed under: mobile, cellular, communication, ITU, LTE, mobile, mobile operator, Wireless

Dust to dust…or is that CPUs?

A quick follow-up from a news story I wrote for eWeek yesterday entitled ‘Moore’s Law – Still Driving Down The IT Footprint’.

The story concerned the research by Stanford University professor, Dr Jonathan Koomey, who found that Moore’s Law was active for long before Gordon Moore coined his eponymous observation. Koomey reckons that Moore’s Law will result in the huge growth in mobile devices with fixed computational needs, such as controllers.

Their requirements won’t grow but the growth of smaller, more power-efficient processors will come towards them, to the point where battery life becomes a non-issue.

Then you’ll get ‘dust’, as this fascinating paper posits. Read and enjoy!

Filed under: mobile, Wireless, cellular, communication, mobile, Wireless