I don’t have an iPhone4 yet
Friday, July 30th, 2010 4 Comments
This morning I was up and at it early. With all the rumours overnight about the iPhone4 not making it to release in NZ today after all, I thought I’d be clever and be a the shop anyway. urns out 9am resulted in a no-show for the phone. Did some more research, and managed to view an internal Noel Leemings document which acknowledged that there would be a release through a limited number of Vodafone outlets. Just after this, as I headed back to the Queen Street Vodafone store, it was made public by the big V themselves.
Got there and got in the queue, about 20 people back, so no big dramas. They were going around handing out the sign-up forms which was when I hit a little snag (and this is my grumble too).
Vodafone New Zealand management in their wisdom, decided that for the initial launch of the iPhone4 in New Zealand not only would they would only sell it on contract (no problems) but that, additionally, they would not allow subscribers paying break-fees to re-sign and get the iPhone4!! This I thought was a bit on the nose really, essentially existing Vodafone customers who wanted the iPhone4 were given the big proverbial finger. I did think about just signing for a new plan, and then just cancelling my existing one afterwards. The break-fees would be the same, but I didn’t want to be that much of an a$$ about it.
The very minor silver lining to this cloud is that I am on the list for the 2nd batch of phones to arrive in NZ, which should be mid-way through this coming week. I am going in to have a chat with them on Monday though, as I really was a bit grumpy that as a loyal Vodafone customer I was given the shaft.
Anyways, so I will actually be an Apple user of some description soon. iPad no, iPhone4 yes.
[Update - ahmad posts a more detailed breakdown of the woes we were struck by in How not to treat your customers - the Apple and Vodafone NZ example]
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Wow, if you have been told that you can have an iPhone in the next batch and do a re-sign then Vodafone are definitely giving you the shaft! If you are subsequently ALLOWED to do a re-sign (paying re-sign fee) then this is definitely confirmation that Vodafone New Zealand were choosing who they were selling the first batch of iPhone 4 to, even though you were contractually within your rights to re-sign for iPhone 4.
That’s a terrible way to “reward” loyalty.
The, actually very nice, marketing lady told me that it was a corporate decision to not allow “paid” re-signs for the “initial launch” due to supply. She was apologetic, and I was aware it wasn’t her fault – she was just the messenger.
So unofficial confirmation then that this was Vodafone NZ company policy. Vodafone NZ can sell the iPhone 4 to whoever they choose to – corporates only in the first wave if that pleases them – just don’t give false hope to all potential New Zealand buyers and then give them the runaround at launch time.
Under promise…