Damien Mulley

Seems Vodafone accidently double billed some credit card paying customers and will eventually rebate them. Looks like they haven’t told their customers about the snafu though.

The bit that interests me is the crappy customer service that Conor got. I own the pretty much dead blog IWillNotHold.com (Which is coming back as a different service later this Summer) and this is the kind of customer care you should not have to deal with.

Got this from Conor Byrne:

Have you heard about Vodafones double charging of customers who have paid by credit card. I am one of those customers. When I discovered the charge I rang Visa and was told to ring Vodafone. I rang Vodafone and the girl in Customer Care (thats a joke) told me that no there was no double charge on my account. I was looking at the charge and explained to her I didnt care what her screen was telling her, that I WAS double charged. She then went off to “speak to a supervisor” (God I hate that line) and then told me to fax the proof. I had to prove to them! I said I had no access to a fax machine and could I email it….no there was no email address (really an organisation the size of Vodafone has no staff emails?). Eventually I got an email. That was 11 days ago. And there is still no refund on my account. I have had to email Vodafone 4 times to see what is going on before I even got a reply…and this is the reply I got:

Vodafone email:

It has been discovered that due to a technical error, some credit card payments made on My Vodafone by a small number of customers were duplicated for each paying customer.

Some customers who made CC payments between the 23rd of April and the 11th of May were charged on a duplicate basis.

The issue is currently still under investigation and a rebate will be applied shortly.

Unfortunately I wish I could give you more information than this, but this is all I know at the moment. I do know that a rebate is going to be applied but not the exact date when this will happen, and I am not in a position to refund the card myself as this is being dealt with at a higher level.

It kind of gets better, they haven’t actually informed customers about this. They need to figure it out themselves:

When I asked to speak to the person who would know (the higher level person) what was going on I was told to call Customer Care on 1907!!

Do Vodafone just not care. They didnt communicate with me to tell me this had happened, didnt assure me that it would be resolved quickly, didnt call me (lets face it they have my number) or email me (and everyone else) to tell us what the latest was.

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I’m doing a Business Blogging training Course in the ArcLabs Research and Innovation Centre in the WIT Carriganore Campus on June 3rd. It’s a full day course with lunch and refreshments and all that thrown in. The cost of the course is a considerably reduced price of €120 per person for the day and Arc Labs were on to me to say there are some places open for the public if you want to attend.

Blurb:

A 1-day workshop on using blogs to enhance communications with your customer how can blogging help your business?

Amongst other things I’ll be covering:

* Using your blog to boost your search engine rankings

* Using your blog to mark you out as an expert in your field

* Showing how blogging improves your overall communications with customers

* How to use your blog as an R&D resource

* How to write and phrase the content on your blog, how best to interact with those that read it and how to get your blog noticed

The theory is disposed of quite quickly as I’ll have those attending logging into blogs and composing blog posts as soon as we have an understanding of the basics.

Give Mary Fearon a call on 051-302900 or email her on mfearon@WIT.ie if you want to book a place.

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Update @ 18.45: Seems it’s not just Irish gay discussion sites that an over-zealous third party application that Three uses sees fit to censor. Word is that Three are trying to just bin the software now. Vodafone also have banned access to GCN.ie, QueerID and Angrypotato.net all tame Gay Discussion sites.

Via QueerID

I recently switched my mobile phone from O2 to 3. I soon discovered that certain websites are banned, in fact all “gay” sites which I’ve are inaccessible from my handset.

I called 3 to ask them why this was, and if they could remove the restriction, they said that certain sites are deemed unsuitable for children, and that if they ban these sites for one user they must be banned for all. I explained that I’m over 18 years of age, but they said they they couldn’t remove the filters for just one user. When I asked if this was company policy (I got speaking to a supervisor), he said it was

Three of the main Irish Gay Discussion sites have been banned: Queerid.com, Gcn.ie & Gaire.com but I’m sure there’s more than that.

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If we live in a world where we don’t fully own our digital content but have full access to ALL digital content, what happens?

Apple has given us iTunes, the iPod, Apple TV and the MacBook Air. All of which hate physical media. Apple helped killed the floppy, they put most momentum into killing the music CD and they’re doing the same for DVDs. And BluRay? Ttheir lack of support for it says it all. Dirty discs don’t suit Apple. Hell, they don’t like the public even accessing the battery part of the iPhone or the MacBook Air. Closed devices are what Apple likes, both in terms of ability to plug something into them as well as making the tech open.

Apple is probably doing more to kill off as much physical media as possible and move all our music and movies on to harddrives and then from there to the “cloud”. With ubiquitous broadband (stop laughing) we’ll be able to stream high quality music and video to our iPods or Apple TVs instead of storing it all on one device. (yeah there will be some local caching) There’s been rumours now and then that Apple wants to go down the subscription model where new iPod owners could get access to all the music they want for the lifetime of the iPod or a yearly subscription means all of iTunes can be accessed for free. All you can consume.

Fred Wilson has a really good and in-depth piece about the moving over from physically owning the CD to streaming of music. Streaming certainly has a strong future.

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JP Rangaswami wrote this the other day on a blog post about collaboration but I think it’s on the money about content property rights turning into access rights in the future:

Or maybe it was because I grew up in Calcutta. Access to material goods seemed a lot more important than ownership of the same goods; possession was a transient concept. It wasn’t your bed, your book, your park bench, your air. You just had passing and temporary rights to it, and the rights would fade as easily as they came to exist.

We’re probably a few years off this but a considerable amount of our media is going to be exclusively digital with just the hyperloyal fans buying the exclusive and therefore pricey physical boxsets and the like. If we only pay for “access” to the music though even for a year or for life, will we devalue the creative process of the content producers or will it mean the loyal fans who buy the boxsets and turn up at the concerts and shows let artists know they’re being appreciated? As an artist with all of the world able to access all of the music in the world, how are you going to get attention? Even more money spent on those marketing sharks or engage in a grassroots type campaign to build recognition? Another question, if people are given access to all the music in the world, can they be temped away from the overly manufactured pop drivel into listening to better quality music since they don’t have to pay to listen to it or try it?

Questions, questions, questions…

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