Vodafone Epic FAIL

Vodafone’s global roaming isn’t global… >:(

yep it’s not.

So I was planning to blog about Vodafone and how awesome they are being the only Australian company to offer global roaming with Pre-Paid – alleviating the need to pay $29 a month for a plan when you can’t even use the credit (because it only applies to non-global roaming and you are out of the country).

Instead I am blogging about how crap they are.  Little did I realise – and no information on the website or at the shop led me to believe otherwise that Vodafone’s prepaid Global Roaming isn’t quite Global.  And it’s not like I hid the fact I wanted Global Roaming – I got the guy to set it up when I bought the SIM.

Japan and China are two countries for example that do not work on the pre-paid roaming (note this distinction ‘pre-paid roaming’ – Vodafone do NOT use that distinction anywhere…).  Hey that’s OK – who would want to go to China or Japan anyway…?   :-S

My next step while on the phone to Vodafone was to then find out if I can change my plan to one that offers truly global roaming.  Oh of course you have to go INTO A SHOP.  And it must be an AUSTRALIAN shop.  GEE maybe I DID that last week, trying to get everything set up like the good little traveller I am.

OMFG.  So I asked if I could log a complaint, which I did.  And they lady said they would call me to discuss it.

call me

on my vodafone

which does not work in China

wow

they really are smart

… NO CARRIER

Currency Conversion: A Case Study

On my recent trip to the US I gathered some data to try and answer the highly contentious topic of which currency conversion is the best value. The following methods of accessing cash in a foreign country are compared: converting cash in Australia, withdrawing from an ATM, and just using the credit card everywhere.

Exchange rates are from the RBA (an Australian source is used to hopefully reduce error in timezones – all receipt dates are from Australian timezones). The percentage fee is calculated based on the difference between the RBA exchange rate, and the one used by the financial institution.

From these calculations, the ATM looks to be the big winner (even with an additional ~AU$2.76 fee for the US). I suspect my method has a very high margin of error due to the fact I am unsure exactly what the official rate was (I’m only guessing based off the date). Perhaps an improved study would execute all three transactions at once – but even then there may be a daily error margin between institutions. But, if these results are correct, then I wasted $18.72 by using the currency converter. If convenience is factored in, the ATM wins again – you can use it anytime overseas (even in Santo), and generally without delay.

Perhaps it’s simply not worth worrying about…

* On the ATM transaction, the ATM itself took 2.50USD of the converted amount. This fee was not included either fee column as it is assumed to be specific to US ATM’s.

** This percentage is very different to the other Credit Card percentage, it is assumed that the bank is passing on some other per-transaction fee which I do not know about. Unfortunately, I have no way of knowing.

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