Vodafone India - Fine Print

Hardly any of us check the terms and conditions before we sign on the dotted line. Specially if it doesn't involve our bank account

Here is what I found when I took a peek into Vodafone India's T&C and Privacy Policy

Terms & Conditions:

Vodafone's contents are copyrighted and cannot be reused by you. But Vodafone reserves the right to use any of your contents that you provide through the website

2. Content (information, communications, images and sounds contained on or available through vodafone.in) is provided by Vodafone, its affiliates, independent content providers and third parties. The contents of vodafone.in are copyright © Vodafone its affiliates, independent content providers or third parties. All rights reserved. The contents of vodafone.in cannot be reproduced, modified, transferred, distributed, republished, downloaded, posted or transmitted in any form or by any means including but not limited to electronic, mechanical photocopying or recording without the prior written permission of Vodafone Essar Limited.

8. By submitting any material to us via the vodafone.in website, via email or otherwise, you do so in the knowledge that Vodafone may copy, modify, distribute or create a derivative work from that content in any form. You warrant that the material is fit for publication and agree to indemnify us if any third party takes action against us in relation to the material that you submit. You warrant that you believe Vodafone may publish the material you submit and/or make use of it or any concepts described in it in our products or services without liability and you agree not to take action against us in relation to it.

You look at some offer on their website, decide to buy it and do so online through vodafone website. Subsequently Vodafone can decide that the price mentioned on the website is not correct and decide to retroactively change it

"You should not assume that vodafone.in or its content is error free or that it will be suitable for the particular purposes that you have in mind when using it. Vodafone reserves the right to make subsequent changes to it, and services may be modified, supplemented or withdrawn. "

If vodafone's website cannot guarantee accuracy, where do they expect us to find accurate info about vodafone's services? In Airtel's website?

"Vodafone Essar is not responsible for any errors, omissions or representations on any of our pages or on any links on any of their pages. The users are requested to verify the accuracy of all information on their own before undertaking any reliance"

Vodafone can disturb you but you should not disturb vodafone

"9. In a few areas of vodafone.in. we may ask you to provide personal information that will enable us to use the information you provide us with to keep you informed of our latest products and services after your visit to vodafone.in"

"You agree not to cause, nor knowingly allow others to cause, any nuisance, annoyance, or inconvenience, whether to Vodafone or ...."

Last T&C is funny. Not only can Vodafone unilaterally change the T&C, its applicable to you immediately without notification or notice period

"15. Vodafone reserve the right to vary the terms of this contract from time to time, such variations becoming effective immediately upon posting of the varied Legal Statement on vodafone.in. By continuing to use vodafone.in you will be deemed to accept such variation."

Privacy Policy:

Vodafone can collect any and all personal information regarding you. They hold on to it indefinitely and share it with other firms for marketing purposes

"We may hold information relating to you that you have provided to us (such as on an application or registration form) or that we may have obtained from another source (such as our suppliers or from marketing organisations and credit agencies).

This information may include, amongst other things, your name, address, telephone numbers, information on how you use our products and services (such as the type, date, time, location and duration of calls or messages, the numbers you call and how much you spend, and information on your browsing activity when visiting one of our group companies' websites), the location of your mobile phone from time to time, lifestyle information and any other information collected in relation to your use of our products and services ("information")."

"2.7 carrying out market and product analysis and marketing our and our group companies’ products and services generally;

2.8 contacting you (including by post, email, fax, short text message (SMS), pager or telephone) about our and our group companies' products and services and the products and services of carefully selected third parties which we think may be of interest to you (unless you ask us in writing not to). For completeness we note that where such contact is via electronic means, our terms and conditions record our agreement with you that the electronic marketing messages we and our selected third parties send need not include an unsubscribe facility;"

If vodafone buys personal information of airtel's customers through third party companies, then vodafone reserves the right to sell your personal information to that third party.

"There may be times when we need to disclose your personal information to third parties. If we do this, we will only disclose your information to:

3.2 those who provide to us or our group companies products or services that support the services that we provide, such as our dealers and suppliers;"

If you accept (this can happen when you don't read the fine print) to receive marketing products/offers from vodafone, vodafone will reserve the right to share your personal information with third party companies. How exactly is the consent for latter implied by consent for the former?

"If you have opted in to receiving marketing material from us, we may also provide your personal information to carefully selected third parties "

Not only vodafone collects personal information, they strive their best to ensure that its accurate and have complete profile about you. It is not sufficient for vodafone to settle down to just the information that is really required to provide mobile services

"We will take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we collect, use or disclose is accurate, complete, up-to-date "

By chance, you decide that the above privacy policy is reasonable ( possible if competing provider's policy is even worse ), then vodafone reserves the right to change their policy. So once they have a personal profile of million customers in India, they have the option to change the personal policy allowing them to sell this information to the highest bidder

"We may change this Privacy Policy from time to time."