I agree that this is a bad policy, but you say "women" when you mean "people who don't work".

No, that's not what it stinks to me of. It stinks alright, but it stinks of a money-grabbing company that's trying t maximise their profits not by making their product better, but by jerking their potential customers around (which is bad mostly for them, as said potential customers are gonna take themselves, and all their mates and family, off to the competitor that offers better customer service).

As for the sterling advice to get her husband to buy it, as soon as I read this, I pictured the fumbling store clerk in his poorly fitting uniform in unfortunate bright red, all of 24 and not the sharpest tool in the box (either in an academic sense or in an everyday-smarts kind of sense, 'cause if you've either, you don't stick around vodafone shop floor long enough to get in that sort of jam). He's trying to fix the problem a bit, serve the customer because he's the one who has to deal directly with the understandable annoyance of the customers at measures such as this that have been devised by suits who'll never have to deal with the irate public. But he's not making a great job of this (see sharpest tool argument above), so this results in one more sad case of corporate BS.

And that's what this is, folks; nought to do with feminism. Afraid we're all equal under the bead eye of corporate bureaucracy ;-)