Originally Posted by Espi_Vodafone:
“Hi everyone -
We have seen quite a bit of speculation on the out of bundle charges for Vodafone UK mobile internet users on forums and in the media. We wanted to clarify things. Here are the facts as they stand today:
In June we'll be introducing a free text service to tell our contract customers when they're approaching the upper limit of their data bundle. As the vast majority of our mobile internet subscribers (more than 97 percent) never reach the limit they will not be receiving the text alerts at all.
The minority of our customers (less then 3 percent) who do come close will receive a text telling them they are approaching their data allowance and advising them to monitor their usage going forward. At this point customers will not be charged anything more.
If after receiving several such alerts, over a period of few months, customers continue to use excessive amounts of data they will be contacted by Vodafone and advised to upgrade to another data plan to avoid incurring unnecessary additional charges.
Customers will be able to make an informed decision on whether to continue, limit their use or change to a different price plan, giving them total control of their spend.
However, if customers continue to use excessive amounts of data over a longer period of time, the costs are as follows:
Current charge Out of bundle charge
No handheld data bundle 50p a day for 25MB 50p for an additional 10MB
Handheld data bundle £5 a month, or £7.50 with a flexi-bundle £5 for an additional 500MB
Note: 500MB means you can read and reply to thousands of emails, download 24 Google maps and read 8,000 BBC News stories. Today, a tiny fraction of our customers use their full allowance.
Thanks,
Espi
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK”
I am really annoyed by this. I sent my notice to quit in to Vodafone in April and was very clear that I wanted to leave because I was concerned the 500mb would not be suitable for the new phone I wanted Nokia N900. I pointed out that it was an internet tablet running full sites as opposed to mobile browsing and used over the air updates for the phone and apps and was repeatedly assured the data would be sufficient and had my concerns dismissed. In the end after being reassured by two members of staff I agreed to stay with them. Now it seems these changes were already on the cards and I was not informed. I would never have signed up again with Vodafone had I known this was coming.
I have still not received any formal notification of this change and yet I have just received my first text warning.
I didn't even have a full months usage of the phone before the changes were announced for comparison.