A recent holiday promotion from Telecom caught my eye, $12 for unlimited texts; to any network.
That was brilliant, I was impressed and couldn't wait for Vodafone to match it or at least make TXT2000 to any network if they didn't want to go all out.
Vodafone's response was also a temporary "more than before" text bundle so that you could communicate with your friends and family over the Christmas holidays.
Their plan, called TXT4000, does something almost as good as $12 Unlimited Text whilst maintaining the TXT [Insert Number of TXTs you get here] branding which is to provide more texts than you'll need.
It, however, has one caveat. You can only wish your friends and family a Merry Christmas, if they are also on Vodafone.
"That's about it," Paul Brislen, spokesperson for Vodafone, said when questioned about these issues. "Vodafone gives more value to customers who are on our network than on other networks."
It's clear that Vodafone are using similar promotions that competing mobile providers use to reward and liberate customers to lock them into their network; Vodafone does this by making it too expensive for those Vodafone-customers who would like to contact ex-Vodafone-customers, to do so.
When shown that Telecom not only offers more open SMS and Voice plans but also offers them at a cheaper rate, Paul responded, by saying:
"It's not as straightforward as comparing headline rates - we offer a lot of value inside offers like BM, Family, $2 for 2 hours, Free Weekends and so on."
It's these "value inside offers" that seem to provide the only real value for Vodafone customers, but it's not the specific offers that Paul mentioned that makes it very difficult for personal mobile-phone consumers to leave Vodafone. The real issue lies with SMS bundles.
Bestmate and Family are two examples of services that I believe make sense for on-network only add-ons as it would be far too expensive to include off-network phones. Telecom's similar Favourites addons are on-network only also, and this makes sense.
Despite cost there's another good reason why these types of add-ons are okay on-network-only whilst others like TXT2000 should not discriminate against networks.
Best mate and Family allows you to make a lot of contact with a small number of people. That means if I want to move from Vodafone to Telecom, it's likely that I could get my Best Mate to switch also and become my Favourite instead.
TXT2000 bundles however is used to communicate with everyone else. The people you don't talk to enough for it to make sense to make them your Best Mate are therefore the people who would not switch mobile phone providers just because you think it's a good idea. Unfortunately if I just wanted to only use my phone to talk to one or two people I could get a high-range walkie talkie instead. The whole point of a mobile phone is the "everyone else."
So when Vodafone makes their "everyone else" pool a "Vodafone only" pool, you find that no-one (who's friends make decent use of SMS to contact them) can leave Vodafone because it means their phone would just become a very expensive paper-weight or a one-way walkie talkie (a direct-to-one-person at a time radio transmitter.)
Vodafone are clearly aware of this and are using this to their advantage. If you asked someone before XT why they were on Telecom or Vodafone the answer was simple: 'because everyone I know is on Telecom/Vodafone'.
Now if you ask someone why they are on Telecom it becomes a personal reason; because I like their new logo, because they offered me $600 toward an iPhone, because I like their SMS bundle pricing, because their no-term post-paid plans are awesome.
Ask someone on Vodafone and the old answer remains; because everyone I know are still on Vodafone.
We are all on Vodafone, because everyone else, not because we want to be and Vodafone know this. Unfortunately, "That's about it" and things won't change until enough people take the plunge to Telecom or 2degrees' pool so that Vodafone's pool becomes too small for it to be of any value.
This is a good plan for Vodafone's business but not a good one for their customers. I strongly believe that the best business plan is the one that is in the interest of your customers; playing dirty to keep customers does not build brand loyalty and in a market where the only real difference between two products is a couple of cents per minute and the brand, this is very important.
Google have a team of engineers called the Data Liberation Front who's sole purpose is to make it easy for customers to leave Google if they want to.
I don't see many people leaving because Google make good products and they know it. They aren't afraid to make it easy for me to leave, if I want to, which means I can trust them more; they care about me.
Vodafone, do you believe you provide a good product? Do you care about me? Or do you realise, as I do, that currently your pricing is sub-par and you might see mass-exodus if you remove the wall?