I live in Berwick and on the train not only does data drop out but also voice recepetion several times. Every second call i make they can't here me and I need to redial. So 2 connection fees. Thanks! And why, when I ring Customer Service, do I feel that they either don't get it or just don't care!

I like everyone else is having the "drop out,poor reception,delayed txt & no Internet".
I have had a problem getting through to customer service....why? because me phone call drops out.oh the irony.
don't bother trying to make sense of the staff locatedin India.they have no idea what is going on. don't expect them to admit to their network having problems.the down-low on it.all of this has stemmed from a programming code that wasn't done correctly the first place.
don't expect it to be fixed anytime soon either.
essentially,either get your account credited or get out of your contract.
if you don't get anywhere go to the telecommunications ombudsman.
vodafone should be harshley reprimanded for the so called "service" they provide.
WHAT A JOKE VODAFONE!!!!!

My family live on a farm in Diamond Beach which is in the Forster/Tuncurry area of NSW.

They have no landline, and they are out and about most of the day. When I visit the farm, I have no coverage what so ever.

As I spent Xmas Day there, I was unable to contact family and friends for Xmas wishes.

More worrying, if I was on the farm on my own, any should any emergencies occur, I would not be able to call for help with using my Vodafone mobile, as it has never had reception out there.

The combination of these two, and the complaints on this site mirror the absolute scam that is the Vodafone telco.

Everything from there customer service Lara, to the Indian customer service makes the whole experience a disgrace to the way Customer Service is being conducted in Australia.

In Aug 2009 when Vodafone switched over to 3G network, I was working in the NSW Snowy Mountains region. From Cooma through to Jindabyne, there was no Vodafone coverage at all.

I rang Vodafone, got through to their local Indian customer service centre, and was told that they had no issues reported in that area.

I then rang the local radio station, and there was widespread outage and complaints coming into the radio station about the coverage.

When I rang Vodafone back and advised that there was a local issue, again got told that the they had no reported outage.

As I was running a business which relied on my Vodafone phone, I was forced to get a pre-paid phone with another company.

Coverage in this area having just visited the area Jan 2011, is still limited from Cooma through to Jindabyne. Several call drop outs and no coverage experienced.

i am generally not unhappy with my 17 year experience with vodafone apart from the appalling lack of customer service by phone. lara is the most annoying and unhelpful voice on the planet. the voice recognition software does not work and getting to speak to a person is impossible. i currently have a query re my account and can't even contemplate ringing. my appeal is that vodafone ditch lara and replace her with people who can direct you to the right section to a person who can deal with the inquiry. for my landlines and internet i use westnet (iinet) and not only can you speak to someone but if they are too busy you leave a message and they ring back. amazing but obviously it is something that can be done.

Purchased a 2 year contract with an iphone 3gs, from Day 1 poor reception or no coverage in certain parts of Sydney, No coverage in my home Sydney west or in my office Blacktown. The phone worked extremely well while traveling-roaming the VFONE Eu network. full reception at all times. After 8 months of heartache, I wrote to the communication ombusman, made contact with a VFONE representative"David" greatest customer service ever experienced. The Phone/acc where returned to the Tasmanian office and all was over so I thought.
I have contacted the billing dept on many occasions to resolve an invoice. ($59 plan costing over $200 for the month). No one returns my calls,On one call previously an operator told me all the history and calls where on record
then today, no history or anything.
Stop sponcering the major sporting functions and supported the users Vodafone

I have been with Vodafone for a year now. When I first got my iPhone with them in January last year it had screen issues, so I took it back to them and they sent it away telling me it will take 6-8 wks, and they had no replacement phones so I borrowed a friends and almost 6 wks later after I had contacted them to see what was going on, they informed me that the phone was at the shop waiting (thanks for letting me know). Oh and the upside I go in and pick up the 'new' phone only to realise they have given me back my old one which is still not working. So I took it back and they said they would send it back and I would get the new one this time, however this was all too hard as the shop assistant said it would take two wks and I went back exactly two wks later to see if my phone had arrived to be told by another assistant that the phone had never been sent off and the paperwork not processed, so I had to do it all again. Finally 10 days later I receive the new phone. Coverage is always pretty poor with vodafone.. but the phone is not the only problem.. I also unfortunately purchased broadband with vodafone, and WOW is what I have to say, as I was a F/T student an F/T worker for all of last year, so I needed the internet (considering my Grad Dip was soley ONLINE) mainly from 5-10pm at night and on weekends, however I either never had any service or if I did it would take approx 20min to download one page if not longer. I just didnt have the time to waste, so I relied heavily on using the internet at work and also a friend's, as I complained to vodafone numerous times to both the customer service centre and instore and they said they could do nothing, yay for me huh!!! Also my complaints were about the USB which would not register quite frequently, so that coupled with the fact that I for the most part could never access the internet, and never at the times I needed to (so PEAK times) meant that I was and still am paying for a service to which I do not receive. The last time I complained to the customer service was in November as I had taken the day off from work to study and of course my internet wouldnt even work during so called non-peak time, and the operator said that his supervisor had authorised for me to receive free of charge a wireless modem to assist internet activity, he told me I would receive it in 10 business days, funny that I needed it that day and the fact that my studies ended on Nov 12 so yeah kind of a bit too late, but I accepted it anyway..and I am still waiting for it. Oh and I just got internet back on my laptop, as when it would say no device I would uninstall and reinstall the program and it would work typically so I could access the internet on an infitiseminal scale every so often, but the last time I did it which was early Nov whilst on the phone to the vodafone operator, it would not register the device at all..and the guy said it is a problem with my laptop, well I disagree as the usb and internet very rarely work, so I consider that a problem with the service and usb itself. I finally got the device to register on Jan 2 this year so that was 2mths of paying for a service I did not receive and myself having to actually fix the problem caused by their device. Great Customer Satisfaction vodafone does not have, nor are they concerned with satisfying customers sufficiently, and we are not all naive to think that other TELCOs do not have problems, because we all know they do, however I have not encountered one until vodafone that had no regard whatsover for trying to provide a service adequately at minimum to its customers. Vodafone needs a more customer focussed approach wherein customer satsifaction is a priority!!

