Hands0n
22nd February 2006, 04:41 PM
If you are having trouble cancelling a Subscription on Vodafone and don't want to read my particular tale :) then skip to the bold paragraph below.
In December I became a re-acquired Vodafone customer, buying into their Sony Ericsson W900i 3G Walkman handset and a rather packed Online 500 tariff (500 voice mins, 100 txt, 50 videocall + other stuff).
Unbeknown to me whomever set up the tariff in Vodafone also chose [without telling me] to "give" me a free trial to Premier Football which, after 30 days, would automatically be charged at £5 to my account. Not knowing this I went through the 30 days and a £5 hit my account :eek: I should just say at this point that I utterly detest all and anything to do with Football. To say that I have zero interest in it would be putting it as mildly as could politely be done in public.
I only found any of this out when I got my first full Vodafone bill in February 2006! The subscription did not show up anywhere else that I would normally have looked.
My usual step when finding out something unusual in the account is to call Vodafone Customer Services (tip: dont wait for the voice messages, just press "2" twice to get straight through to Billing). The CS rep there was attentive and offered to credit my account back with the £5 and said that the subscription would be cancelled. End of story, or so I thought.
A little while later I got an SMS telling me that I had to manually cancel the Subscription to Premier Football myself via Live!. Okay, a chore, but seems easy enough. So I went onto their My Vodafone on the Internet, logged into my account management pages and seeked out the Manage Subscriptions bit of the website. Its broken!!! Four days later it still gives a silly error message saying that there is a fault! The clock is ticking and I don't want another £5 charge to my account!
Calling back to Vodafone's Billing CS I made my case and asked if they could cancel the Subscription for me. They cannot, I was told. But the helpful CS did go off and ask around a bit before coming back to me and telling me that the cancellation has to be done from the Handset itself using Live! from there.
She gave me the necessary instructions (go to My Account, Purchase History, My Subscriptions) and there it was. Select "Cancel" and that was it, end of the Subscription.
Epilogue: Why on Earth do companies put up such broken functionality on their websites like this? It is not only frustrating but terribly confusing to the punter. Vodafone are not alone in this, so I've no intention of singling them out.
I do firmly believe that "Self Help" features like My Vodafone and My 3 are excellent concepts that should be stretched to the max - putting the account management into the hands of the Customer. But, and this is crucial, they must make sure that it all works, and works consistently well before releasing it into production.
Steps in the right direction, so well done indeed - just please, pretty please, test it first before release!
In December I became a re-acquired Vodafone customer, buying into their Sony Ericsson W900i 3G Walkman handset and a rather packed Online 500 tariff (500 voice mins, 100 txt, 50 videocall + other stuff).
Unbeknown to me whomever set up the tariff in Vodafone also chose [without telling me] to "give" me a free trial to Premier Football which, after 30 days, would automatically be charged at £5 to my account. Not knowing this I went through the 30 days and a £5 hit my account :eek: I should just say at this point that I utterly detest all and anything to do with Football. To say that I have zero interest in it would be putting it as mildly as could politely be done in public.
I only found any of this out when I got my first full Vodafone bill in February 2006! The subscription did not show up anywhere else that I would normally have looked.
My usual step when finding out something unusual in the account is to call Vodafone Customer Services (tip: dont wait for the voice messages, just press "2" twice to get straight through to Billing). The CS rep there was attentive and offered to credit my account back with the £5 and said that the subscription would be cancelled. End of story, or so I thought.
A little while later I got an SMS telling me that I had to manually cancel the Subscription to Premier Football myself via Live!. Okay, a chore, but seems easy enough. So I went onto their My Vodafone on the Internet, logged into my account management pages and seeked out the Manage Subscriptions bit of the website. Its broken!!! Four days later it still gives a silly error message saying that there is a fault! The clock is ticking and I don't want another £5 charge to my account!
Calling back to Vodafone's Billing CS I made my case and asked if they could cancel the Subscription for me. They cannot, I was told. But the helpful CS did go off and ask around a bit before coming back to me and telling me that the cancellation has to be done from the Handset itself using Live! from there.
She gave me the necessary instructions (go to My Account, Purchase History, My Subscriptions) and there it was. Select "Cancel" and that was it, end of the Subscription.
Epilogue: Why on Earth do companies put up such broken functionality on their websites like this? It is not only frustrating but terribly confusing to the punter. Vodafone are not alone in this, so I've no intention of singling them out.
I do firmly believe that "Self Help" features like My Vodafone and My 3 are excellent concepts that should be stretched to the max - putting the account management into the hands of the Customer. But, and this is crucial, they must make sure that it all works, and works consistently well before releasing it into production.
Steps in the right direction, so well done indeed - just please, pretty please, test it first before release!