Vodafone's inadequate customer service

[superduped]

I’ve been a Vodafone customer since December 2007. I’m on their Pre-Paid 365 day plan, which means the credit I buy from them lasts 1 year. I put a $20 voucher into my phone approximately once a month.

Late July a girl from Vodafone called my mobile to make a special offer. If I put 3 x $29 vouchers into my phone before the end of August then they’ll send me a text confirming that they'll send a new mobile phone to my registered address.

Over the next few days, I did exactly that (and have the receipts) but no text was sent to me. No phone arrived in the mail.

On 25th Aug 2008 I called them to find out when I could expect these things to happen. After negotiating a unhelpful automated answering machine, and waiting in a phone queue for 20 minutes, I finally got through to a human. She advised me that I had to speak to another department and that the wait in the queue was 1 hour. I pointed out that that was unreasonable and having already spent 30 minutes on the phone waiting to talk to her, I simply didn’t have a further 60 minutes to wait on hold. So she double checked and came back with the revised estimate of a further 30 minute wait. I asked her could I make a complaint by email and she said this was not possible.

It proved to be untrue, though, and after finding their website I sent my query as well as a complaint about the extraordinarily long wait times when calling them by phone.

After a few days my email was acknowleged by someone who asked me to provide personal details such as DOB, address and Drivers Licence number before she would assist me.

I pointed out that it was a personal security risk to me to provide such information over the internet, and queried why she couldn’t just access my account (I’d given her my full name and mobile number) and settle my query.

The next day my credit expired on my phone for no apparent reason. I still had roughly $70 credit on my phone and 11 months in which to use it. I sent her a further email asking that my credit be restored immediately.

Her response was to ignore this point but to claim she had no access to my account without these details and that I should send them to her in an email or else call up their call centre again.

I pointed out for a second time that it’s a personal risk for me to send personal details over the internet and that I don’t have the 60-90 minutes required to wait in their phone queue. I pointed out that the person who called me up with this so called special offer had access to my account, and that she had only asked me to confirm my name. I requested that she call me on my mobile and I would give her any personal details she required to confirm my identity over the phone.

After a few more days she eventually responded with the ludicrous claim that she was unable to call me. I had 2 options. Call their inadequate call centre or send my personal details by email.

What does one have to do to receive adequate customer service from Vodafone?

[mjd26]

It does sound like you've got the raw end of the deal there, but there are a couple of very important things that need to be considered:

1. The $29 top-ups are a $29 cap, you do NOT get 365 days during which to use it. By electing to do a $29 top up; you elected to take advantage of their $29 cap (much higher value of actual calls and SMSs) you lost your 365 day deal that you had before.

2. When they call you on your mobile, your identity has been almost completely verified already, you are the person who answered that mobile phone and therefore (in the absence of it being reported stolen) you are the owner of that mobile phone and by confirming your name (hence not being a relative or friend or otherwise not the owner) it can be known who you are. When you send them an email, this is not the case, as far as they are concerned; you are some random person who nobody knows who wants access to someones account and only knows their name and phone number. It is against the Telecommunications Act for them to speak (email) you details about that account without being able to verify sufficient detail. As already mentioned, the need for this extra detail is largely bypassed when they make the outbound call to an already known and verifiable mobile.

3. It's not really a security risk to send private details such as those to a trusted location. You did it when you signed up on to this forum, you have probably done it a multitude of other times as well. Yes, to send details like that to a non-trusted email account would be a bit dangerous, but not when it's a trusted organisation.

On the matter of how to get better customer service levels from them, a complaint to the TIO is quite effective.
I had an issue with them recently and had to lodge a complaint through the TIO. It yielded a 100% satisfactory outcome within 3 quick phone calls and about 8 days.
It is also important to note that my main problem actually arose from a specific store which wasn't actually a Vodafone store (it was a Vodafone branded outlet) and didn't relate directly to the service I had with them but rather the handset provided by that store.

[superduped]

Thanks for the response mjd26.

Re: The $29 cap. No mention was made by the girl from Vodafone of these new conditions. Why would she advise me to put 3 x$29 into my phone within 30 days when they can tell from my account that my usage is extremely low? My guess is that she was paid commission per customer she signed up and therefore misled me deliberately.

My main gripe with them is their lack of accessibility to anyone prepared to give reasonable customer service. 60-90 minutes waiting on hold demonstrates their contempt for their customers.

I can't take them to the TIO until I've dealt with them for 30 days. I'm not that much of a masochist.

It's significant that I've had my general queries answered within 24hours by someone who's not a Vodafone employee. These could easily have been answered by Emailgirl without accessing my account. My (apparently misplaced) fear of sending personal details by email could easily have been dealt with by making a short phone call to me.

