Vodafone’s history over the last 10 years has been varied to say the least. But over the last few years, their promise has outweighed any negative publicity from previous times with the company building a much better network infrastructure. Now they have such confidence in the network they have built that they are offering all new post-paid customers a money-back network guarantee.
Under the new 30 Day Network Satisfaction Guarantee new customers who are dissatisfied with the network within the first 30 days of joining Vodafone can cancel their contract, no questions asked. Vodafone will refund any monthly access fees and handset instalments paid by the customer — as long as the customer returns the phone to a Vodafone store. The guarantee also applies to businesses with up to 9 line connected with Vodafone.
Alongside this announcement, Vodafone also announced that new customers signing up to selected 12 and 24 month contracts will receive one month of UNLIMITED data for use within Australia.
The new Network guarantee replaces their previous ‘Network Happiness Guarantee’ which also allowed new customers to trial their network for 30 days, but the customer was required to pay, pro-rata, for whatever service they used. This deal, with unlimited free data for the first 30 days, appears to be a much better offer, even going so far as to better the Optus offer they introduced in April offering to pick up the tab for a users first month if they decided that the network wasn’t for them.
Vodafone Chief Marketing Officer Loo Fun Chee said that the company was willing to walk the talk on network satisfaction and put the power in their customer’s hands. According to OpenSignal’s State of Mobile Networks: Australia June 2016 report Vodafone now matches Telstra with its 4G availability. The report also showed that Vodafone, while only 3rd in 4G download speed was equal first for 4G latency making the offer enticing.
While Vodafone have had a network guarantee since 2012 this is the first time it has come with a money-back offer. If you’ve been looking around at your mobile providers, maybe it’s time to give Vodafone another go.
I think it could be time for me to try out Vodafone yet again. Anyone else swayed to return to, or try for the first time, Vodafone now that they have Australia’s equal largest 4G network backed by a new money-back guarantee?
I’ve been with Vodafone for years and the call quality is excellent and I rarely have an issue with coverage (unless I’m really out of the way anyway). 4G is excellent. They are definitely worth a(nother) go.
I love the Vodafone brand and my recent local experience of the network was fantastic but coverage is the killer. I may well change over when my contract with Optus ends and just keep a second Telstra network long expiry sim of some kind.
It will be interesting to see just if the Voda network coverage expands greatly in this deal with TPG or if it’s more just a performance improvement.
Maybe it’s because I was burnt badly back in the Vodafone days but I still don’t feel their 3G network is up to scratch. 4G may be fine but I still like a reliable fallback.
How is 3G and call coverage? Its generally been cr@p?
On Vodafone? Their 3G / call coverage is usually pretty good. Only place I’ve found it to be less than happy is around Palm Beach (no 4G coverage, 3G is a bit slow, but calls work every time), and around Arrawarra (north coast NSW, look it up) where they roam onto Optus 3G, and the performance really is crap (but that’s Optus’ fault, because their network isn’t great).
Optus is putting a 700 mhz band 28 4G cell into Arrawarra at Arrawarra Headland within 6 months. I live between Armidale and Coffs and Optus is blitzing Telstra for coverage there.Even the 3G data is always faster by 300-400% . Perhaps less contention ? I got 60mbps down and 20mbps up at the Wollomombi Gorge parking lot in the Picnic shelter using Optus 4g from the Wollomombi cell near the gorge turnoff .Which was about what i got in a pub in the middle of the Sydney CBD a few weeks prior.This is UNBELIEVABLE , regional can mean better… Read more »