I've been a vodafone for approx 5 years and have lived in Marrickville/enmore for most of that time. Over the past 6mths it has become increasingly difficult to get network coverage at home. Now I need to get in my car and drive a few blocks away before I will recieve or be able to take calls. I first complained in Sep last year and went through several steps with the customer service people to try & improve network coverage (yes and waited up to 20-30 minutes at times for assistance). In spite of being told again and again and again that my issue was being escalated, nothing has happened. I'm now in email correspondance with vodafone, begging to be released from my contract so I can source an alternative telco provider. I simply want to be able to make and receive calls on my phone in my own home. I have contacted TIO and notified vodafone of this contact. Vodafone responded by saying I now need to take it up with TIO and follow their process. Basically they know I have no network coverage yet they are willing to drag this out as long as they can. I believe what they are doing is unethical. I am so angry with the way they are stringing me along. I'm frustrated and feel powerless.

I sit here typing this post thinking about the good & the bad experiences I've had with Vodafone. So 1st the positive. I live in the Sydney Metro area.I've been with Voda & Nokia since 1992. In that time I've always had a reliable mobile phone service with them. I've paid my bills & the reception was mostly ok with only a few grey areas of poor signal strength. Went to Cobar a few times (far west about 7 hours drive)& absolutely zero signal. Part of the 6% & 132,000 people that don't get Voda service (that's left to Telstra).In 2008 I bought a new PC & went with Vodafone with a broadband modem. On occassions I have had the need to converse with customer service. Enter the much dreaded Indian call centres.The waits on hold have often been beyond belief? That recorded voice LARA soothingly saying "won't be much longer we're flat out at the moment"? Somewhat hard to take after being in the Queue for 65 minutes. Sometimes I would do Basil Fawlty pround, swearing at LARA in frustration. Eventually my problems were sorted. Then came BLACK Tuesday 7/12/2010. Internet OUTAGE?(although my mobile ph. service was fine?) Oh no, I've got to deal with that LARA again. In total I consumed over 7 hours of time = Tu/Wed/Th/Fr. Occasionally I got through only to be told just a small technical problem & all should be ok SOON? I later found out, via IT media, that Vodafone was changing over to another main network provider & had struck major technical difficulties. The SMALL problem only affected the Eastern Seaboard States of Australia. I.E. Qld.,NSW, Vict.& Tas. ONLY? Well by Friday I'd had enough & went to Allphones & signed up with Virgin Broadband (Optus network)for 12 mths. Same 8GB deal & same price $39pm = $468 pa. One vital difference is with excess usage charges. Vodafail charge (sneekily) 10c a KB. Only 10 cents one thinks, big deal. Not so if you go a GB or two over in any month, which I did in Oct. & Nov. 2010. Also keep in mind that on the 8GB plan = about $5pm/GB return to Vodafail. Well I remember gasping on the total bills for Oct.& Nov. of $484 incl.GST. This was more than my total normal 12 mth broadband bill. Difficult to accept but as it was in the contract I was obligated to pay it. In contrast Virgin charge $15GB for excess useage abt 1/7th of vodafails. Then fear crept into my mind as I had to try & contact Vodafail & LARA in India again. This was to cancel the Broadband service(the contract period had expired) Well, another hour of my life was consumed & their on hold music is crap, distorted & repetitious. With LARA constantly assuring me once more "won't be long ....etc". If I ever meet any Laras in real life I'm not sure how I'll react? No doubt the real live laras would all be nice girls? Anyway I get through to someone,hooray at last. After getting grilled about the problem (5 minutes)it's sorry wrong section. Next section same thing another grilling & on to another department.Then Jackpot someone authorised to make decisions. Their attitude changed on the fact that I was cancelling one account & could also flick the off contract ph. a/c too. Maybe a lot of cancels were happening that week? In the wash up I was sweetened up with the full waiving of the Oct./Nov broadband bill & I was put on a 12 month $29 cap plan. The waiving of the fees,I feel, compensates me for all the pain & suffering I went through with LARA etc. The Virgin/Optus broadband works better = stronger signal & my VODA phone is good now too. Other things I note. Vodafail have increased their call charges. For me the old was $1min. now $1.35min. On my old service the bill showed 1,000 minutes of voda2voda calls. I was ineligible as was not on qualifying plan? Vodafail forget about loyal long term customers? As market forces see better plans evolve = more GB I found I was on the lower shelf. 2 years ago I was on 5GB for $39 internet. Then they were offering new deals of 6GB for $39. It was only when I asked (via THAT LARA AGAIN) that they gave me an exta FREE GB/mth. They sent me back slapping emails about how generous they were. It was the same deal when they upped it to 8GB. What I'd like to see is some sought of credit system on the monthly allowance that factors in well below cap usage. Like last year in total I used around 45GB out of a total allowance of 96GB. Acually that underusage is a bonus to them as they can resell my unused, 51GB, space again & therefore get a double dip? Australians pay through the nose for mobile services? I'll certainly be looking at better deals in 12 months or so. As with a lot of things you don't know the true value of service until something goes wrong. 2 cases here,1 is recalls with cars & their CEOs refusing to admit there is a problem? 2. Vodafail Aust. CEO playing down problems. Like I saw no announcement from Vodafail about their broadband network had failed in December? CEO speak always tries to play down gross operating problems. I think Vodafails quest for extra profit (cheaper operating networks & 3rd rate 3rd world call centres) is the root cause of most the problems users are discussing here. More oversight & regulation is needed.

I recently upgraded to a new iPhone 4 with Vodafone. This replaced my old iPhone 3G. I have been trying to get the iPhone 3G unlocked so that I can give the phone to my girlfriend since her Optus phone is starting to mess up... I am unable to do this on the internet, presumably because during the 2 years I had my iPhone 3G, the button broke, and it was sent off to Apple to get fixed. They sent me back a new handset (obviously with a different IMEI number) and the Voda site doesn't seem to recognise the new IMEI for unlocking. Irritating, but understandable right?

Wrong!