Instead she ignored my concerns and repeatedly advised me to do what I had expressed difficulty with. It was as if she didn't even read my emails.

Adequate customer service is not difficult. It just requires a company who actually wants to provide it.

[Interface]

I work at a service station and I once had to call Vodafone to ask them to verify if a voucher had been used or not. I called them three time and was on the phone for well over 40 minutes. The first time I called, I got onto someone who said I needed to speak to another section (which I couldn't get directly onto because of their stupid voice recognition software) and then after being on hold for another 10 minutes the phone hung up from their end. The I rang back, waited more, got onto someone again, they said I needed to go onto another section, and I asked if I could be put straight through as I had already waited 20 minutes, was told that would be okay, was still put on hold, and again after 10 minutes it hung up from their end. Did the same thing again a third time. The second and third time the staff member lied to me and told me I'd go straight through.

I'm not a customer of theirs but by co-incidence I was looking for a mobile phone at the time. Luckily I got my negative experience with them before I purchased a mobile phone as I knew who not to buy one from

[kyakudaiichi]

See my post, "Bye Bye Vodafone". Their customer service has gone from poor to bad to plain shocking over the last few years. I can't get angry at the poor people who eventually answer the phone if you aren't sent in circles between 2 different automated answering systems ad infinitum. They sound like they get yelled at all day and know full well how bad the situation is. One two occasions I've been asked to ring back because the entire computer system crashed, badly, while they were talking to me. I will try get through to a person tomorrow to get them to port my number to another provider. Hopefully it will be my final dealing with Vodafone.

[zylax888]

The Vodafone service is hell-dead service that I ever experienced in my life. Their service is far below the standard that you could imaging. So here I recommend anybody NOT to choose Vodafone because from my experience, they have been ignorance, lying and pass the buck as many times as possible!!!!!!!!!!

1. Customer Service: Keep transferring to other departments so you just keep going around the circle!!!

2. On-line complaint: Keeping telling you that your issues do not comply the procedure and after 120 hours, they sent you an e-mail stated that your problem has been SOLVED!!???

3. Service Server: The server always reply the message that "service is unavailable" so you couldn't check you usage status, etc. So you will likely to exceed your limits and billed with extremely expensive rates!!!

4. The usage statement has been fraud when I checked them. You wouldn't able to prove it because it's all calculated by computers. How could you tell the difference between talking time of 1:20 and 1:22? Say they steal 2 seconds from every call you made, imaging how much money they would steal over two years contract and times all the customers they have!!!

SO NEVER USE "VODAFONE"!!!! IT STEALS!!!

[DG58]

Some time ago i had to ring Vodafone, their call center is in Egypt, i spoke to a very nice young man with a very good English and he fixed my problem without any hassle, much better then talking to someone in the Philippines.

[computerflyer]

DG58,

What is "some time ago"? Almost every company's service has deteriorated significantly in recent years, with telcos leading the charge through outsourcing to foreign lands sans training and systems to enable resolutions. Uneven English is an increasing problem even locally. (Try the USA - press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish )
--
From my perspective it is 50% the lowest cost outsource provider, and 50% the company's inadequate systems and training of the outsource. If an operator in India, Philippines, or Egypt are not empowered or enabled to correct a billing fault, or directly contact the systems department, who is that on when you have a problem? It is not so simple.
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zlax888,

If not timed by computer how would you propose to time a call? If their computer is caught out as you suggest by adding phantom seconds (not seconds they can justify, even if you don't agree with their algorithm), the outcome would not be in their interest as there would be publicity, probable class actions, and a very very remote possibility of government interest in what would be a fraud.

[DG58]

"some time ago" about 3 months ago, i'm not suggesting that vodafone is perfect, i was just stating a fact that happened to me on that occasion.

[student8899]

Vodafone are the biggest cheats around, no doubt. 3 and a half months now and my phone is still in repairs. Any excuse you can thing of it has been done. (Phone is under warranty). + about 2 hours of calling them to ask them what is going on with my phone. Now thats the way to swindel more money out of people. Yes people.

[ho_k]

mjd26:
"3. It's not really a security risk to send private details such as those to a trusted location. You did it when you signed up on to this forum, you have probably done it a multitude of other times as well. Yes, to send details like that to a non-trusted email account would be a bit dangerous, but not when it's a trusted organisation."

Actually it is a risk because emails are not encrypted and can be eavesdrop.

[muttley-au]

When Vodafone want to switch you from a prepaid onto a CAP, their is no warning you that you lose all your accrued bonuses.

Fortunately I spoke to a lady in Oz who put me back on my former plan and gave me some extra credit.

I still wouldn't recommend Vodafone as their customer service is very poor.