I have been a Vodafone customer for a while. Most recently as pre-paid. When a friend game me their old iPhone I had the need to move to a plan with data allowance. And the Vodafone SIM only plans looked good for someone not needing a phone.
That was until I received my first bill with charges 3 times what I though my monthly cost would be.
One third for the month just been. One third for a month in advance (and I though this was post-paid). The last third though is what I have the big gripe about.
I found that my data allowance was half the data allowance advertised on their site!!!! And that I was being charged for excess data that I believed was included.
With a bit of research I found that all the SIM Only Caps are advertised at double the data allowance mentioned on the plan details pages. (Which are hard to find as the ‘Help’ section of their site needs work.)
Below if a table of my finding, with links to the pages the data comes from:
| Stated on advertisement page | Stated on plan details page | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Type | Cost per Month | Value included | Data | VF to VF/3 | Data |
| SIM Only Cap | $20 | $150 | 100MB | $200 | 50MB |
| SIM Only Cap | $35 | $350 | 500MB | Unlimited | 250MB or Blackberry 500MB |
| SIM Only Cap | $55 | $550 | 1GB | Unlimited | 500MB or Blackberry 1GB |
| VF Cap 12 Month | $29 | $180 | 200MB | Unlimited | 50MB |
| VF Cap 24 Month | $29 | $180 | 200MB | Unlimited | 50MB |
As you can see, the 3 SIM Only Cap plans only give users half the advertised data allowance. And the 2 Vodafone Cap $29 plans give the user one quarter the advertised data allowance.
So, is this a problem with the advertising department? Or the people setting up the details pages?
I hope it is the latter. I do want the data allowance I was sold.