I have called them 4 times (each time eventually getting to someone, each time being told that it will be sent to the 'unlock team' and they'll get back to me within 10 working days), gone into a store (who emailed the unlock team and CC'd me in, and then the 'unlock team' 'escalated' that email by forwarding it onto someone else), obviously tried online AND called Apple. Apple are able to see that I had one phone, sent it back, and was sent a new phone. They are able to see that I am with Vodafone. They informed me that "the call has to come from the telco for us to unlock it". Why on earth can Apple see exactly what I need, but Vodafone simply can't make that call?! This doesn't really involve money (yet... Let's bet that when I finally do get the phone unlocked, they'll charge me the full unlock fee because I didn't use their online service) I still feel that it is a absolutely awful customer service.

To be honest, I haven't had too much trouble with the actual network, but that might be because I pretty much always use wireless... And when I do use 3G on the odd occasion, it is quite slow, but since it's only occasionally I've always assumed that it was just because my wireless was faster... Apparently I was wrong.

no reception in most of my house ,then have 2 locked prepaids as well as one on 2 year plan so we can ring eac other wgat a joke that is ,,,loys of dead spots all over my area ,drops out ,long cues in customer service ,,,,got told at one vodafone shop it would take hours to get on to them too,,, lots of hundreds hours waiting on phone to complain,, then when u get through they loose you in there system ,i mean they cut you off ,,or u loose connection ,,,,,,,,,,i put up with it for ages till recent stuff on news and of course your anazing vodafail site,,,,please give me back my lost mega hours of lost time and missed calls sms/s you dill heads vodafone u dills

I have been with Vodafone for quite some years now and particuarly in the last year their services have failed me numerously. I have the new iphone 4, and like most people, I have limited to no internet service around the home and on the road, along with extreme delays in downloads, constant drop outs and most times call connections dont even go thru, and if they do, its only after the 4th attempt at calling. I am a young girl that has to spend many hours driving on the highway up to north queensland every couple of weeks, and it scares me to think if I were to break down I would be stranded in middle of nowhere, my phone alot of times doesnt receive calls or send calls, it just goes straight to voicemail without even ringing and doesnt send messages, so to me I have no assurance that I am safe. Also the main issue I have is the constant messages I receive from Vodafone saying that my calls have been blocked and that I need to call customer service to update my address details. Once I called, they had no explicable reason for cutting my phone off, and stated that all bills had been paid on time and they really didnt undsertand and ASSURED it would never happen again. Needless to say this happened every week for around 2 months. And Im sure everyone understands that having their calls blocked for no apparant reason, then having to wait on-hold before finally speaking to someone who most times in barely understandable or calls dropping out in the process of being half way thru conversation to them after all that time of being on hold..it takes around about an hour each time to come back online after THEY stuffed up. This makes it impossible to conduct business or personal matters. Now they have unexplicably blocked my online account and cant explain why they have done that either. So to pay the bill, I must sit on the phone, get halfway thru, then it flicks up "call failed". There is no wonder that Vodafone has left a bad taste in the mouths of almost every person using them!! It has cost us all time and money!

I have an iphone 4 on contract and a vodafone wireless modem which i purchased to use while up the coast on holidays. I get full reception except the connection continually drops out. I run a business and need to be in continual connection to the internet. i can't even access my emails or bank transactions. THIS IS POOR SERVICE

I have already documented my many issues with Vodafone here - apart for a poor reception,poor data download, poor reliability, inability to bill correctly and having woefully inadequate systems and being in denial of the extent of their problems and not putting forward plans on how they will fix their problems they are great. Perhaps they can should have spent some of the money put toward sponsoring the cricket to actually improving customer service.

However I digress. For those interested here is an article on how the same kind of inattention to customers impacted AT&T Wireless in the early part of this decade in the USA. The full article to "Project Management: AT&T Wireless Self-Destructs" is available here http://www.cio.com/article/32228/Project_Management_AT_T_Wireless_Self_Destructs?page=1&taxonomyId=3198 - it is well worth a read and would be quite instructive to Vodafone management.

Reception on my iphone 4 constantly cuts out even with the 'iphone - case'.

Even when I am on the phone to customer service they have to call me back on my landline due to the amount of drops outs and they just say they will note it down on their system.

I have tried resetting my network with the support of vodafone and it doesn't work! I have only recently started my contract with Vodafone :-( Two years of this.

I think some people don't know how to use a mobile phone. If this stupid website succeeds in shutting Down vodafone, then where are their customers going to go? There's basically two alternatives: optus, which is oversubscribed and Telstra, which is overpriced. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. I do agree, however that vodafone's customer service is a bit scruffy, but that doesn't mean that you have to lash out and tell the whole of Australia that you had a bad experience with vodafone.

I hope this website gets shut down.

I am with vodafone for the internet. Although my contract ran out about four months ago. When my contract ran out I rang them up. I was on hold for about 50 minutes, when I finally got through I told them that I wanted to cancel my internet service. The operator said they can not do it from there end they have to get the technicians to ring, which will be 24-48 hours. Guess what no phone call. I rang them back a week later told them the same thing and that I had already rang the previous week. The operator said the same thing technicians have to ring me. Guess what one week later still no phone call. I rang back and tried again, of course it was the same answer as the last to phone calls. So my husband said don't pay them. So we didn't pay them for four months they kept charging and now they have just cut my internet off. I have now gone prepaid with some one else. But as soon as that bill is paid they will connect me back up and its going to be the same story of trying to disconnect.

I moved from telstra to Voda Phone.... What a mistake that was. I have large amount of dropped calls and failed TXT. VodaPhone has very very poor service. I will not be renewing my contract and I warn others to be aware they will NOT get what they pay for....

extremly bad reception an awfull internet coverage.
im on a 100 doller a month ''unlimited'' plan!
my bills has been over this 100 mark every month, altough its IMPOSSIBLE TO CALL because the only customer service rep i speak to is Lara.
if i do end up waiting 2 hours for a ''real'' person i get a stupid indian who cant help me.

