Vodafone Live site - free or not?

[Buy]

Recently my girlfriend bought a £25 per month Vodafone contract. Initially we weren't sure whether it was such a good idea as any WAP/GPRS usage has to be paid on top of the £25, and it doesn't make for good budgeting if you don't know how much your phone bill is going to be (we're both very careful with things like this)

Now, my girlfriend doesn't really use mobile internet for browsing, but she does use it for finding out train times and suchlike. The Vodafone salesperson advised us that this wasn't a problem since you can look up train times on the Vodafone Live website, which is free to browse on contract. I've used the same service on my Vodafone PAYG phone (although I assume it charged me).

However, when trying to access the train times the other day, it wouldn't let us view the search results without signing up at an additional cost. In fact, the entire free part of the site seems to be an advert for their paid services.

Is this a recent change, or was our Vodafone staff member a bit confused?

Between this and the whole not-being-able-to-check-your-remaining-minutes thing, I have to admit we're not very impressed with Vodafone's service so far. :(

[M2KB]

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to return the phone as mis-sold and sign up to Three for free portal and very very cheap internet access (£5/unlimited data).

3 have their problems, but their service is amazing.

[GC27vf]

Sorry to hear of the problems you've had. The way I've always explained Vodafone Live! to a customer is it's free to browse the content, e.g. the Sky Sports / ITN text based services. You can take these to the next level when you start using the 'In Depth' features, e.g the subscriptions to video downloads and streaming. Download content prompts with a '£' sign (e.g. videos, ringtones). I'm an occasional user of the rail / travel / find and seek service myself although have only used it from the one month free trial period before reverting to a £1.50 per month.

Regarding problems with receiving unbilling minutes information, is this via the 44555 system? From past experience there is a 45 day delay if it's a new account. This is because the first invoice needs to be created before the information in the 44555 text is created. If you still have problems after this period let me know and I'll speak with our billing team for you.

[ramjam69]

I got the shock of my life today when I got notification of my latest bill. I'n on the 200mins/250 texts bundle for £25/month. My bill was £77.38!!
I have been using the WAP browser on my phone quite a bit as the motorsports season has begun, so I've been getting news and results delivered by RSS feed.
I had used 225 messages, but vodafone had started being charging me from 8th Feb onwards.
I phoned Customer services to complain, but was told that WAP usage was charged in conjunction with my text messages i.e I now had a £14 extras pakage that covered all sorts of content, not just texts as before. I was also told that any site linked directly to Vodafone Live that used to be free to browse no longer is. The Home Page is free, but none of the links off it are. I complained I hadn't been notified of these changes and was told that they had sent something out about it along with my bill a couple of months ago.
When they stopped you using video and MMS's as part of your text bundle, they notified me by both text and email. Not this time, however
So I guess Vodafone Live no Longer's free then

[Hughesy]

I don't understand why one would want to view Vodafone Live.

It's like your electricity company trying to sell you appliances.
All I want is an internet connection (ok, and traditional voice)!
If I want video, music, news or any other content, I will buy it from whomever!

Perhaps the real problem is over paid executives with nothing better to do than dream up new customer offerings, rather than concentrate on their core business.