Comments on Vodafone?

[major_clanger]

Yep, another mobile phone post. Despite having an extended play with aardvark179's iPhone in the pub on Monday I'm still resisting the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field; I want a proper PDA, and it's missing some key attributes such as either a real keyboard or the ability to use an external one. So I'm back to looking at my plan of buying a non-phone PDA that has wi-fi, plus a 3G/Bluetooth mobile that I can use for net access when away from hotspots. The Nokia N95 looks nice, but only Vodafone seem to be doing the updated 8GB version. Anyone have experience of their coverage and customer-friendliness?

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I switched to Vodafone a few months back, when Orange was unable to cut the mustard (how long does it take to repair a phone mast?). Oh, and Orange's care plan didn't cover the phone I was actually using (as opposed to the 'upgrade' they'd sent me).

Vodafone did accidentally charge me £55 for a single phone call - 40 minutes from Hiroshima to Silverstone. When I plaintively called, they were pretty good at working out what the problem was, which was that though I was supposed to have the Passport plan, it hadn't been applied. They were very good at sorting it out, reset that call to 75p, and checked through my other calls to see whether any of the ones from Norway (which I hadn't thought to be covered, though it actualy was) and Ireland (lot of travelling that month) had been overcharged either.

I'm on a SIM only plan, so I'm able to jump ship any time I feel like it.

[aardvark179.livejournal.com]

Don't know about Vodafone but before I bought my phone I went looking around for a smartphone, and the N95 in the orange shop had crashed. I think Orange are on the older firmware version though so things may have improved.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I am still waiting for my E90 Communicator to show up from Nokia. (But the good news is, the reason I hadn't heard from the shop was because a spam filter was eating my email; they're chasing things up now.) Assuming it comes back working, that might well be the gizmo you are looking for (and Vodafone do them on their business tariffs -- might be possible to blag one on a pay-monthly account though).

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

I've been on Vodafone since way back when and aside from one problem when they were supposed to switch my contract to a cheaper one and it didn't get done for three months (several years ago), they've been excellent. When I've had problems with my handset, they've sent a courier with a replacement the next day and handed me a working handset before taking away the old one.

I believe the N95 8Gb is exclusive to Vodafone only for a limited period of time and will then be available to a wider group ... and anyone that has a pre-8Gb phone should get the latest flash upgrade as it has much better memory handling which makes the phone run faster and (I'm told) more reliably.

[daveon.livejournal.com]

We use Vodafone for the UK business and they seem fine. As a recovering Orange and O2 customer I'd say they're better.

One thought though. They do tend to enforce a lot of borked stuff onto handsets because they want to own the user experience. I've seen a lot of otherwise benign handsets rendered inoperable by what they've done. Not quite as utterly dreadful as the standard Orange interface but close.

Have you looked at www.expansys.co.uk who provide unlocked handsets at competative rates on contract with the OpCo of your choice?

[htwj.livejournal.com]

I recently bought a notebook with Vodafone 3G HSPDA connection. The response is very similar to my landline broadband. The area of coverage seems to have expanded recently as it now has HSPDA connection in Pontypridd when a month ago it did not.