This has been the most frustrating experience. After visiting my local vodafone service centre I was told that the CEO is aware of the problem and was told I to call 1555 or their 1300 to cancel my contract. After just over 30 mins on my mobile I hung up. I then used the shop one and waited a further 20 mins. During my time in the shop I witness vodafone selling another 3 mobiles and plans to people in the shop.Still with no luck and poor service from that end as well, I went home and called the 1300 from my landline while my mobile was charging. After waiting for 87 mins on one hand set and a further 54 mins ont he other yes they both wewent flat while waiting I was then told I was not speaking to the cancellation deapartment. I just couldnt beleive it. I said I have just been put through to cancellations." No mame what is your problem, so then I explained it again!I am unable to receieve phone calls the network says I am busy. I dont receive text messages until 8 hours or the next day after they have been sent. Someone was going to get back to me and they called me on my land line number when I was out ( How Convenient!) I have just called the 1300 back again and tried to cancellmy contract as they are in breach of their side of it. HOwever they wanted to charge me over 400 to pay out my contract I said no no. I politely explained to him that there is no cancellation policy as the company is in breach at their end and Im not going to pay for a service in which I dont receive professional coverage.I then expalined how Iwas with in my rights to go to the telecommunication ombudsman and make a formal complaint. Interesting enough the indian man on the other end said as long as I have a trail of evidence proving my claim I was with in my rights to do that. So it appears over in indias call centre they are more than aware of what has been happening but are full of excuses to offer me a free month while they fix my problem and they will get back to me.... You guessed it Im still waiting.

vodafone are shit. my iphone has been trouble since day 1. apple have replaced phone cause vodafone said it was faulty. still no good, so then got new sim, still crap. Can never get onto internet ,when i do very slow or wont open pages. my phone constantly goes to message bank even when im not on phone, to make calls it regulary says call failed, it drops out on calls and messages and voicemails can take up to 3 days to recieve. Vodafone wont help! great customer service. cancelling contract and never returning to vodafone!!!

I have a prepaid phone with lots of credit and have found for about a week that I cannot receive any calls as it has had restrictions placed on it. I then went to my account on the internet and found that my Username has been disabled. I have tried on numerous occasions to ring Customer Service and have had to hang up as spending over 30 minutes trying to get through to Customer Service is not my idea of having a happy holiday. This is very annoying as I cannot seem to get a response from Vodaphone.

god I hate vodafone customer service ..SOOOOOOO bad you can never get your point across, they don't understand a word Im saying..I was supposed to be on the 99 unlimited cap and im trying to explain thats what I signed up for..she keeps telling me im not $%^#&@# how are you supposed get them to understand

I bought Crazy John's prepaid internet, provided by Vodafone, & for the last month my internet connection has been all but non-existant! I spent over an hour on Boxing day checking with their customer service, then upgraded & checked all my end, only to discover that it is indeed related - something their customer service failed to inform me.
As my work relies on a reliable internet service, I will have to purchase with another company & forfeit the outstanding credit. But my opinions will be strenuously voiced at Crazy John's customer feedback, hopefully with many others which might influence them to find another provider!
Any suggestions related to this dilemma are most welcome, thank you.

We have 3 business iPhones using the VFail network, for calls, email, Skype, web surfing and Calendar sync. For at least the last 6 months, we've been unable to rely on them to support our business, as calls drop out (or even more often just don't ring at all), email takes hrs to come in, using the web is unbelievably, frustratingly slow and trying to sync over the network is pointless. VFail currently decides this level of service is worth $280 a month! The best part is that when we DID get through to customer service (yes, you've guessed it, somewhere on the Indian sub-continent, to someone whose first language wasn't English), they offered us a $30 discount - which equates to them saying their service is only 10% worse than it should be!! Telstra, here we come...

Feb 2010 I recieved my bill, $1700 all up for one month. $1300 of it was for less than 5 minutes on the internet. It has taken me almost a year to get hold of anyone even willing to listen to me and even now I'm still struggling. I cannot understand their customer service reps on the phone and they have been extremely rude. Their is no way in hell I am paying for a $1300 mistake on their behalf. This is a $79 a month plan through Crazy Johns and it turned into this.

Stuck on a 24 month contract. Terrible customer service. I was on the phone to Mumbai for 6 hours - repeating and reiterating that I had no mobile coverage. They wanted to investigate because their words ' we have had no complaints about network coverage,. I was furious....it goes on and on.

ive been trying to get through to customer service to send me handset settings for my internet to work. and they still haven't answered my call ! i been on the phone for 1week now for hours trying to get a answer!!!.and reception is really bad!; this is unbelievable ! i'm really disappointed in vodafone ! i thought they were the best company to be with! guess not. !!!!

Extremely poor internet connection-constantly cutting off. Customer service is appalling. Have waited on the customer service line for hours at a time and then just been cut off without any contact. If I can get through to someone they pass me from person to person and then hang up when I tell them there is some problem. Customer service officers have been rude and aggressive.

My phone drops out of service continually, its battery barely lasts a day, yet its a brand new samsung galaxy, it won't send txt messages despite being in full service, it turns itself off regularly and open programs but itself when its locked.I can't download apps for it as it wont connect to the networks, i've sent it back 4 times each time to be told theres nothing wrong with it.i've tried getting hold of customer service, only to be on hold for over an hour and not get any answer

Regularly not getting messages. On hold for ages with customer service. Today my son sent me a msg @ 10 am to let me know what time to pick him up from work and I still havent got it (its now 4.30pm). I was expecting it so I ended up driving back and finding him instead. He showed me the msg he had sent.

reception is usually minimal or non existant. Phone drop outs all the time. long waits to talk to customer service. lose lara its too impersonal. Been with vodafone for 8 years , never used to have these problems. Have had enough switching to Optus, as one of my sons seems to have no problems on it.
Definately VODAFAIL

I signed up to a Vodafone mobile and USB modem more than 2 years ago while living in Melbournes southeast suburbs and Toorak close to the CBD...service in these areas is good. I now live in Briar Hill (post code 3088) between Greensborough and Eltham. Vodafone signal strength is very low, only 1 bar on 3G and 2G services. I cannot even send small emails through my USB modem internet service. I complained to Vodafone on numerous occasions. Each time tthey said Briar Hill has full 3G coverage, they eventually send technicicans to check the signal in my area and rang me back to say all is fine. I continued to call Vodafone customer service and was finally told Vodafone could not guarantee full coverage and service because I had moved address...but hang on its a "mobile" service. The service should be the same regardless of your location within Melbourne city boundaries and they never told me that when I took out the contract.

