Vodafone review: Great for bundles, not so great for satisfaction

While it’s not as cheap as some rivals or as speedy as EE, Vodafone has its own position as a forward-looking network with some useful features. However, improved 4G and 5G performance from Three has seen Vodafone knocked down to third place in terms of UK-wide performance, and there’s now talk of a potential merger between the two companies. The resulting superbrand would be Britain’s biggest mobile network, but is Vodafone worth signing up for now?

Yes and no. On the plus side, Vodafone’s customer service and support seems to be improving, according to our 2022 Mobile Network Awards survey. On the minus side, fewer than two-thirds of users would recommend the network to a friend, leaving Vodafone trailing Three, EE and O2 by a few points, and Sky Mobile, iD Mobile and Tesco Mobile by a lot more. This doesn’t exactly instil much confidence.

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Vodafone review: What do you get

Vodafone has some good deals on pay-monthly contract phones, though the lowest monthly payments tend to be on 36-month Phone Plans, which you sign up for in concert with a 24-month Airtime plan. These spread the cost of the phone over a longer period, making that portion of the contract cheaper, but your total cost could work out more expensive than the same phone purchased on another network’s 24-month plan.

Buy an iPhone 14 on a 36-month contract, for example, and you’ll pay from £40/mth with £29 upfront on a 36-month contract, but reduce the contract to 24 months and you’ll pay £51.50/mth on a 2GB plan. For that money, you could have the same phone with 250GB from Virgin Mobile. A Samsung Galaxy S22, meanwhile, starts at £32/mth on a 36-month contract with 6GB of data, but that rises to £42.50/ mth over 24 months. The same phone on iD Mobile with 10GB will cost you £29.99/mth plus £29 upfront.

If you prefer to go SIM-only, Vodafone has a slightly bewildering range of packages, including its basic Red packages, its “with Entertainment” packages and its “with Xtra benefits” bundles. The Entertainment bundles throw in your choice of a streaming service free over the 12- or 24-month contract period, with YouTube Premium, Amazon Prime Video or Spotify Premium. The Xtra benefits packages give you added features such as a data boost, standalone smartwatch connectivity, free international roaming options or phone insurance. You’ll either find them irrelevant or the kind of features that seal the deal.

The packages tend to be more expensive than the equivalents from, say, Three or Sky Mobile, let alone the cheaper no-frills virtual networks. Vodafone’s own no-frills offshoot, Voxi, is also significantly cheaper. You also need to watch the Unlimited 5G packages, as the Unlimited Lite and Unlimited versions involve speed restrictions that arguably prevent you from getting the most out of your 5G connection.

Only 24% of the Vodafone users we surveyed said they were very satisfied with the value they were getting from the network, though another 53% were fairly satisfied. This puts Vodafone behind every other major network overall, and with more dissatisfied customers than anyone except EE.

Vodafone review: Customer service

Vodafone did relatively badly for customer service in last year’s awards survey. While two-thirds of its customers were satisfied on this front, only 21% were very satisfied, and only Three and Virgin Mobile had more dissatisfied users. This year, the news is better. Nearly 74% of customers say they’re satisfied with their customer service, with over 27% very satisfied. Other networks also performed better, so Vodafone still isn’t a leader for customer service, but it fared better than Lebara, Virgin Mobile or iD Mobile.

Ofcom’s latest research is also reassuring. Vodafone now has above average results for overall satisfaction, and while Vodafone has more customers with a reason to complain than the norm (12% rather than 9%), it has fewer complaints per 100,000 users (14) than it did last year. It’s doing better here than Virgin Mobile, not to mention Three, which has more customers (16%) with a reason to complain.

Vodafone review: Coverage, reliability and speed

According to the latest figures from RootMetrics, Vodafone has lost its second place position for UK-wide median download speeds to Three. EE leads with 66.2Mbits/sec, followed by Three with 29.9Mbits/sec and Vodafone at 23.8Mbits/sec. However, Vodafone beats Three for speed in Wales and Northern Ireland and also performs well in some UK cities, where it reaches median download speeds of over 50Mbits/sec. 4G coverage reaches over 99% of the UK population, and Vodafone now offers 5G services in over 127 UK towns and cities.

EE and Three have achieved a higher 5G rollout – both claim to reach 50% of the UK population. What’s more, they’re a little faster, with median download speeds of 200Mbits/sec (Three) and 150Mbits/sec (EE) across the locations where RootMetrics tests 5G performance. Vodafone lags behind at around 130Mbits/sec. This doesn’t mean that Vodafone is slow, but it’s not the fastest network on the block.

This is the first year where we’ve asked about 5G performance in our survey, and Vodafone’s results are slightly better than the average: just over 50% of the 5G customers we spoke to were satisfied or very satisfied with their 5G connection – worse than EE, Sky Mobile and Three, but better than Giffgaff, O2, Tesco Mobile and Virgin Mobile. The main source of dissatisfaction for most customers (nearly 69%) is the lack of 5G coverage, which should improve with time.

As for reliability, 22% of Vodafone users say it’s always fast enough for web browsing and roughly 63% say it’s mostly fast enough. This drops to 21% and 47% for audio streaming and 14% and 43% for video streaming. Again, that’s almost bang-on average; better than Tesco Mobile, BT Mobile or Virgin Mobile, but comfortably behind the likes of Voxi, Sky Mobile and Smarty. This may reflect higher expectations of Vodafone; as a Vodafone sub-brand, Voxi runs across the exact same network.

Vodafone review: Roaming

Like most of the other networks, Vodafone now charges £2 a day for EU roaming, after which you can use your data, calls and text allowances as you would at home, subject to a 25GB per month fair usage clause. Outside the EU, your best bet is the £6 Roam Further pass, which gives you the same deal across 60 global destinations. This is available as a free benefit on some SIM-only and pay-monthly plans. In destinations that aren’t covered, roaming costs vary dramatically, going anywhere from 60p per minute, 8p per text and 12p per MB to £2.40 per minute, 60p per text and £7.20 per MB.

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Vodafone review: Other services and spending caps

Like EE and Three, Vodafone supports Wi-Fi calling, so you can make and take calls over a wireless network instead of 3G or 4G. This doesn’t save you any money – it comes out of your normal allowance – but it helps you stay in touch in locations you might not otherwise get a decent signal.

You can set data caps for a Vodafone contract, either through the website or Vodafone’s smartphone app. You’ll get an alert when you’ve run through 80% of your data allowance, another when you’ve used it completely, and more for each further 250GB of data you consume.

Vodafone review: Verdict

If you can make use of the features in its bundles, and you’re not too fussed about getting the highest speeds or the lowest monthly cost, Vodafone still has much to recommend it. It’s also worth noting that you can find some great Vodafone deals online, either from Vodafone itself, or from third-parties such as Mobiles.co.uk or Carphone Warehouse.

All the same, there’s plenty of room for improvement. 5G performance and coverage should improve as more services roll out, but customer service still needs some work and too many users feel that they’re not getting great value. Vodafone is heading in the right direction, but it’s not where it needs to be quite yet.