Herald exposes roaming charges obscenity

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Posted Mon 16 August 2010 @ 6:24 a.m. by Ernie Newman

 

Helen Twose has an excellent article in today's Herald about the scandalous charges for international roaming. Correctly, it has a special focus on data roaming prices.

One point that especially hits home to me, is the temporary nature of Vodafone's much publicised "roam here for just $2/MB" campaign for data roaming in Australia. This has had saturation coverage including a giant billboard at the approach to Auckland airport.

As I've observed to Vodafone people who will listen (and there are some), use of the word "just" is a very misleading piece of advertising. Most holiday- makers, and indeed many regular business travellers, have no idea what constitutes a meg of data. So the terminology - "just" - clearly implies that data roaming is an everyday, affordable product rather than a huge rip-off that can set you back more than the family holiday.

And the realisation that this is merely a temporary promotion makes this far worse. In a couple of weeks the rate goes back up five-fold. Look at the sneaky final sentence of this "Vodafone Forum" page from three months ago. Lull them into complacency and then whammo - up go the rates again. If that's not deliberate, cynical trapping of customers, I don't know what is.

If its possible to negotiate these rates down for a three month special, then its possible to do permanently. This deceptive conduct is scandalous.

Watch this space on 1 September. TUANZ will do our best, within our very tiny resources, to make New Zealander aware that day that roaming is to be avoided at all costs.

Categories: Regulatory | TUANZ policy | Wireless carriers

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7 comments

• Paul Brislen says:

  Hi Ernie, The data roaming is "just" $2/MB as you say - down from a high of $30/MB (something some of our competitors still charge I see from Helen's story). So yes, I think $2 is worthy of the word "just" in that context. As you'll see in the article, we do acknowledge that roaming is an expensive business and as you will know yourself, we're working with the TCF to improve our offerings across the board. Already voice and TXT roaming in Australia is on par with calling in New Zealand (albeit with the added payment for receiving a call) and we hope to have better data rates right across the world as soon as possible. Customers are only now starting to use data in a big way when roaming - previously it was only business customers who used data overseas and most of those were BlackBerry users. Now the customer wants to send photos, update profiles, download applications and so on while on the move it's clearly an issue whose time has come. Regards, Paul Brislen, Vodafone head of corporate comms

  Added: 16 August 2010, 9:56 a.m. Flag as Spam  |  Flag as Offensive

• Ernie Newman, TUANZ says:

  So Paul - answer me this; If you can make data available for three months for "just" $2 without breaking the bank, why don't you leave it there? How can you possibly justify reverting to the old rates with a five-fold increase?

  Added: 16 August 2010, 11:09 a.m. Flag as Spam  |  Flag as Offensive

• Paul Brislen says:

  Hi Ernie,
  As you say, there’s more to be done. We fully acknowledge that – but don’t ignore what’s happened so far. This is a complex issue – for example when a Vodafone NZ customers roams in Australia they could be roaming on any one of 3 networks, only one of which is Vodafone Hutchinson Australia’s on Telstra’s network they’re incurring costs on someone else’s network. Each network has a separate deal with Vodafone NZ with its own wholesale rate. Australia is just one example of the complexity we and other operators face around the world. Managing hundreds of individual agreements to produce a cohesive global standard price is not a straightforward issue.
  Having said that, we’ve permanently lowered our price in Australia (the number one destination for our customers) from a high of $30/MB to $10/MB. That’s a saving of two thirds – and in addition, as the press release says, we’ve lowered that rate as a special offer to $2/MB.
  Businesses offer specials for various reasons. For example testing customer responsiveness to a service at various pricing points. Obviously what makes good economic sense at a large scale volume may not make good sense at another level of demand. Specials are a useful mechanism in that regard. They help businesses test the market and at the same time customers can receive great value deals. “
  None of our competitors are moving swiftly in this area – it’s been a full quarter since we lowered our rates around the world, yet neither of the other network operators have budged at all. We’re leading the way on this and proud to do so – I hope you’ll be taking the matter up with our colleagues in the rest of the industry with quite the same vigour.
  

  Added: 16 August 2010, 11:52 a.m. Flag as Spam  |  Flag as Offensive

• Ernie Newman, TUANZ says:

  Thanks Paul. Some of your points are valid. However, the starting point was so high as to be not a viable basis for comparison.
  If a restaurant offered an eye fillet for $195.00, then reduced it to $34.95 and trumpeted "80% reduction on eye fillet" they would be ridiculed. That's what the mobile industry - Vodafone included but not exclusively - is doing, and its worse than that because there is far less awareness of prices or the unit of measure in the roaming market.
  The issue is not the percentage reduction, but how roaming prices compare to what the user reasonably expects to pay based on experience with data use at home.
  Given the unique features of the roaming market I stand by my criticism - to reduce the rates for three months, promote the reduced prices heavily, and then revert to the original price of 400% more is deliberate, cynical trapping of customers.
  

  Added: 16 August 2010, 1:42 p.m. Flag as Spam  |  Flag as Offensive

• Paul Brislen says:

  Lower of rates as a bad thing... Interesting approach. As I said, we're happy to lower our rates, we're leading this market and the other telcos are yet to move. Yet somehow that's a "deliberate, cynical trapping of customers". I call it moving to meet the market demand. I guess we'll have to differ on that one. Cheers, Paul

  Added: 16 August 2010, 1:59 p.m. Flag as Spam  |  Flag as Offensive

• Heaven Can Wait says:

  $2 per Mb - To call it a reasonable (let alone a great) deal for customers is a joke!!
  What sort of surreal world are mobile operators living in?
  Now if it were $2 per Gb ........ That would be worth putting on a billboard.
  

  Added: 16 August 2010, 4:11 p.m. Flag as Spam  |  Flag as Offensive

• Paul Brislen says:

  Hi Heaven, I'm curious then - when is Vodafone being singled out for this kind of assessment when our nearest rival Telecom charges four times as much and Two Degrees charges 15 times that amount?

  Added: 16 August 2010, 7:42 p.m. Flag as Spam  |  Flag as Offensive

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