1. Very Poor to Nil mobile internet coverage 8ks from Sydney CBD
2. Double charging for one account
3. Zero customer service follow up or action after repeated calls and letters
4. Got the TIO to intervene to get some action
5. Will never use, recommend Voda again...ever. 0/10

Guess what everyone!!! The Vodafone site is unavailable. So much for their customer service. The amount of money it has cost me to redial drop outs would be quite substantial. Also many text messages are not delivered and I also don't receive many messages sent to me. I'm changing to Amasym today!

Voda might not have the best coverage but they are still better than optus, at least i can call voda on 1555 with out any credit on my phone, you need credit to call optus customer service.any old employer let me keep work mobile number and when i ported to voda, Optus changed my old employers phone account to my name without my permition and it took 3 months to get it fixed up.

I have been with Vodafone for over 4 years but the last 6 months have been a nightmare. My phone is a critical part of running my startup business and recents issues with coverage and network dropouts mean I can no longer take the risk and will move across to another carrier today. After reviewing my December bill I identified no fewer than 40 calls that needed to be remade due to drop outs mid conversation.
Vodafones response has been appalling they stated when I managed to get through after 57 mins on hold that their network was fine on the same day their CEO issued an apology no less! And to top it off instead of acknowledging all the calls that had to be remade and the associated costs a d discussing how they would compensate that merely tried to convince me I was on the wrong plan and spent the rest of the call trying to upsell me.

I have 6 months to run on an existing contract but we move to Telstra today, knowing while everyones customer service is poor I need to be with the provider with the best coverage. I will deal with the fallout and costs I will incur when I have a phone that connects every time and for the entire call

Vodafone you failure to acknowledge and address my issues through you call centre and refusal to compensate me or even offer to discuss is a factor but the real reason is that you network getting poorer by the day.

My wife has had to revert to 2G on her iPhone 4 as 3G coverage at our home in Gungahlin ACT is just about zero (no it's not a fault with the iPhone 4 antenna as 2G reception is perfect). She is rarely able to make any calls from our area and if she is then the reception is just terrible. Also she signed up for the $49 cap with $5 handset repayment for a new 24 mth plan - now the first bill has arrive and she has to pay $10 p/m for the phone. Customer service didn't help her at all, hopefully the Vodafone shop people will be able to sort it out! Great work Vodafone.

Every call i make or receive either drops out or experiences some issues. Some attemps to call i make dont even go through. I regularly lose reception when a couple of km's from the perth CBD.

I do not receive a reasonable proportion of sms's until a few days later. mms's substantially longer.

I use the internet tethering on my iphone for my home internet use. Currently the broadband works a max 10% of the time. and when it does it cuts out every minute or so and is terribly slow. The 2g internet is fine but thats not what i pay for.

I live less than 4km's from Perth CBD. There is a tower approx 1km on a massive hill from me. I can see it if i went out the front of my house. and no f*cken reception?

The fact we are all paying for their services and the fact they are not delivering their services as outlined in the contract is a joke. I want out of vodafone asap.

I wouldnt expect to keep my job if i only worked less than 10% of the time. so why should vodafone be different? As such, i will not pay them when they are not doing their job.

BTW customer service was a joke. waited 2 hours for the call back (although i must admit the call back idea is a good one - not sure if this is a common thing its just the first time ive experienced it). in the end all i got told was reset the phone - which made no difference.

So i currently write this using crappy 2g speeds. takes several minutes for a page to load. seems slower than i remember the old 56kb modems on dial up connection used to be.

We signed a contract stating we will pay $XXX for them providing YYY. If they dont provide YYY thats a breach of the contact. they dont care about that but. I garantee as soon as we stop paying $XXX theyll be chasing us for every cent!

Excessive phone bills, non-existant wireless internet coverage (in North Sydney), extremely poor customer service and being kept on hold for hours while being "cold transferred" to different departments and different customer service queues to deal with issues.

Out of contract now but wanted to unlock my phone today - they tried to charge me $50 to unlock a phone that was already paid off. Got it after hours of discussions with CS, Supervisors and Managers. Wasn't happy about having to explain the situation at least four times to each customer service representative and being kept on hold for 50 minutes.


Would also like to include my short experience as a temp employee at Chatswood Head Office where I was treated in a disgraceful manner. I was given an initial run down on the job then left to my own devices with no support staff network and no staff available with knowledge of my job role, office floor procedures or any IT troubleshooting (they had just fired the only IT guy!!!!). No staff member around was able to help with any issues raised - was always told to call a different staff member, however nobody could help with anything. Was fired on the spot on Day 3 because supposedly I hadn't handled a situation well - would have been nice to have some team support. They were just so rude.

Left Vodafone as a customer immediately after - only way to do it though was to stop paying bills and have them cut off my service and pay a debt collector. (It worked, but I wouldn't recommend it. Credit is cleared in full).

Open letter to Vodafail (also posted on Vodafones Facebook page):-

Your mobile broadband service - if you can call it that - is abysmal, to say the least.

But first, it is only appropriate that I start by stating that I only 'like' your company on Facebook because that's the only way I can start this thread. And Facebook is one of the few options I have left to communicate with you.

I far from like your company, your appauling customer service non-standards and your complete an inappropriate disregard for providing any level of service that you promote to proffer. But I digress.

When you were 3 you promised me the world. You couldn't deliver. When you transferred me to Vodafail you reluctantly apologised and promised me the world again with the added promise that the previous woes would never be repeated. They have been. Repeatedly. It took 4 months, constant phone calls, threats of legal action and contacting the police and TIO about your harrassment to make the 3 bills stop coming.

You've told me I was the only one with network issues. That there were no issues. That you'd oversubscribed your service. That things would get better. You've repeatedly put me on hold for hours. You've transferred my calls to the wrong department. You've hung up on me. You've told me you'll get back to me. That you'll investigate. You've offered pathetic discounts on a service that is barely useable at the best of times and often not useable at all. You've charged me for exceeding my limit the one month I managed to actually get a decent enough service level to use the internet despite months of not being able to use the internet allowance I've paid for in other months.

