Dear visitor,
Since its inception Vodafail.com has made a significant
contribution towards raising awareness of the problems and issues faced
by Vodafone customers.
Vodafone Australia customers have had the opportunity to voice their concerns, their fears and their troubles from every corner of Australia and beyond our borders.
You have gathered the courage to stand up for your rights as consumers and to make your voice heard.
Each and every person who shared their story should have a sense of pride in this achievement and the changes that have occurred since the start of Vodafail.com.
More recently, traffic to Vodafail.com has declined significantly.
Having achieved the goal of raising awareness and promoting concrete action in early 2011, we have now reached the point of closing Vodafail to new complaints.
The site will remain online for as long as possible as a
reminder and an example of what is possible when we share our experiences.
It has been a privilege to run this initiative
and I'm am forever grateful for the help and support I've received. In
particular I would like to thank Melissa, David and Travis for their
continued efforts over the past 15 months. I'm also thankful and humbled by the support of ACCAN, Choice magazine and a wide range of media outlets, blogs and websites.
You can still browse existing stories and find out how to file a complaint if you are experiencing problems.
Until next time,
Adam Brimo
Share Your Pain
| ACT (1140) | Everywhere (19206) | NSW (7557) | NT (170) | QLD (3578) | SA (987) | Somewhere else (224) | TAS (242) | VIC (3573) | WA (1735) |
15254 Someone from SA thinks vodafone is Unfit for purpose under the trade practices act at 5 Feb 2011 06:57:10 PM
I recently decided to go the whole hog and buy a high end phone, the google nexus. As my current provider 3 had no android phones on offer I changed to Vodafone. I had had very good experiences with vodafone in the past so I had no qualms about changing back especially given that they were now the same company.
However the smart phone I was sold is dumb. It does not implement the SMS protocol correctly. When the phone runs short of memory (at 20MB of free memory mind you) it does not have space to store an SMS (160 characters/bytes), it SHOULD be able to fit 125,000 SMSes into that space. Instead of following the protocol specifications for SMS and telling the network "I have no memory now" so the network stores the SMS, my dumb phone accepts the SMS and throws it away leaving me a message on the screen to the effect that it threw away an SMS due to lack of memory. That's just great because the sender will get a delivery confirmation if they asked for one and think I got the message, and despite having a PhD in software the software on this phone gives no clear indication of what exactly is filling my memory up so I can't easily fix it except by randomly removing the very software (large programs) for which I chose to pay the extra to buy a "smart" phone in order to be able to run.
Other faults in the SMS implementation on the phone include: Turning the phone on makes it resend several (I've never been able work out just how many) recent SMSes I've sent. This irritates and confuses my contacts. Thank god they are being sent to their original recipients and not to each other! When an SMS appears on the screen it offers delete and reply icons. However if I press reply, the SMS is sending forever, whereas if I go into the SMS application separately and send a message to the sender, it is sent. I have wasted heaps of money and time copying and pasting these "forever sending" SMSes.
I also bought the phone to be able to read internet on the train, and pay a high plan to get 1MB of included data. Well about 35% of the time the data connection breaks before the full page is loaded. More retries, more data used for the SAME incomplete service. And it is not from the train acting as a Faraday cage, today I walked to the markets here in central Adelaide, and there - in the open air - half the pages I tried to access failed to even be delivered.
To add insult to injury I now find on my last bill that Vodafone has been charging me an outrageously high 4 cents for SMS delivery receipts. These should be free because they are a natural part of a COMPLETE protocol, it's like charging extra to have the called party's phone ring in addition to charging for the call itself. Also with the substandard network combined with the broken and incorrect SMS software, it is the only way I can tell that and SMS I send has actually been sent. I cannot believe what the software tells me and I do not trust the network to work.
In no way happy Jan, and instead of Senator Stephen Conroy wasting his time and our money trying to censor the internet like the Chinese or Egyptians, he should be doing his job and making sure that basic network services are being provided.
However the smart phone I was sold is dumb. It does not implement the SMS protocol correctly. When the phone runs short of memory (at 20MB of free memory mind you) it does not have space to store an SMS (160 characters/bytes), it SHOULD be able to fit 125,000 SMSes into that space. Instead of following the protocol specifications for SMS and telling the network "I have no memory now" so the network stores the SMS, my dumb phone accepts the SMS and throws it away leaving me a message on the screen to the effect that it threw away an SMS due to lack of memory. That's just great because the sender will get a delivery confirmation if they asked for one and think I got the message, and despite having a PhD in software the software on this phone gives no clear indication of what exactly is filling my memory up so I can't easily fix it except by randomly removing the very software (large programs) for which I chose to pay the extra to buy a "smart" phone in order to be able to run.
Other faults in the SMS implementation on the phone include: Turning the phone on makes it resend several (I've never been able work out just how many) recent SMSes I've sent. This irritates and confuses my contacts. Thank god they are being sent to their original recipients and not to each other! When an SMS appears on the screen it offers delete and reply icons. However if I press reply, the SMS is sending forever, whereas if I go into the SMS application separately and send a message to the sender, it is sent. I have wasted heaps of money and time copying and pasting these "forever sending" SMSes.
I also bought the phone to be able to read internet on the train, and pay a high plan to get 1MB of included data. Well about 35% of the time the data connection breaks before the full page is loaded. More retries, more data used for the SAME incomplete service. And it is not from the train acting as a Faraday cage, today I walked to the markets here in central Adelaide, and there - in the open air - half the pages I tried to access failed to even be delivered.
To add insult to injury I now find on my last bill that Vodafone has been charging me an outrageously high 4 cents for SMS delivery receipts. These should be free because they are a natural part of a COMPLETE protocol, it's like charging extra to have the called party's phone ring in addition to charging for the call itself. Also with the substandard network combined with the broken and incorrect SMS software, it is the only way I can tell that and SMS I send has actually been sent. I cannot believe what the software tells me and I do not trust the network to work.
In no way happy Jan, and instead of Senator Stephen Conroy wasting his time and our money trying to censor the internet like the Chinese or Egyptians, he should be doing his job and making sure that basic network services are being provided.
b) I bought it from the Australian Vodafone shop online.
c) I did research the phone in multiple ways. You just do not expect such basic parts of the phone's software not to work. 3 might NOW have numerous phones with the Android system, at the time I bought they only had a cheap and nasty LG which I played with at their store and felt less than robust. Also at the time the Desire was exlusive to Telstra on a $80 or $90 plan. Given the nexus and HTC Desire are basically the same phone with slightly different buttons at the bottom the reviews were good.
Given the Android software architecture, there really is no excuse for not having updated this most basic of phone software to working versions. It's the same as having a jet engine explode in midair when the Airplane / Engine specification says that the engine will contain any failure within itself and jettison any debris rearward, or to have a bridge fall down when you walk over it. Failure to meet the specification is completely unprofessional and quite unheard of. OP