Phones4U-turn
Three years ago Vodafone UK decided to restrict its third-party retail partners for selling new monthly contracts to one - Phones4U - dropping Carphone Warehouse in the process.
Today it announced it's reversing that decision and you will be able to get monthly Vodafone contracts from Carphone Warehouse from 7 July.
HEXUS.channel spoke exclusively to Vodafone UK consumer director Ian Shepherd (pictured) to find out the reasons for this U-turn.
"Vodafone and Carphone Warehouse have been working together for 20 years," said Shepherd. "But in 2006 the industry structure wasn't working in the interests of customers. It was too unstable, customer churn was high and complaints were high.
"We decided we wanted longer term partnerships with retail, so we did one deal with one retailer - Phones4U - but carried on with Carphone Warehouse for pay-as-you-go. In the intervening time the whole market has moved in that direction, so it's become the industry norm."
We asked if there was anything significant about the timing of the announcement but it doesn't look like there was. Getting back into Carphone Warehouse significantly increases Vodafone's retail presence and it's clear this now outweighs whatever benefits Vodafone thought it was getting from the previous arrangement.
