vodaphone

Shoddy web experiences are still too common

Imagine the Vodaphone shop on the high-street is open for business, the phones are on display but there are no sales staff around. You wait a few minutes, call out (thinking there might be someone “out back”) but nothing. Nobody there. It’s the same thing everyday, the shop is open for business but no-one to help you buy. Or maybe there is a sales person, but anytime you ask them about the hot product you want, the iPhone, they respond to you with nonsensical gibberish. It’s hard to imagine the high-street outlet doing this, but on the web this kind of thing is still sadly common place. Take a look at Donna M’s recent rant. Because it is a website (probably within the constraints of some dated CMS), a shoddy experience is permissible.

Vodaphone & Skype

Bad experience #1. Got a mail from Skype telling me that because I’ve not used their service for a while they are going to “expire” my credit.

Skype Credit expires 180 days after your last purchase or SkypeOut call. If you’re not using your balance we need to expire the credit sooner or later to comply with normal business accounting rules

Eh? I’ve topped up my account with money, what rules are these that confiscate it for not having made a skype call in a while?

Bad experience #2

So I want to visit Skype and see exactly how much I am going to loose, and take a good look at the rules. I’m using a vodaphone 3G card. I link to a skype URL and…

vod-skype.gif

Eh? Skype is “restricted content”.

On what grounds is that I wonder.