Every Vodafone India Mobile customer must read this..

This post is dedicated to those who are customer of Vodafone India Mobile Services. There are tons of complaints online on dozens of forums about random charges by Vodafone, and these charges could be in hundreds of rupees or even thousands of rupees. One major reason behind such random charges is the pre activated services that Vodafone gives to all its prepaid (PayG) as well as post paid (Pay Monthly) customers.

Two of such services that attract seriously high charges, are Vodafone Live (VL) and Vodafone Mobile Connect (VMC).

Whether you call it a gimmick, a trick or too much pro-activeness by Vodafone, every customer gets pre activated VL and VMC services on their each prepaid and post paid mobile connection. This comes bundled just like normal calling / sms services.

A survey conducted by Nielsen Informate Mobile Insights says there are 27 million smartphone users in urban India – a total of 9 per cent of the entire mobile user base in the urban demography (as of June 2012), and this is very rapidly growing. And smartphones do have internet features, hence we get charged for internet usage on our vodafone mobile connection quite unintentionally.

Even if someone actually wants to subscribe to Vodafone Internet services (EDGE / 3G), they would normally subscribe to a package, under which they would get certain amount of bandwidth as a free usage allowance, however, Vodafone's pre activated services are generally 10 paise / 10 kb of usage.

This actually means, if you are using a smartphone that is constantly in search of an internet connection whether to update the apps like facebook, twitter, etc. in background or to update its own operating system or just to stay connected with manufacturer's server so that it can push instant messages / updates (eg. Android, Blackberry, iPhone, etc.) unless you have specially disabled Data Services on your handset, you are likely to be charged as and when you insert your Vodafone sim card inside your phone.

And Hey Presto! your credit starts exhausting almost instantly.

So, how do you disable these services? Well, one way and actually the only way, that vodafone doesn't promptly tells to its customers is by sending a toll free SMS which is as follows:

For Pre-paid customers - To cancel Vodafone Live sms: CAN VL to 144 and to cancel Vodafone Mobile Connect sms: CAN VMC to 144

For post-paid customers - To cancel Vodafone Live sms: CAN VL to 111 and to cancel Vodafone Mobile Connect sms: CAN VMC to 111.

Just in case, if in some time 3G also comes pre-enabled on your vodafone sim card, you have to sms CAN 3G to 144 (if prepaid customer) and to 111 (if postpaid customer).

All these SMSes are free if sent from your vodafone sim card (at least as of today, 21 Dec 2012, the day I am writing this post). So go on sending them even if you are not sure whether internet services are already deactivated on your phone or not.

FOR OTHER SERVICE PROVIDERS

The above stands true for other services providers as well such as Airtel, Idea, Aircel, BSNL, MTNL, Tata Teleservices, Reliance Mobile and so on.. hence its appropriate to enquire about these or any additional charges that you might be charged at the time of purchasing the connection.