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Vodafone Moan
posted Tuesday, 15 August 2006
A certain Ms Crowe once said "a change'll do you good". Well she obviously hasn't experienced the sort of change I made recently!
The wealth of options when it comes to looking for push email solutions in the UK is but a poor one. Until recently only T-Mobile offered an affordable and realistic BlackBerry package and that's who I'd been with since May last year. But with a contract renewal due I decided to check out if any of the other providers had stepped up their email offerings and Vodafone obliged with an attractive package - £30 for 200 mins, 100 texts and Vodafone Business Email (their own push email service). With the latest and greatest handset from Sony Ericsson thrown in and I was sold.
Received the handset the next day as you'd expect but had to wait a week for my number to be ported and thus the handset was a bit useless to me til then - despite the joys of PIM and mp3 playing that it offers :) Cue Friday - the day before I have to fly off to San Francisco for a week I might add - and the phone comes alive. Well all except email. But after a call to Vodafone, I'm informed that it requires setting up via the phone browser - sounds simple enough I thought.
I thought wrong.
Browsing to the required setup page only resulted for me in the browsing hanging until eventually timing out many minutes later. But it was much more than a timeout as the browser was useless after that request and I had to reboot the phone to bring it back to life. Oh and on occasion I'd get an error:
Application Closed:
Application Browser
Reason Code:
KERN_EXEC
Reason Number:
3
Another phone call to Vodafone resulted in the advice of emptying my browser cache and soft resetting the phone (pulling out the battery for 10 secs essentially). Neither of which I had confidence in and neither of which did me any good.
Having little confidence in the Vodafone support at this point I headed to the Sony Ericsson site to grab the latest firmware for the phone and give that a try. That didn't offer any joy either so it was back to Vodafone who put me on hold while they spoke to technical support. After waiting a few minutes the call is abruptly dropped.
Don't you hate it when that happens! Wouldn't it be great if they phoned you back - they do after all have my number! Though the cynic in me imagines the guy at the other end deciding that it was too difficult a problem for him to handle and hanging up 'accidently'.
Another phone call explaining my woes for the third time and another behind the scenes chat with technical support resulted in the explanation that the m600i was not yet supported on Vodafone Business Email and I'd have to wait 3 weeks until the 24th of August before it would work.
Needless to say I was feeling a little cheated at that point given the Sales guy was made well aware that push email was an important feature for me and yet he sold me this phone. It was even more significant given my impending trip to the States where internet access can sometimes be at a premium. I was all for moving back to T-Mobile at that point and made that pretty clear.
So I'm passed onto a 'team leader' who informs me that he'd only been made aware of this issue recently himself and could only apologise. Sadly apologies don't really compensate much for the lack of services that you've paid for so I asked for another handset that would work with Vodafone Business Email until the 24th at least. He obliged with an offer of a refurbished Nokia N70 which he'd despatch appropriately so I'd receive it on the Monday after I returned.
Well yesterday was that Monday and to my surprise - after said 'team leader' had been so gracious - no handset arrived.
This morning I phoned up once more and was once again cut off whilst on hold - perhaps my previous cynicism was a bit close to the truth.
A second call and this time the woman I spoke to said she'd attempt to find out what had happened and speak to the team leader that I had promised me the handset and call me back. The morning passed and then most of the afternoon but no return phone call.
My impatience and annoyance growing I gave them another call. This time having located the bit of paper I'd scribbled it on, I asked to be put through to the extension of the team leader I'd spoken with previously. But apparently I couldn't. He was located at Head Office and shouldn't have been dealing with my account. Well he had been. Perhaps he was promoted and relocated in the week that had passed.
Furthermore, the handset I was promised doesn't support Vodafone Business Email, the issue with my phone actually effects all Sony Ericssons, and the date for this software update that my phone required to use Vodafone Business Email would be available "some time" next week.
Faced with a "nothing I can do" attitude I had to push the fact that I was paying for a service that I wasn't receiving and got a "best I can do" offer of a months refund for the Vodafone Business Email portion of my bill. Eager to bring this to a close I accepted but I'm not a happy customer.