These are but a few of the lies and hurt and frustration that you have subjected me to. And now I learn I am not alone. In fact it would appear that I am a part of the majority.

So now I've stopped calling you. I've also stopped paying your bills. I can't get through to you on the phone to find out if you have a direct debit authority but I'm contacting the bank to make sure that if one exists it will be cancelled.

It's time for you to contact me. So now I'm waiting for you calls. So I can put you on hold. And hang up on you. And transfer you to the wrong department. Then one day I'll answer and I expect an apology. A big one. With bells and whistles.

In the meantime, I'd appreciate it if you would fix my internet, so I can use all the internet time I've paid for in the past and never managed to get access to. Then you should call me so we can discuss the closure of my account with no penalty to avoid yet another complaint to the TIO.

I was on hold altogether for approximately 4 hours trying to speak to a customer service operator the other night!
I have a log of all the calls i make on vodafone coz i know they have not really been good at providing customer service in every way! Should anyone wish to see my 'log book' please contact me as i'd like to be compensated by vodafone too!

I stupidly swapped to Vodafone after being a 3 customer with no reception in my home in metro Melbourne, thinking my endless reception issues would go away. I was told that since 3 and Vodafone are now 1, this would be the only way I could cancel my contract without paying a fee (which makes no sense, as I was paying for a service that was never provided), I was also assured many times that even though there the same company the operate out of different phone towers and my area was not a blackspot with Vodafone, and no blackspot = no reception issues. FAIL!!
I have no service whatsoever at my workplace (same area) and my Internet NEVER EVER works, unless ofcourse I am at home using my wireless Internet, where's my 2GB of data? Why can't I use it? And why-oh-why am I still being forced to pay for it?!
Ridiculous! Rule out Vodafone and rule out 3 for your next service providers, as not only is there service non existent but there customer services sucks just as hard!

After waiting on hold for over 30 mins to speak to a customer service rep, the call dropped out. The same exact thing happen again two times after that. After an hour and a half i finally got to speak to a customer service rep, but i could not understand a thing they were saying due to their thick accent and poor english. they clearly could not understand a thing i was saying either, so i politely ended the call and just gave up. Thanks for stealing 2 hours of my day again Vodafone. Your customer service is embarrassinly bad - the worst i've ever encountered.

Yep, Im just one of the many and just spent most of my new years day on the home phone to a customer service person in India repersenting Vodafone after not getting anywhere with a overcharged account, I asked for a manager 2 hours and 10 minutes later I have been given a credit for the over charged account and told that in two weeks Vodafone will have the best service in australia!!! interesting. I have no reception at my home, I travel from west of Noosa to Maroochydore on a daily bases and only have reception for no more then 10% of the trip, when I do get a call it normally will drop out before the end of the conversation. I have been a Vodafone customer for more then 12 years now and after being extremly loylal I have had enough, the phone I have under contract (Nokia N97) turns itself off, freezes, tells me I have no memormy left and will not operate currectly, I have no less the 3 times reported problems with the handset to Vodafone Noosaville (Civic centre) only to be told that the handset is now out of warrenty by 2 days and it's basicly my problem. The Vodafone computer system has no detail of my last 2 reported issues with the phone (who's not doing there job!!!)so I now sit here writing this after being on hold 6 times over 4 hours and 17 minutes waiting for a return call as the last 2 calls where from the wrong department? it has now been a futher 14 min and still no reply but the last person did tell me they can offer a $10 discount for the remainder of my contract and free Vodafone to Vodafone calls "WOW" that's going to help someone who struggles to get reception.
I was told that network connection can come out to my area and check the signal strength and if it's not up to scratch mt contract can be terminated, thats if they ever get back to me??? its now 4.25pm I made my call to them at 11.59am good to see there fixing things. The first person to read this will be the only person to realy listen, sadly.

I moved from Toowong to Nundah and have noticed that the coverage in my new residence varies from poor to no coverage at all. Outside the house is marginally better. At the time I was self employeed and the mobile number was my contacts with my clients. After contacting Vodafone this solution was suggested to me, buy and used a bluetooth headset with the mobile phone placed in a locations where it would be be able to make and receive call.
This was a brand new Blackberry Storm and email was important to me as well.
I recall that on next occasion that I reported this reception problem and I was told that a technician would survey the area. This is on file. I have since called again to voice my fustration again. The result was acknoledgement of a problem. I explained my situation again and in particular the fact that I was not getting the service that I was paying for each month.
The customer service operator without any hesitation offered to reduce my monthly plan from approx $109 to approx $65, with no fees for changing plans while on contract.

I now am out of my contract and have reduced my plan to $45.
I have been a customer with Vodafone for many many years, does loyality count for nothing? Why should I continue to put up with this?

No coverage area's exist, don't pretend that they don't, I live in one.

My only alternative is to switch carriers if I want my phone to work at home.
But what good will that do.

I've been trying to contact Vodafone for the past few days, and have not been able to get through to 1555. All it does, is 3 beeps, and hangs up.
I am unable to use my 3G internet connection when away from my WiFi at home, and my calls keep dropping out, regardless of where I am.
I did not sign up for this shit. Bad Customer Service and extremely poor reception. Why am i paying again??

Constant failed reception, Internet dropouts, delayed sent messages, delayed received messages, delayed voicemail, incorrect account balance bills, overcharging, incompetent customer service. I have had people try to ring my mobile and it will go straight through to message bank, my phone won't even ring and it will have full reception. Vodafone is an embarrassment to themselves and will no longer benefit from my customer loyalty. Nor anyone else's if I can help it.

Having huge reception issues, data...what data?? Dropouts all the time. Customer service (to India) on hold for up to an hour and then charged $76 for the privilege!! Worst thing is that we have a Vodafone tower 100m at the end of our street .... WTF.?????

I am a prepaid customer. In the last 2 months, I have a lot of calls of 1 or 2 seconds generated from my mobile number which I did not made. For every such call 74 cents are deducted from my prepaid account.Yesterday I had 5 such calls charged even when my mobile was not switched on.I called customer service and they denied any problems at their end. I wonder anyone else has similar problems.

does anyone know which mobile providers don't use Indian call centers for their general customer service?

