If Vodafone Australia don’t release their iPhone pricing/data or respond to my Pre-registration ASAP (and I mean by midday Wednesday only 48 hours before launch) I’m going to unfortunately have to go elsewhere.
What is the point of their pre-registration when:
- One hears nothing back from it except a “Watch your inbox”
- One goes into a Central Melbourne Vodafone shop and they say “We are not owned by Vodafone so don’t know about pre-registration or when the pricing is available”
- One rings the Vodafone Connect number and can NOT find any option – menu – or area that will answer your iPhone questions
- Optus and Vodafone 3G offerings outside Metro areas will use 900Mhz – WTF Carriers!
In fact their automated Phone system hung up on me twice and I gave up calling.
It looks like I’m going to have to go Telstra or Optus. Hmmmm. It may have to be Telstra since:
- they have Nationwide 3G coverage using 850Mhz – iPhone supported
- They will offer free WiFi access at their hotspots (aka any McDonalds)
- It’s that easy to port my mobile numbers away from Vodafone
I know Telstra have yet to list their data usage pricing; but it can’t be as any worse than their previous offerings.
I will take this moment – for the first time – to note here that although I’m not a Telstra employee I currently work on their IT Transformation. So it may be in my best interest to “show company colours” around the office – and have my phone continue to work as I travel the lifts of the many Melbourne buildings.
Come on Vodafone – you will be losing a customer and $2000 a year in money spent on your services. As other bloggers and news outlets have mentioned, they are cutting it too close.
Get this though – I rang Telstra to get info, some bozo got on saying he hadn’t had the ‘training’ yet, asked around, (when I asked about data rates with Telstra), came back and said “the iPhone isn’t really suited to email and web browsing, you’re better to go with an imate or htc [insert some crap phone here]“…!!!!
I paused, gobsmacked, and said, “Um, I really don’t think you or anyone you’ve asked knows what they’re talking about”.
He hung up on me straight away. Beep beep beep…!
WOW!
Man they have it all wrong.. Safari on the iPhone is the ultimate mobile web browser that is … um… not for the mobile web!
You are not wrong though. A colleague of mine rang them too, and they said they would be getting Training on Friday – AFTER THE LAUNCH. Way to sell phones Telstra.
I got the same in their T-Life store (see newer post) and all the rep went on about was 3.5Generation phone networks; even after I did just what you did and said “Aaaah the iPhone is not a 3.5G/NextG specific phone. It’s a 3G device” They just dont know.. “Come back Friday” he says….
So despite this post thinking about Telstra, now I see that they will probably only include 5 stinkin’ Mega Bytes, I’m seriously thinking of not getting an iPhone for the foreseeable future. I’ll replace my broken Nokia with another one, and get a data card (3 or 5GB plan) for my Powerbook
Thanks for commenting Ben.
iPhone choices…
As I posted late last night – Vodafone had not announced their pricing. They did – then retracted it. This is a major factor for an IT and tech geek who currently uses Vodafone. I’m now seriously thinking of taking my business to Telstra (I use t…