First off, I'd like to say thank you 
to MN and Sainsbury's for selecting me to take part in this trial :) I have the Galaxy Fame, which is probably fab but I'm finding pretty hard to use!
- How do you find the signal coverage? Is it reliable? Have you had any issues with this?
It's fine, but I live in NW London and have been using Vodafone services (white labelled and direct) for about 6 years. In fact, Vodafone tend to supply the best coverage around my area - it's a bit of an Orange black hole!
- How has your family been using the service? i.e. is it you or your DC/DP who has the handset? How useful have you/they found the Mobile by Sainsbury's service?
I've been using it, as I only have a work Blackberry: my company have started charging for personal calls, so I was keen to try a PAYG service and a different handset.
It would be more useful if I could work out how to transfer all my Outlook contacts off my server/Blackberry and onto the Galaxy handset, and if I could work out how to install my Hotmail and Facebook accounts onto the handset. I suspect this is me being quite dim, but the total lack of instruction manual doesn't help: I have now found it online, so will spend some time getting to grips with it over the weekend.
- Do you think that the Nectar offer of double points on all of your shopping for 30 days each time you purchase a bundle makes the service more desirable or not?
Probably, but its hard to say this early on as I've never had a Nectar card before and normally shop in Tesco. It will take more than double points for me to shift supermarket, although I can imagine starting to stop by Sainbo's more often on my way home if I'm going to collect points. It would have been helpful to be instructed to link the Nectar card
before topping up the phone, as I'm another one who missed those points by topping up first.
- How have you found the Mobile by Sainsbury's customer care?
I've spoken to them a few times, as I'm another one who didn't have the Sainsbury's network pre-installed on the phone. I followed the set up instructions, like
Groovee, but in my case the mobile data never turned on. After a very frustrating 48 hours I call the customer care number.
a) It shouldn't cost 'up to 25p' to access customer support. I find this enormously off-putting and probably the biggest barrier to entry in terms of this being an accessible/attractive product
b) The first customer care conversation (with Charlotte) was fine, but didn't resolve the problem. Apparently she didn't realise that the Android platform cannot receive settings by text message.
c) The second conversation (with Chris) was great, but I waited another 24 hours to follow up an unresolved problem due to the cost of the call.
d) Chris solved the problem (although it was complicated to install the new service and would have been simpler to instruct me to select Vodafone!) and was enormously helpful. As someone else commented, he definitely seemed to 'care'.
e) The IVR for top up and bundle selection is absolutely impossible to follow and should be reviewed. As with others, common sense suggests that if you put £10 onto a PAYG SIM then you should be automatically allocated the £10 bundle. In fact, doing anything else feels a bit 'underhand', as though Sainsbury's want to catch customers out and charge them substantially more for un-bundled calls and texts.
- If it came up in conversation, would you recommend this network to your friends or not?
The Vodafone network is great, but I'm not sure that Sainsbury's are adding any value to the service (except for the nectar points) at the moment.
- Bearing in mind that the bundle of 200 minutes/unlimited texts/250 MB data costs £10, do you think that the service is good value for money or not?
It's not bad, but I've done a bit of shopping around and there are several better bundles on the market. At the moment, both the differentiation (i.e. why buy from Sainsbury's rather than Vodafone direct) and the market/value proposition (cost, value for money, customer experience) feel fairly weak.
