Vodafone you can suck my dick you fucking wankers.

I don’t mince my words when I’m pissed off.

On Vodafone’s website you can manage your mobile package including what data allowance you use:

A series of simple binary switches let you control whether a data allowance is on or off for any given month. In the example above I have opted for an extra 17GB of mobile data because I love watching streaming videos of Japane…anyway, when you toggle the buttons there is no confirmation message or anything like that. This is important. Remember that last bit.

I like to fiddle with things and I like to play with buttons because that’s what I do as a UXer. And one day I was playing around on my mobile and was all like “I wonder what happens if I switch one of these buttons off?”.

And Lo! I get a text message saying something like “you have opted out of your 15GB extra data bundle. You can opt in at any time by visiting the Vodafone website blah dee blah dee fucking blah”. So I was all like yeah OK, so I go back on to the website and switched the thing back on and then I get a text message back like “congratulations, you have an extra 15GB data valid from 15 August”. Which fucking sucked because I had originally opted in on July 26 so now I was all like “I’m going to get charged for all that data between 26 July and August 15 which is like £2 per 100MB or something. Fucksticks!”

After a quick tweet to Vodaphone’s Twitter I was referred back to some online chat dude who assured me that the 2 extra 15GB packages I had opted in for (I know, I apparently clicked on and off lots) would be removed from my bill. Yay!

Imagine my surprise at today’s bill:

That’s right. Every time you toggle one of these wee switches on and off you get charged.

No warning, no message saying “you will cancel your upgrade from July 26 to August 15 and any data charges outside your allowance will be charged to your account” or “this isn’t a simple binary switch that says whether an extra 2GB allowance is active for a given billable month” or “each time you switch this button on again you will be charged” or “we are a bunch of thieving dark pattern bastards”.

There’s no way Vodafone are that inept. There’s no way they would program something so potentially destructive and costly for the customer. No, this is probably a deliberate ploy to extract cash from stupid, meddling usability pro’s like me. Fuck you Vodafone. Fuck you.

And fuck your customer services too.

Anyway, rant over. But what do you think? Are you stupid, like me? Have you been ripped off by these total wankers? Hook me up on Twitter

Update

An online friend writes

Vodafone are just awful. I have recently changed from O2 to vodafone. As vodafone has the best signal around where I live.

They screwed up the number porting and for over a week I had no mobile. Their customer service people are generally useless, the gave no explanation to what the problem was and just wait 72hrs, which is their default timescale. Then my online account wasn’t set up properly, that was another 3 days and I couldn’t setup my voicemail PIN which I had to use the text chat thing and they reset it. Once I managed to get to my online account, I noticed that I was being billed at £32 a mouth instead of £19 of the deal they advertised. I went into one of their store where the guy said he thinks I’ll be charged the £19 but isn’t sure and just wait to see what bill I get. If you check out Trustpilot they are score 0.5 out of 5

Share your experiences with Vodafone in the comments!

Update 2

Here is copy of the kind of texts Vodafone send:

Sounds like an opt in or out service. Misleading huh?

Update 3

Vodafone have refunded £80! Woohoo! Only £20 more Vodafone. CAN YOU DO IT?!!!!!

Update 4

Yes they can! They refunded all £100 in disputed fees! My bill is now ‘only’ £68.95. So at least their customer services are pretty cool.