Fone Forum

Vodafone has left its Pay As You Go customers with a sour taste in their mouths after increasing the cost of calls by up to £1.50 a minute.

From the middle of next month, Vodafone punters on the Simply price plan will be stung with a hike.  Calls to any network, standard landline, or voicemail, will jump four pence to 25p per minute.  Texts are set to rise to 12p each, with picture and video messages up to 36p and 60p, respectively.

The big stinger is premium rate numbers, which at the moment cost 50p per minute.  Vodafone now insists customers pay £2 instead - a whopping 300 per cent increase.

You shouldn't worry too much as that only applies to digits starting in 09.  However, numbers such as 'freephone' and 08-ers, will set users back 25p per minute.

The inflation doesn't stop there, though.

Those on other price plans, such as Smart Step, Smart Plus, Anytime, Anynet, All Calls and Original will also see calling costs rise from 15p to 25p per minute.  Mobile Internet users will be hit for £1 per 25MB too, although the maximum data charge each day is £5.

Fortunately, not all costs are on an upwards path.  From 1 July, Vodafone is lowering the cost of making and receiving calls while abroad.  In Europe, customers making calls will now pay 36p instead of 39p each minute, while forking out 11p instead of 15p to receive them.

See here (http://www.reghardware.com/2011/06/29/vodafone_increase_payg_call_costs/).

Only because of the heavy hand of the European Union. ;)

Thanks for update