Vodafone stops the clocks, but without much fanfare

We've Got Mail:PriceWatch reader Tim O'Sullivan got in touch to make some noise about the silent end of a Vodafone promotion he had grown quite fond of.

He says the company's "Stop the Clock" promotion for pay-as-you-go customers was launched last year in a blaze of publicity.

"It allowed said customers to talk to other pay-as-you-go customers for up to 60 minutes, but to pay for only 3 minutes. Apart from the television advertising, Vodafone also sent out blanket text messages to customers informing them of this offer," he writes.

However, since the beginning of the year Vodafone has ended the promotion, which means callers must now pay for the full 60 minutes. The company has "done very little (nothing?) to inform their customers of this. I am not aware of any advertisements by Vodafone announcing this decision. Neither did they bother to send a text message to their customers informing them of the cessation of Stop the Clock. I only became aware myself when I noticed how quickly my call credit was falling and a subsequent Google search which confirmed the promotion was over," writes O'Sullivan.

He goes on to say "no doubt some nice PR person from Vodafone will refer to Stop the Clock being a time-limited promotion, but given the huge profits Vodafone already make from their Irish customers, would it have been too much to expect them to send a simple text message informing us that this promotion had ended?"

Well we contacted some nice PR person from Vodafone to find out exactly what they would say.

A spokeswoman said that "very clearly and in a very upfront manner on our marketing we included the message that Stop the Clock was only available until December 31st." She went on to say that this information was also contained in the terms and conditions and "would have been very clearly communicated to anyone who signed up for it". She said, much as our reader predicted she would, that it was a "promotional offer with a limited lifespan".

Tip of the iceberg

Last week we highlighted what a reader described as the increasingly common practice in some restaurants of charging diners a service charge and then cheekily asking for a tip on top of it. The item prompted two other readers to get in touch with wildly differing experiences.

Before Christmas Mags Murray had lunch with a friend in the Westbury hotel and was charged a "whopping" €38.84 for an egg sandwich, a smoked salmon sandwich and two teas.

"I added €4.00 to the credit card bill so my total charge was €42.84," she writes. "The person who brought the credit card machine to our table saw me add the service to the bill and never mentioned that a 12 per cent service charge had already been put on the bill. I did think 'Wow that's expensive.' However, as I needed to get back to the office for a meeting, we left."

She subsequently checked her receipt more carefully and realised that not only had she tipped the waiter on the double but she had also paid €4.20 for a juice which was neither ordered nor received. She says that she has written to the hotel and is awaiting its response with interest.

Well, PriceWatch couldn't wait that long so we called the hotel instead to find out if they make clear to diners that a service charge of 12 per cent is automatically applied to every bill.

A spokeswoman said that the automatically applied service charge was not 12 per cent, as our reader thought, but 15 per cent, which is generous by any standard and ridiculously so when you consider that all our reader had ordered was two lunchtime sandwiches and a cup of tea.

We were also told that the service charge was made clear on all menus and on the bill. The spokeswoman said that an extra space was left on the credit card slips should diners wish to express their financial gratitude for being served food still further. She said that the waiting staff would generally ask if the diner would like to leave a "further" gratuity, although that question appears not to have been put to our reader.

Gareth Keenan had a completely different tipping experience recently after he went for dinner in the Chakra restaurant in Greystones.

"We accidentally left a tip not realising that there was a service charge," he writes. "However, after we had left the restaurant, a member of staff came running out after us to advise us of the error and return the cash." Now that's service that deserves a tip of more than 12 per cent!