I am so sick a tired of trying to deal with this company!!! After being with a different service provider for over 10 years I approached DUDphone & was informed by the sales attendants at Crazy John's in Ballarat that the coverage was excellent in this area, and they further stated that coverage would be even better in the up coming months as a new tower was going up in Daylesford. In my profession I rely HEAVILY on my mobile phone & this was a crucial factor when changing service providers. (Wasn't I an idiot). It clearly states in my contract, "I have discussed and understand Network Coverage provided in the areas I require usage."

Service and coverage have provided a headache since day 1 although I persisted for quite some time. However, of late, the persistant dropping out of phone calls, colleagues telling me they have been trying to ring me and getting a recorded message that the phone is not in a service area. People ringing my wife's mobile (optus!!!) while she is working beside me because they wish to speak to me but can't get through to my phone, receiving text messages 24hours after they have been sent. To send a message from my home, which is 1.5km from the vodaphone shop, I have to walk around the house trying to find reception like it was way back in the early 1990's!!!

I made a complaint in October 2010 and was told I haven't complained enough and that they would send me a new sim card! Guess what?? No improvement at all!!

I rang again of on friday the 17th of December at my wits end and after hearing through the media that vodaphone was having to release customers from their contracts due to poor service and coverage. Whilst on the phone to customer service they had to ring me back three times due to the call dropping out. They finally put me through to accounts who were in the process of trying to tell me that I would have to pay for the termination of my contract when the phone call dropped out again. Within minutes it became clear that they had disconnected me, No phone call to tell me what was going on. At that point I rang back and after a 40 minute wait was told that my account was terminated and inactive, no discussion of fees.

I have since connected gone back to my old service provider but they have locked my iphone.

I also want an explanation as to a text I received in the last few days stating that I owe vodaphone an early contract payout sum

I would not have asked to get out of the contract a couple of months early if they had have met their part of the contract. Vodaphones service and coverage has been absolutely appalling and Vodaphone have failed miserably at fulfilling their part of the contract. I was a loyal customer to Vodaphone up till this point but given the poor service and failure on the part of Vodaphone, I fail to see how in good conscience they would seek monetary renumeration for the early termination of my contract.

Well,
Vodafone completely failed. I complained. They didn't fix the problem but they DID give me a credit.
An "Extra" credit. What is that worth? NOTHING!
Can I use it to recharge my account? NOPE
Can I use it to download something? NOPE
What's it good for? ? ? ? ?
NOTHING I have ever or will ever be interested in.

Vodafone has again MISLEAD me and provided THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF CUSTOMER SERVICE.

Vodafone treats you with contempt.
Vodafone is not interested in your problems.
Vodafone will not help you in the future.

I PHONED THE TIO THIS MORNING (FRI 31-12-2010 AT 10:32AM), THEY TOLD ME THAT BEING A PRE-PAID CUSTOMER I HAD NO RIGHTS TO COMPLAIN ABOUT VODAFONES POOR PERFORMANCE, QUALITY, AND BEING MADE TO WAIT FOR HOURS ON THE NO HELP CUSTOMER SERVICE LINE IN INDIA. THEY TOLD ME THAT THEY COULD ONLY ASSIST IF I WAS A POST-PAID CUSTOMER.
THANKS MR CONROY FOR YOUR DEPARTMENTS FAILURE AS WELL AS VODAFONES FAILURE TO LOOK AFTER ITS CUSTOMERS. BEING BILLED OR PREPAID.

I have had the absolute displeasure of dealing with Vodafone 'Customer Service' on 4 occasions in the last 4 months. Every time I approach a Vodafone store with my queries, even after a lengthy wait instore, I am then told they cannot help me and i need to contact ' Customer Service' - which roughly translates to 'If you are not here for me to sell something to, please contact our offshore contact centre'. I upgraded from the iPhone 3 to the iPhone 4, which required a micro-sim. I was instructed to contact 'Customer Care' and activate my new sim. After customer care had done this my call was terminated mid sentence. An hour later my new phone and sim card still were not active. I called back and was told to give in another hour. 24 hours later and still no access to the network. At first i tried to access the ' complaints line' but was cut off 3 times in succession. When I finally spoke to someone, after 45 minutes, i was told that 'someone' hadnt fully activated the account and to wait another '20 minutes'. 8 hours later, i still had no access. Tried again to call the ' complaints' line and again just kept getting cut off. When i finally got to customer service i was told it would be active in 20 minutes and they apologised for the previous mistakes. Why, if it finally took 20 minutes, did it take 3 days for that to happen. And why was i still charged for those 3 days access??? Following this, my phone was stolen. I called Vodafone to report this and have the phone barred. 6 hours later, my phone was still taking voicemail, for which i am charged. (The further charges to the account have only been rectified after many hours again on the ohone to vodafail.) Called again, waited more than an hour, finally spoke to someone and explained that i had my old iphone with the old sim card inside and to reactivate that one. I was told 20 minutes. I called again in 2 hours and was told that everything would be fine after a 30 minute wait. I had network access for 25 minutes before it was cut off. I called again and was told ' this phone has been reported stolen' I tried at great lengths to explain the situation to punjab but he then referred me to another department, who asked me the same security information before transferring back to the same person ( another 20 minutes ). I then again attempted to contact the 'Complaints dept' , was cut off 3 times before i spoke to some one who said, im sorry for that but there is not much i can do, i will talk to the person that made the mistake, but i will have to transfer you to someone else to have t rectified' (another 25 minutes). In the next week the sim card was disconnected 3 times based on the phone being ' stolen ' meaning i lost about 2 hours waiting online and 3 full days of 'access' to the network - for which i was still charged. I then attempted to change my number with vodafone, requesting my contract number be transferred to a pre paid sim and my contract be issued a new number. I made this request at vodafone bondi junction, and was advised again to call ' Customer Service'. I called India and was told no, this needs to be doen in store. Went back to the store, spoke to the same guy that directed me to CS in the first place, who then got his manager who told me that what i spent 4 days trying to do was not actually possible. I was given a new number,, but had to retunr to the store 24 hrs later to have a new sim card issued because after cancelling the number the sim card was cancelled too. I also recently recieved an ' your phone is about to be cut off' sms from vodafone, but no bill to be paid in my email as usual. Again, I called complaints, and waited 38 minutes to be told it was sent. I asked for it to be re-sent and told it would be immedeatley. I still have not recieved a bill. When i Called to advise that the outstanding account, as detailed in the sms i recieved, had been paid via 2 different transactions, i was told ' im sorry sir but the 'system' will only allow me to input one transaction number and amount, so your phone will still be cut off after the weekend and you wil have to call back next week to advise that you have made another payment. I have recently driven from Mackay in far north Qld to Sydney. From Kempsey to Sydney I have driven many time before on the same roads with no problems. I managed to get coverage on less than 10 % of the ' National Highway'. Maybe, next time Vodafail plans an /aquistion' and considers it and 'achievement' to be finally operating off their own network, they should not choose the network with the worst reputation for coverage in australia. A copy of this compaint has been sent to the TIO and i await confirmation of my desire to be released from my contract and never, ever, ever have anything to do with Vodafail and their pack of incompetent 'off shore staff' ever again

