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) |
19419 Someone from QLD thinks vodafone is Confusion at 12 Sep 2011 04:39:19 PM
This is the editorial from the Sydnet Morning Herald editorial regarding Vodafone and other telecommunications companies --
"Your call is important to us"
MARKETING researchers refer to a critical tipping point at which customers become sworn brand enemies, consumers so passionately enraged by service failure that they will bad-mouth a company at every opportunity and go out of their way to sabotage the business in any way they can.
The "Vodafail" website is, unfortunately, a good measure of the extraordinary level of customer rage among telecommunications consumers. The parody site offers dissatisfied customers a chance to share their pain - and compete for various dubious honours such at the longest time spent on hold (257 minutes continuously). The site was constructed by a frustrated customer during the time he wasted trying to resolve his problems with Vodafone, which makes an obvious point. Yet the telecommunications industry has been fully deregulated since 1997 and such competition is supposed to deliver price and service benefits. What has gone so wrong that more than 200,000 Australians complained to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman in 2009-10, double the number of complaints annually in the considerably larger British market?
First, Vodafone is no standout when it comes to poor service and confounding consumer information. It seems all telephone companies go out of their way to exploit the increasing complexity of telecommunications services to their advantage, making consumer choice virtually meaningless.
Take the so-called cap on which most mobile phone contracts are based. "Capped" means limited or shut off, and so implies a maximum payment. But in a phone contract a cap is a minimum payment. Go over the cap and call prices and data costs rocket.
One case highlighted in an Australian Communications and Media Authority inquiry, released last week, featured an overwhelmed father who was unable to determine when his daughter had reached her $129 cap and found himself facing a $4544.71 monthly bill. Research by the Brotherhood of St Laurence found that if the first 15 hours of mobile phone use cost $79 a month, the next 15 hours put the bill up to $889. Other consumers are paying too much for plans far above their usage. With smartphones and service "bundling", the market is just getting more complicated. The authority's proposal that ''cap'' and other misleading terms be banned and that the true, comparable cost of a two-minute call, for example, be disclosed makes good sense. It's up to the phone companies to turn their reputations and service levels around. It would be real failure of the market and the industry if regulators have to step in to clean up the mess.
"Your call is important to us"
MARKETING researchers refer to a critical tipping point at which customers become sworn brand enemies, consumers so passionately enraged by service failure that they will bad-mouth a company at every opportunity and go out of their way to sabotage the business in any way they can.
The "Vodafail" website is, unfortunately, a good measure of the extraordinary level of customer rage among telecommunications consumers. The parody site offers dissatisfied customers a chance to share their pain - and compete for various dubious honours such at the longest time spent on hold (257 minutes continuously). The site was constructed by a frustrated customer during the time he wasted trying to resolve his problems with Vodafone, which makes an obvious point. Yet the telecommunications industry has been fully deregulated since 1997 and such competition is supposed to deliver price and service benefits. What has gone so wrong that more than 200,000 Australians complained to the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman in 2009-10, double the number of complaints annually in the considerably larger British market?
First, Vodafone is no standout when it comes to poor service and confounding consumer information. It seems all telephone companies go out of their way to exploit the increasing complexity of telecommunications services to their advantage, making consumer choice virtually meaningless.
Take the so-called cap on which most mobile phone contracts are based. "Capped" means limited or shut off, and so implies a maximum payment. But in a phone contract a cap is a minimum payment. Go over the cap and call prices and data costs rocket.
One case highlighted in an Australian Communications and Media Authority inquiry, released last week, featured an overwhelmed father who was unable to determine when his daughter had reached her $129 cap and found himself facing a $4544.71 monthly bill. Research by the Brotherhood of St Laurence found that if the first 15 hours of mobile phone use cost $79 a month, the next 15 hours put the bill up to $889. Other consumers are paying too much for plans far above their usage. With smartphones and service "bundling", the market is just getting more complicated. The authority's proposal that ''cap'' and other misleading terms be banned and that the true, comparable cost of a two-minute call, for example, be disclosed makes good sense. It's up to the phone companies to turn their reputations and service levels around. It would be real failure of the market and the industry if regulators have to step in to clean up the mess.
Vodafail.com Moderation Team