The Unwanted Adventures of a Vodafone Customer!

Posted in Communication, Customer Service

I recently moved my mobile contract to Vodafone.  T-mobile were not really offering any thing worthwhile on upgrade and Vodafone seemed to have  a really good deal available.

Apparently, the reason they can afford to offer such a good deal it that they don’t appear spend too much on customer service.  Here is my letter to the chairman and the reply from the Vodafone Director Complaint Office.

Dear Vittorio Colao,

I am writing to express my frustration and disappointment at the apparent unwillingness to help and the rudeness of Vodafone UK customer service staff.

I recently bought a price plan and handset from the Vodafone UK business website and provided my PAC to have my number transferred from T-Mobile.  Unfortunately my number did not arrive from T-Mobile, so I contact 191 to try enquire when my number was likely to arrive.  This began a litany of calls to your customer services department to solve numerous issues, all of which appear to have occurred because the request to port my number failed at the first attempt.

During the calls that I have had to make a number of staff I spoke to have not allowed me to fully explain my issue, they have talked over me, ignored me and on one occasion accidently hung up on me.  Every time I have called I have been given a completely different reason for the current problem occurring and on more than one occasion been informed that the problem was my fault and there was nothing Vodafone could do about it.

My history of calls currently stands at 10 as follows:

Monday 14th September: Ordered an HTC Touch Pro 2 handset with a £30 (+VAT) per month price plan, with 750 minutes, 250 texts and unlimited internet.  This included an offer of the first 3 months free.

Tuesday 15th September: Phone arrived and worked fine with the SIM provided.

Friday 18th September – Call 1: As my number had not yet been ported from T-Mobile I called 191 to enquire when this was likely to happen.  Informed that the porting request had not been received.  Provided my PAC again and was informed that they would provide a new SIM, to which my number would be ported and the first SIM would be deactivated.

Saturday 19th September – Call 2: Received new SIM along with a letter asking me to call to activate it. Called to activate the new SIM.  Was informed that I now had two price plans on my account and when I tried to explain the situation and the previous calls, the person kept interrupting, spoke over me, did not appear to want to listen to the real issue but kept offering solutions to what she thought I was asking.  In the end I was informed that I would have to wait ’til Monday to contact the porting team.

Monday 21st September – Call 3: Called 191 to arrange activation of the new SIM.  Was informed that they could activate the new SIM, but that I now had two price plans on my account and Vodafone was unable to cancel them – it was my problem and I was now stuck with two price plans.  Again, I tried to explain the history of the issue, but once again the person kept interrupting, talking over and did not listen or acknowledge what I was trying to explain.  After a long time on the phone and after consulting with a number of colleagues, she decided that she was able to cancel the original SIM, but before she had to check with me whether a second handset was sent out with the second SIM. When I told he only a SIM had been sent, she appeared sceptically and at first did not believe I was being honest. (I do not understand why information on what has been sent to me is not available to staff!) I was abruptly disconnected from the call without explanation, because the SIM I was using had been deactivated.

Monday 21st September – Call 4: I called back to enquire what had happened.  The person I called agreed to email the original person who had cut me off and get her to call me back.  This never happened.

Monday 21st September – Call 5: Called to enquire about the current status.  Was informed that I now had only one price plan on my account and that my number would be ported between 12pm and 3pm the following day, when the second SIM I had been sent would be active and have the ported number attached.

Tuesday 22nd September – Call 6: My number ported to Vodafone as expected at 12pm.  However, I was then unable to connect to the 3G/GPRS network.  I called to rectify this issue and was emailed the set up manual for my handset.  I checked all the settings and they were correct.

Tuesday 22nd September – Call 7: Having checked that the settings were correct, I called to raise the issue again.  I was informed that if I removed the SIM card and turned to phone on without the card, then switch it off again, reinserted the card, this would solve the problem.  It did not.

Tuesday 22nd September – Call 8: Again I called to raise the issue of no 3G/GPRS connection.  I tried to inform the person I spoke to that it was the SIM and not the handset.  He offered me a number of solutions all involving amendments to the handset settings.  None worked.  In the end he agreed to call me back after further investigation.

Tuesday 22nd September – Call 9: I was called back and informed the issue was with the SIM and I would be sent a new SIM card (the 3rd SIM card) which would solve the problem.

I then discovered that the price plan I was apparently on was an £11.91 price plan, when I originally ordered an HTC Touch Pro 2 handset with a £30 (+VAT) per month price plan, with 750 minutes, 250 texts and unlimited internet.  I was now concerned that I was not being given free internet or enough calls and texts.

Wednesday 23rd September – Call 10: Having been passed to two other departments by the automated system, I was eventually forwarded to customer services, who was able to inform me that I now have one price plan on my account and it is the correct plan.

For a company as large and prestigious as Vodafone, I am shocked that they could fail so dramatically in one of the main strands of any business – customer service.

Thank you for your time and I hope that this letter will enable you to amend some of the issues that I have faced to ensure that further customer do not receive such poor service.

Yours frustratingly,

Ben Drury

Ben,

Ive had a look through all the notes and I can certainly understand why you are frustrated with the service.

You would expect to put the order through on-line with the pac code and everything to run smoothly as it usually does, im truly sorry this was not the case.

I can see the port date was set for 22nd September, and you were set up with a temporary number while the port was going through. The port did go through on 22nd at 8:12am.

And then there were further problems with connecting to the internet.

I appreciate you letting us know what has gone wrong, there are clearly training points which I can address internally and we don’t want this to happen again. If the advisors had given you the correct information you would have not needed to make so many calls and go away concerned.

I believe everything is now set up fine according to the notes. If I’ve missed anything or you need anything else, please let me know.

Best wishes,

Dan Steele
Directors Office
For And On Behalf Of Vittorio Colao