Vodafone abolishes roaming charges – temporarily
Leave the first response May 15, 2009 / Posted in Mobile phones, TravelGood news: Vodafone has announced a Summer Roaming promotion that offers greatly improved value for money. Disappointing news: it was launched under a misleading title: Vodafone “abolishes” roaming charges in Europe.
From 1 June – 31 August 2009, Vodafone customers who are opted in to the Vodafone Passport programme can pay UK prices for calls, texts and picture messaging whilst abroad in over 35 countries in Europe and in Australia and New Zealand. The promotion involves two levels of price reductions:
1. Vodafone Passport normally involves a 75p connection charge per incoming and outgoing call whilst roaming in qualifying countries. This will be set to zero.
2. Calls, texts and picture messages will either come out of any inclusive allowances or be charged at standard UK rates.
There are no discounts for data usage / mobile internet or MMS messaging, so caution is still advised whilst using these services abroad. Watch out also for 20p per minute charges for calls from the 60th minute onwards. See Vodafone’s site for the offer’s full terms and conditions.
The roaming offer is available to personal customers on both pay monthly and pay as you go price plans. Vodafone customers can join Vodafone Passport for free from 15 May by texting PASSPORT to 97888 (pay monthly customers) or to 2345 (pay as you go). Vodafone Business customers with Anytime or Your Plan tariffs are also eligible.
Whilst the offer is great, it’s disappointing to see it being launched with such misleading language. You really can’t abolish something, but only for summer. It’s just a promotion, not an abolition - just like an animal can’t be extinct one year only to return the next.
Even more disappointing is the number of media publishers that have leapt unthinkingly onto Vodafone’s misleading language bandwagon. Why can’t the facts be enough? Why does everything have to be sensationalised? In this case, as in so many others in today’s media, less would have been more.
By the way, summer 2009 will also see the return of the dodo to Mauritius…
