GITweekly

Big business is such a complex beast of many heads and separate brains. One head speaks to the public, selling wares and providing the Ryan Gosling-esque white toothed grin of confidance. Another is the elusive, complex and often brilliant mastermind, finding solutions and planning new creations. They don’t often speak to each other and this often shows. So continues the drama with Telstra that began months ago. Read the rest of this entry →

Look I know. It’s been such a long time. How have you been?

Great. Knee not playing up?

Great. Me?

Yeah, I’ve been cheating on you with My Green Australia. Sorry. I like them. A lot. See, here’s a link of us together. Oh yeah, there’s this other thing. iFieldtests. It’s really a love hate thing though.

Sorry – let’s focus.

iFieldtests is a Tumblr page or Tumblog, if you like, of my experiences with the Vodafone network in Australia. True, it’s pretty niche as it only covers the places that I frequent. Makes sense though – if I’m having issues with my coverage in the areas that I live in there’s trouble to be had. And unfortunately there is.

So pop on over and have a peek at the pics I’ve posted. If you’ve had a good experience with Vodafone we’d love to hear it, along with the bad. Don’t hesitate to send us your screen captures (on the iPhone press the home button and the power button at the same time) and we’ll pop them up on the page – include your location and any other relevant details.

So what’s prompted me to create the iFieldtests page?

Well it’s a saga that’s been going on for about six months and began on the 3 mobile network. We began experiencing dropouts and call fails at our home and at several other places that we hang around. After a load of chatter between 3 and us we, stupidly, agreed to move to the Vodafone network to see if the coverage would improve. The answer was yes and no.

Since the swap to Vodafone we’ve seen an improved coverage, for calls, around our home. On the other hand we can’t go down to the family holiday home due to no coverage at the house and at the RSL next door. Due to the nature of my “day job” I have to be contactable at all times – with Vodafone I’m off the air. At least with 3 we roamed.

We’ve also seen that since the change from 3 to Vodafone the data reliability has been awful. Low speeds and frequent timeouts. Again we didn’t experience these issues as much with 3. With 3 I could even stream audio from the internet – now – no hope. As you’ll see, if you find it, compared to the 2008 average 3G data speeds of 759kbps I should be using my iPhone to its full capabilities. I can’t.

So that’s what I’ve been mulling over for the last wee while. Vodafone now tells us that for them to do anything they need to do a network check. They also say that this could take a month. A month! They could tell me that we live 2 streets away from a known black spot. These delays is what causes me to get so angry.

What do I want?

I want out. Out of the contract that I made with 3 – the same contract that sees me pay for 2 mobiles in our household that are so unreliable. Not once have we been offered recompense. Not once have we seen our service truly improve despite us changing carriers for them and changing sims for them.

Just do the right thing Vodafone. We want out.