VOXI Confuse Customers with Incorrect £10 Unlimited Data Offer
Some of VOXI’s existing contract-free mobile operator customers, which is a UK virtual operator (MVNO) sibling of Vodafone, have complained after the provider appeared to misleading offer them a £10 unlimited data (mobile broadband) deal to prevent them from switching away – only to later decline to honour it.
The situation first came to our attention earlier this month after one of VOXI’s customers, Nathan, who was paying £10 per month for their 30GB (data) plan, decided to request a PAC (switching) code and move to iD Mobile instead. Shortly after this, and upon selecting the “Keep my plan” option on VOXI’s member account page, they noticed a very attractive deal (i.e. unlimited data, but for the same £10 price) – no caveats or terms were mentioned.
Naturally, Nathan opted to take the deal and stick with VOXI, which would have been fine had the operator honoured it. But instead, the customer found that their tariff remained stuck on a 30GB allowance and, after several live chats and a Director’s call, VOXI appeared unable to honour the deal. A second customer has since confirmed that they could also see the same offer, even after VOXI had refused to offer it to the first customer.
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At this point we got involved and asked VOXI to clarify why they were offering a deal to customers that they couldn’t honour, which some might view as mis-selling.
A Spokesperson for VOXI said:
“We’re looking into what happened here and we’re sorry for the confusion. In the meantime, we have resolved this issue with the customer by honouring the deal we advertised.”
Nathan soon informed us that VOXI had actually moved him on to their ‘VOXI For Now‘ social tariff, rather than a standard unlimited tariff, which does indeed offer unlimited data at £10 per month (the customer was eligible for it too). But the catch is that, officially, ‘For Now’ only does this for a period of just 6 months, and after that they’ll switch you over to their standard £10 a month plan (usually with a 15GB allowance).
The operator confirmed this was correct to ISPreview, before adding that their “team continue to look into the situation … and will continue communicating with the customer directly.” As a side note, while we were investigating all this, the original £10 unlimited offer continued to be displayed to existing customers. But the story doesn’t end there.
VOXI later informed Nathan that his unlimited data plan “may not expire” (i.e. suggesting that the unlimited data period would run beyond 6 months), but upon seeking clarification of this the support team eventually “confirmed” to Nathan that “we don’t currently offer any incentive digitally for customers looking to leave, so the information shown for Unlimited Data was incorrect.” The operator added that they are “really sorry” about this and were now working to “remove any wrong information“.
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However, the issue above wasn’t the only one that Nathan picked up on during the course of his ordeal, with the customer noting that the T&C‘s for their VOXI For Now plan still claimed that EU roaming was free, with a 20GB allowance for data.
The operator later responded to confirm that the related T&C’s hadn’t been updated since 27th June 2022 and that they’d since introduced their new EU Roaming Passes. “This means that VOXI customers would now need to opt-in for one of our Roaming Passes in order to roam in the EU“, said the operator to Nathan.
The operator’s support team said they’d asked the “webpage team” to review and, “if necessary” update the incorrect terms. Nathan did, however, get a free 15-day roaming pass out of all this and a £10 account credit on top, so at least that’s something.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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To be fair, I’ve been on “For now” since it launched despite the initial promise of it lasting “6 months”… It’s now been about 2-3 years.
Thanks for Unlimited for £10, Voxi.
I dont see any mention of this £10 unlimited offer on the Voxi web site
https://www.voxi.co.uk/sim-only-plans
‘For Now’ is their social tariff, and it’s a bit hidden away, but you can reach it here:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/go/voxioffer
At present it’s unclear whether VOXI keeping customers on For Now after the 6-month period is unofficially intentional, or just another symptom of the fact that they don’t seem to be keeping up-to-date with some of their own policies/tariffs/terms.
The bigger issue was that at the start they just required you to upload docs rather than utilising a proper supplier to verify this stuff.
I signed up with a 400x400px blank PNG.
https://www.voxi.co.uk/for-now
If this was about customer retention they have completely failed in their approach, this for me would destroy any confidence i had with the company and would move anyway.
If Vodafone will be merging with Three they will have a lot to learn
Number gets PAC’d to iD on Monday 😉
Yeah, their customer service is just appalling. I went on online chat, asked how to move from Vodafone to VOXI, and was told to get PAC code. So I ordered two sim cards, paid for the bundle, activated it and requested PAC codes from Vodafone. Only to then get an error and be told that you can’t move from Vodafone to VOXI via PAC code because they’re sister networks. They can still do it, but it’ll now take 30 days to do so, which is a joke. So I requested a refund for the subscription I paid for and didn’t even activate (paid £10) and all I received was £8. Absolute joke, will not be back again.
My only problem was that I wanted to stay with Vodafone as they have the best signal where I live. But guess what – so does ASDA Mobile as they also use Vodafone network. And they accepted the PAC code no problems, was moved within 24h. Vodafone / VOXI just do not care and because it all I definitely won’t be back.
I’d move to Voxi once am out of contract with EE if they only offered inclusive eu roaming will have to be 02 or iD mobile then ☹️
O2 and VodaFone are the only ones as far as I know that support VoLTE/Wi-Fi Call/Visual Voice and Merge Call/3-way-calling all at once.
I might actually end up on SLOW2 and get a cheap E-SIM for data.
how often do you travel to the EU? would O2 actually work well for you in the UK?
you might be better off just getting another SIM for when you do travel. I’d also say the EE roaming bundle was actually a good deal, though probably not once the price goes up to £25.
1p mobile gives you the EE network and free EU roaming, though.
Hi Ivor it’s more for the signal strength I live 400 yards from a upgraded EE mast and the best I can get inside my house is 1 bar at best on 4G due to surrounding houses, the rest of my house is on Vodafone/02 and get a great signal from the 02 mast right next to the EE one 400 yards from my house. I know 02 isn’t the best for speeds but signal strength blows EE and 3 out the park. I travel about 4 times a year a week or more at a time, last time I was away I added the roam pass to my EE account am sure it was about £15 so there’s £60 extra a year for something I could get with 02 with a cheaper sim plan. Also with Virgin for broadband so will get Volt and get upgraded to 1Gig for free too so looking like 02 will be the best option for me.
The social tariff is unavailable for ANYBODY on benefits in Northern Ireland as the system doesn’t recognise the payments
I’d never touch Vodafone again after my experience with them. When I ran operations for a media company, a new director joined us and we took on their Vodafone mobile account. When they left the firm two years later, I migrated the account back to her name. The bills emails continued to come to me (and still do!). Obviously I could not access the account as the password had been changed but the emails gave sufficient information to breach GDPR. I tried for around another two years to get my detail taken off her account – without success as VF was unable to accept my instructions for an acocunt for which I was not authorised. The ex-director would not take action. I was told to go to a VF store to sort it out. Then we had covid and lockdown. I gave up wasting time on it, applying an email rule to delete any emails from Vodafone billing.
That surely needs pinging to trading standards. It’s mis selling because it’s retaining customers dishonestly. Not only that but the web team not updating a T&C’s document from over a year ago is just not acceptable. They’re online only so any document updates are digital. Reeks of inadequate document control methods that wouldn’t stand up to an internal audit.