Vodafone Quick-Phone
The new Vodafone Mobile vending machine….no not a vending machine that you can move about on wheels, but a vending machine that vends mobile phones with a small amount of call credit on them and Sim cards. If you lose your phone at a music festival or when you’re at the airport, train station or you’re out for a day somewhere, then just buy a new one. Vodafone say that the mobile phones on offer will range from £30 to £150. They will also sell Sim cards.
All the vending machine needs apparently is a power source supposedly, so then how will it use chip and pin when you’re paying for the phone. It wouldn’t be able to be wireless because then each bank would need to be wireless enabled, and we can’t see Vodafone paying for that. Unless the machine would be using a mobile phone to call the banks? The vending machine is meant to save people the hassle of having pushy sales people trying to sell you something that you don’t really want, but would this mean that mobile phones are going to be sold out anonymously? Slightly worrying….
It would be good if they sold charged batteries as this is one thing that is the most annoying thing, running out of battery life when you’re not able to plug your charger in, but then they would have to introduce standard size batteries. Another thing these days is that does anyone know their mates mobile number off by heart… no, so what’s the point of a fresh mobile if you have lost all of your contacts. There needs to be a clever way of transfering info from your lost Sim to your new phone and Sim surely?
3G is used to update Vodafone when stock is running low. Consider another problem, if the machine accepts cash then it will store it inside the machine as we don’t think it will be emptied every night. So then it is a prime target to have a chain put round it and a transit van will tow it away with some free phones and if you’re lucky you’ll get some cash too.
This idea seems to be flawed and we think you’ll be lucky to see it hitting the high street. It is initially being trialled in Manchester.
October 31st, 2005 at 12:49 pm
I can see so many issues with this. Saw one in Manchester in the Vodafone shop… what’s the point
October 31st, 2005 at 5:29 pm
I suppose they are just trying to take away the hassle of buying a mobile, but there seem to be some problems with the whole concept as you say Will.