Tim Unwin's Blog

I don’t usually use my blog to illustrate poor customer service, but an e-mail I received this morning has infuriated me so much that I am putting fingers to keyboard!  Vodafone has to be one of the very worst companies for customer service in the UK! Why does anyone still use them? For that matter, why do I?!

I renewed my contract with them a couple of weeks ago, and upgraded my phone.  Since I could not do the necessary change-over online, because their website was down, I took my new phone in to a Vodafone shop (in Hammersmith) to ask them to activate the SIM and transfer my data across.  “Of course”, the assistant said, “It will only be a couple of minutes”.  Half an hour later, when the assistant was unable to do it, his manager came over and managed to get most of the issues sorted.

However, not all of the data was transferred, and I could not access WiFi from the hotspots because of a problem with my account, which they said would soon be activated.  A week later, nothing had happened, and so began a series of quite bizarre phone calls with ‘customer service staff’.  None of theme were able to resolve the problem.  Unbelievably, three out of the four staff could barely speak English, and I kept having to ask them to repeat their questions – really simple things like “What is the first line of your address?” were completely unintelligible.  Eventually, I was told that I could not access my account because of a problem with their website that they were fixing, but that they would give me a £5 refund on my next bill because of the inconvenience.

Still nothing happened – I could not access my account online, and still could not use the WiFi hotspots because I could not sign into my account!  So, I sent an e-mail, and two days later received the message below:

“Thank you for contacting Vodafone Customer Services
I have checked the online account and can see that you are not able to access the online account however if you are unable to access the account; hence I have escalated this to the online escalation department they will look into this matter.
Your patience will be appreciated in this matter
I trust the above information is helpful.
Kind regards,”

This is unbelievable.  First, I am appalled that an e-mail can be sent by a company based in the UK that is so illiterate!  Second, I am not told that the problem is being fixed, but merely that the matter is being escalated to the escalation department!

I wonder how many more weeks it will take for them to get this fixed?!