In Spain...Generation Y cannot get a cell phone contract!

As crazy as it may sound! it is true...I tried it myself...In times of economic recession, one may think that every business will do anything to get new customers, including mobile operators. However in Spain, this is not the case... Some of you might be thinking that it is crazy, and it is...so let me tell you the story. 

I am self-declared Blackberry addict, so whenever I came to Spain and saw that Vodafone was selling the new Blackberry Storm I wanted it. A month ago I went to a Vodafone store and filled some paperwork and signed the contract. A nice lady told me that I had to wait one week to get my phone, she said that I will get a call from Vodafone the day I was supposed to pick it up. 

A week and a half later, there was still no call, so I went to the store again but the lady was not there. So I talked to a fellow named Diego, who after a few minutes of looking for my contract, he told me that they were about to call me (I just laughed, he had my contract under some boxes of used mobile phones so there was no way he was planning on calling me that day) to tell me that my contract  could not be processed because my ID number started with "Y" (so it is not the generation Y that you guys were thinking... since October last year all spanish IDs start with a Y, since they already used all the number combinations for IDs that previously started with an X) 

It seemed weird to me so I asked him what should we do... and he told me that I should try another company!! How can Vodafone turn down an 18 month contract with an unlimited data plan from a person that was willing to buy a high end phone from them??

No idea, but they did... as some of you know I am doing a Master in Telecom, so we are always studying how operators can reduce Churn (the amount of clients that leave the mobile operator) and increase ARPU (Average Revenue Per User---basically how much money they make from each of us).  So I find it funny that these huge companies complain about this but then have people like my buddy Diego telling me that he doesn't care that I want to give money to Vodafone and that I should try another company. 

Luckily there are MVNOs in Spain (it stands for Mobile Virtual Network Operator, just think about a cell phone company that rents a network from a bigger Operator and sells plans and phones with its own brand- they usually target niche markets). After my frustration I went online and tried www.studentsphone.com and so far they have answered all my questions. Although they cannot offer me a Blackberry Storm, they offer me good customer service and answers, so it seems that I will get a contract with them. 

Too bad Vodafone... now I am looking for an unblocked Storm...I already found hundreds of them in Amazon. However this makes me wonder...Are traditional operators ready to tackle new generations? the Storm attracted me to Vodafone, but it doesn't mean that because they have the phone on exclusivity I have to beg to be their customer. The internet brings us abundance of everything, they don't want to sell me the Phone...hey! no problem!...I will buy it from Asia, the US, or maybe  England. Who knows...let's see who gives me a better price! 

this is the real Generation Y!