Sponsor's Message

Checking with Vodafone, I found that if I wanted to use that PrePay phone overseas, I'd have to ante-up with $10 and my credit card so that additional charges could be billed as they were incurred.

Is this really Pre-Pay?

So, rather than mess around with all this fuss, bother and expense, I simply bought a new "Pay as you go" SIM card hen I hit old blighty.

For the modest sum of about UKPD 29, (NZ$85) I got myself a new SIM card and enough calling credit to last me the entire week I was there.

During that time I made numerous local (to the UK) calls, a couple of calls back home to NZ, and sent dozens of SMS text messages. I still have an $NZ 18 balance left on that card.

If I'd used an NZ SIM card with roaming, I'd have paid a small fortune for any incoming calls from NZ and even the cost of the UK local calls would have far exceeded the price I paid for the UK SIM.

Readers Say (updated irregularly) Roaming for Prepays... - fREITAS Its called competition... - Max Vodafone site... - John Vodafone Roaming... - G.Harris Pre-pay rip off... - Calvin Have Your Say

However, here's the interesting bit...

My flight back to NZ had two stopovers; one in Thailand and another in Australia.

Guess what?

The UK prepaid SIM card worked just fine in both countries, allowing me to send and receive SMS messages along with voice calls.

Switching to the NZ SIM card I got nothing -- no network available.

So what's the guts here?

Why do UK prepay SIM cards appear to roam freely without the need to pay an extra fee and hand over your credit card, while NZ ones won't?

I thought I'd contact Vodafone to find out so I went to the contact form on their website and submitted my query.

Despite the website's assurance that I'd be contacted shortly, I've heard nothing.

Of course I could have gone straight to my existing contacts within Vodafone and got the good oil, but I wanted to present as just another customer.

Quite frankly, I'm a little disappointed.

Don't get me wrong -- Vodafone's service is otherwise excellent but I think they could be a little more responsive to queries lodged through their website and I find it hard to understand why NZ prepay users are so harshly penalised compared to their UK peers.

Suffice to say that Vodafone NZ won't be earning any money from me by way of voice or SMS charges the next time I'm away overseas. I'll simply pop my UK SIM back in the phone and top it up over the Net.

If any Aardvark readers have an opinion on today's column or want to add something you're also invited to chip in and have your say.

Contacting Aardvark
As always, readers are invited to submit their comments on material covered in this column. If you'd like your comments published here then please be sure to use this form and select For Publication.

Other media organisations seeking more information or republication rights are also invited to contact me.

Just add a couple of lines of JavaScript to your pages and you can get a free summary of Aardvark's daily commentary -- automatically updated each and every week-day.

Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using the RSS format. More details can be found here.

Contact me if you decide to use either of these feeds and have any problems.

Linking Policy
Want to link to this site? Check out Aardvark's Linking Policy.

Did you tell someone else about Aardvark today? If not then do it now!