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  • Was Vodafone’s PAYG Outage in Bad Faith?

    Posted on September 7th, 2009 BarneyC View Comments

    Not being a VF UK user I was a little late to hear that apparently their PAYG topup mechanisms were out for the weekend – probably the busiest period of the week for PAYG users.

    Mobile operators are not known for being the nicest of fairest of companies to deal with I know but given the ubiquity and essentialness of their service in modern life it does seem a little poor on VF’s part to not allow normally willing paying customers just to utilise the network whilst VF fanny around with their billing systems.

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    • Thanks for the comment/explanation Mat but still it doesn't really portray VF in any the better light IMO. Sure the problem with you top-up system meant no customer could apply credit to their account but VF could have easily have taken one of two simple courses of action to help their customers:

      1) VF could have allowed customer's accounts to go into the red, requiring a greater port-outage topup but still maintaining the service, or

      2) VF could have just taken it on the chin, admitted it was their fault and allowed customers to make free calls for the duration.

      Either way the outcome would have been better for the customer than a simple service fail.
    • Mat Clarke
      Hi there,

      Hope you don't mind me commenting on your blog, just wanted to explain a little about what happened.

      Due to a technical glitch, our top-up system wasn't working properly for around six hours on Saturday (05/09/09)- causing the unfortunate issue that you mention above.

      Although our engineers got this working again by Saturday evening, I'm really sorry for any inconvenience the problem might have caused in the meantime.

      Thanks for your feedback by the way, much appreciated.

      Best wishes,

      Mat
      Web Relations Team
      Vodafone UK
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