Colm is ainm dom

Vodafone Business Email

Just for the record, Vodafone (Ireland) Business Email is a waste of time.

As I’ve mentioned before, I recently got a new mobile. With it came the possibility of access to said email service.

So, like a good little Vodafone bunny, I called them up and asked to be setup. No bother they said. Go here and register. And you’re done. Push email for you. 100Megs a month they said. €10 a month they said.

So, here’s what happened.

1. The website was down.
2. When I got registered, 24 hours & 3 calls later, the push email was only every 15 minutes (Pedantic I know, but time is money and all that jazz)
3. Then, much to my irritation (and screwing with my Blog by Email plan) the Vodafone server appended “Sent using Vodafone Business Email” to the bottom of all my messages. Come on, what good is pretending to be in the office if it rats you out?
4. It wasn’t 100MB with €10, it was 10MB for €10!

Anyway, having rung customer care (again) to clarify these points, I was told that the “Sent using” bit was added by the server and couldn’t be removed. This wouldn’t have annoyed me (as much) had the Vodafone guy not phrased it “Well Mr.Doyle, that bit is added by our email servers and can’t be removed, so you’re stuck with it“. Listen here mate, I may not be a 5 grand a month client, but when a customer complains about a flaw (cause that’s what it is), you don’t shrug your shoulders and tell them they’re stuck with it. My perfect reasoned response (Right Manuel?) was that I was stuck with nothing and he was going to go right ahead and cancel my business email subscription. This caught him a little by surprise I can tell you.

Anyway, since I still like the idea of email when I’m out and about, I’ve used the built in email client to fetch my email every 5 minutes. The best part is, if it sees a open WLAN or a previously registered one, it’ll use that, and only after that will it try use the Vodafone Data Network. Which is good given the frankly Don Corleone inspired data tariffs.