╠ Vodafone Mess with your head! ╣

Those of you who read and enjoyed my previous adventures in procuring an iPhone may be happy to hear that the story did not end there. The last story was apparently so riveting that it made it all the way to mumbrella. I believe I owe thanks to the Tim fellow who collects the content. Now you may notice that it is a Virgin ad that I have placed above and there is quite good reasoning for this, reasoning that may make the Mumbrella line 'Michael Lanyon explains why Clemenger BBDO’s helped sell him an iPhone' a little bit less than true.

So the way the story goes is that I went down to the Vodafone stores with intent of getting one of those fancy 32gb 3gs' and when I got there this all started going quite smoothly until one road block. Some how my age had been put into the system incorrectly. Normally no biggie but seems with vodafone it is. Now I have a pretty good number as you can see on the right, so I was kind of interested in keeping it. The only way it was possible was to purchase a sim from another carrier, port the number and come back.

Now remember I also had an exam this day so time wasn't on my side but I humoured them anyway. I went down to Dick Smith, bought a virgin Sim, started porting the number and went back to find that Virgin wasn't actually a group that this problem would be fixed by. Now by this point I'd basically given up but I opted to run a credit check to ensure I was actually ok for this considering $74 a month is a bit for a uni student, but that went fine. So it really was just this clerical error at the start that stopped me. I do consider myself a bit brand loyal, and I do like vodafone ads, especially the fold it one as referenced by Mumbrella and also the current one inclusive of voice twittering. However when they can't simply convert a prepaid sim of theirs to a plan sim then well that starts to wear thin. The final option was to call them up and wait for all the people inquiring about the new iPhone.

Which I did start doing however by this point the damage was done. By sending me out of their store to a Dick Smith they had sent me straight past a Virgin store which had a much more appealing deal available for the old 16gb. I inquired about it and the process there ran smooth from start to finish. So as much as I hate to admit it...I'm on Virgin now.

So that's how I go from aiming to be with a group whose ads I love, to a group whose sexist ads I hate with a fiery passion. Goes to show that no matter how good your ads are in the end it does come down to the individual service or product and Vodafone's lack of simplicity in correction of errors cost them revenue of $2,000 from me.

Now lets see if this story can make the news too :P