Stick to T-Mobile. I wish I had.
The wealth of options when it comes to looking for push email solutions in the UK is but a poor one. Until recently only T-Mobile offered an affordable and realistic BlackBerry package and that's who I'd been with since May last year. But with a contract renewal due I decided to check out if any of the other providers had stepped up their email offerings and Vodafone obliged with an attractive package - £30 for 200 mins, 100 texts and Vodafone Business Email (their own push email service). With the latest and greatest handset from Sony Ericsson thrown in and I was sold.
Received the handset the next day as you'd expect but had to wait a week for my number to be ported and thus the handset was a bit useless to me til then - despite the joys of PIM and mp3 playing that it offers :) Cue Friday - the day before I have to fly off to San Francisco for a week I might add - and the phone comes alive. Well all except email. But after a call to Vodafone, I'm informed that it requires setting up via the phone browser - sounds simple enough I thought.
I thought wrong.
Browsing to the required setup page only resulted for me in the browsing hanging until eventually timing out many minutes later. But it was much more than a timeout as the browser was useless after that request and I had to reboot the phone to bring it back to life. Oh and on occasion I'd get an error:
Application Closed:
Application Browser
Reason Code:
KERN_EXEC
Reason Number:
3
Another phone call to Vodafone resulted in the advice of emptying my browser cache and soft resetting the phone (pulling out the battery for 10 secs essentially). Neither of which I had confidence in and neither of which did me any good.
Having little confidence in the Vodafone support at this point I headed to the Sony Ericsson site to grab the latest firmware for the phone and give that a try. That didn't offer any joy either so it was back to Vodafone who put me on hold while they spoke to technical support. After waiting a few minutes the call is abruptly dropped. Don't you hate it when that happens! Wouldn't it be great if they phoned you back - they do after all have my number! Though the cynic in me imagines the guy at the other end deciding that it was too difficult a problem for him to handle and hanging up 'accidently'.
Another phone call explaining my woes for the third time and another behind the scenes chat with technical support resulted in the explanation that the m600i was not yet supported on Vodafone Business Email and I'd have to wait 3 weeks until the 24th of August before it would work.
Needless to say I was feeling a little cheated at that point given the Sales guy was made well aware that push email was an important feature for me and yet he sold me this phone. It was even more significant given my impending trip to the States where internet access can sometimes be at a premium. I was all for moving back to T-Mobile at that point and made that pretty clear.
So I'm passed onto a 'team leader' who informs me that he'd only been made aware of this issue recently himself and could only apologise. Sadly apologies don't really compensate much for the lack of services that you've paid for so I asked for another handset that would work with Vodafone Business Email until the 24th at least. He obliged with an offer of a refurbished Nokia N70 which he'd despatch appropriately so I'd receive it on the Monday after I returned.
Well yesterday was that Monday and to my surprise - after said 'team leader' had been so gracious - no handset arrived.
This morning I phoned up once more and was once again cut off whilst on hold - perhaps my previous cynicism was a bit close to the truth.
A second call and this time the woman I spoke to said she'd attempt to find out what had happened and speak to the team leader that I had promised me the handset and call me back. The morning passed and then most of the afternoon but no return phone call.
My impatience and annoyance growing I gave them another call. This time having located the bit of paper I'd scribbled it on, I asked to be put through to the extension of the team leader I'd spoken with previously. But apparently I couldn't. He was located at Head Office and shouldn't have been dealing with my account. Well he had been. Perhaps he was promoted and relocated in the week that had passed.
Furthermore, the handset I was promised doesn't support Vodafone Business Email, the issue with my phone actually effects all Sony Ericssons, and the date for this software update that my phone required to use Vodafone Business Email would be available "some time" next week.
Faced with a "nothing I can do" attitude I had to push the fact that I was paying for a service that I wasn't receiving and got a "best I can do" offer of a months refund for the Vodafone Business Email portion of my bill. Eager to bring this to a close I accepted but I'm not a happy customer.
Stick to T-Mobile. I wish I had.