Vodafone beendet Verträge von 12 Franchisenehmern, die sich mit einer Klage von 120 Mio. GBP angeschlossen haben

I mean, what did they expect to happen? If the literal operation of your business – and therefore all of your income – involves you using the Vodafone brand name, and you then go out and tell everyone that Vodafone are a big bag of shit who are defrauding you, that’s only going to end way.

I don’t get to run a McDonalds franchise and also tell everyone that Big Macs give you cancer and Ronald McDonald fucked my mum. Not least since that’s at best a half-truth.

This is the business practice, the franchise is responsible for all building costs taxes , payroll anything in the building basically. Vodafone provide the network and the handsets. The franchise gets a negotiated amount for each device/plan they sell. When someone takes on a store, they get say 100 quid for a unlimited plan (keeping it basic for readability). The store goes out and sells loads, previously loss making stores become profitable. Sounds good, hey?

Nope. Vodafone then say – well you are making enough, let’s drop it to 80 quid, store goes out and makes a bit more. Then vodafone drop it to 50. Every room had a ceiling and eventually it hits it.

If you dont make money they say it’s because you haven’t sold enough broadband, hit broadband, it’s because of tablets hit that, it’s because of their watches.

Ok, it’s murky, not in the spirit of the contract or ethical but it’s up to the courts to decide if it’s legal. However, they do it to everyone. At the same time they tell everyone that they are the only one with the problem. Franchisees aren’t allowed to discuss rate cards with other stores so vodafone negotiate down.

They own the casino, load the dice and rig the game. They take the money, car and house and set the bouncers on you for daring to fight back.

TLDR: vodafone screwed every single one over. They knew what they were doing, wasn’t an accident, it was a design.

Now, a really interesting conversation to be had was what happened to the covid relief money? They got a ton of it but made their staff work all the way through doing training.