poor network coverage. no latest USB stick driver for windows 7. website is always unavailable. customer service is far more idot.

I have been with vodafone for a couple of years now (24 month contract).
Regularly I have no service in the CBD and inner city suburbs; calls will go straight to my voicemail and often I will not receive the voicemail for a number of hours or days.
Furthermore, whenever I try to contact Vodafone customer service, I am often left on the phone for at leat 30 mins and sometimes my call drops out at the customer service end.
To make matters worse, the internet on my iPhone is extraordinary slow.

Waiting at a store for 45min waiting to upgarde / renew one of my phones and then being told that they are out of phones and being sent to another store. When I arrived at the next store and after another 50min wait to find out they have a 10 phones I wanted in store but wait... Oh sorry you are a loyal customer with more that one phone. We cannot upgrade / renew your contract in store that has to be done on the phone with vodafone.

After hours on the phone and many different people the outcome is that I need to find another carrier. All they wanted is to flogg me a phone that I did not want. Oh if you want to complain just send a email via the website. Fanstastic service NOT.

Just like everyone else. Poor service, delayed text messages, delayed voicemail messages, cotinuing dropping out calls, can't even connect calls most of the time. I live in Cronulla, Sydney. Vodafone is no help, they come up with the same story about upgrading the towers that they've been using for the past 12 months. I want out of my contract with Vodafone.

I'm not actually in a mess as I cancelled my contract and went with Telstra instead. My situation was simple, I was out of contract and wanted an iPhone4. Vodafone couldn't give me one as they were out of stock (fair enough these things happen), but what pissed me off in the extreme was that no-one there could help me at all. No-one in the store could put me on a wait list either officially (we don't have a list) or unofficially ("Mate here's my number just give me a call when they come in" - "Sorry its more than my jobs worth to do that"). They directed me to the customer help line (an oxymoron with Vodafone), but someone gave me a tip to just say "complaint" to every question which reduces your normal 60 minute wait to 20 minutes. However when getting through to a human he helpfully said I'd called the wrong number and gave me the iPhone4 line to call. I blew up and said I was going to cancel my plan and go with anyone else other than Vodafone (I'd been with Vodafone for 8 years). He said he'd dial the number for me and patch me through when I reached the front of the queue "sometime in the next 2 hours" he said. I never heard from him again and went with Telstra via the Apple Store. Your really don't deserve to be in business when you have established customers wanting to renew their contracts and the folk in the stores and on the helplines are not even empowered to take their money- pathetic

I was formewr employee of vodafone who decided prepaid mobile broadband was a good option for me, convinced by vodafone emtremely competitive pricing i bought with them. As i get home im excited to browse the internet as this is new for me. As employee coverage maps were easily accessable in which my area was completly covered in the 3G network which was great as coverage is not a problem. Installation was simple and easy and start-up ha instructions provided. The problem however as cheap as vodafone was was it never worked, browsing times were etremely slow and at one point timed the download time between web pages the longest ranging 7 and half mins, other times is was so slow it often came up wit browsing errors. So i rang through to data support in which spent tree hours troble shooting everything from my computer settings, to admin rights, to sim swaps at which nothing worked. Working at vodafone i knew the problem was coverage however i was dealt as this was the most unlikely scenerio. I was later told that they would work on solving the problem and to let me know that i would recieve a call within 24 hours. No call came. So i rang again only to trouble shoot the process the exact same way the previous day. Lucly for me the manager at the store ended up writing it off, however can completly understand customer anger and dissapointment to faitfully buy a product with a large amount of promises only to find a second rate service and poor customer service. Unfortunatly people are sucked into buying the lowest price product on the market, but aske yourself is trouble od troubleshooting hours on end and returning a device worth the couple of dollars saved. I ended up buying with telstra and while customer care is only slightly better the coverage is amazing. More expesive but works and works fast.

Another issue i had was when i bought a recharge online for my prepaid account only to be billed twice. I rang up customer care to query why this had happened only to by hung up on, So i rang agin at which i was told it was a mistake and theat the money would return to my account with a week. It did surprinsly, however this is caution to check ur accounts as an employee i have witnessed many mistakes, weather dilberate on vodafone behalf or coincidental be safe and check.

I am sick and tired of having no network and no internet.
my service is dropped regularly and in particular I have not had an internet service on my phone for days now.
did not matter whether in sydney or up on the central coast where I live.
I am sick of ringing them only to be talking to someone in a foreign country who is unable to help properly as they have a very limited understanding of what they are doing.
I want something done about the call centers in foreign countries that all the big businesses are using now.(they are all cheating us now)
I want it to be illegal to give our jobs to foreign countries.
Its not right to do that to Australians needing jobs and its not right to force australians to deal with people who cant be understood.
this is not right and I believe it is providing us with VERY POOR service.
I believe these companies to be making the complaint process as difficult as possible so people just give up.
I suggest people also look at ways of making the government outlaw these call centers.
I have had so many calls end in total frustration after talking with people who are in India or the Philippines that are unable to handle 99% of our problems.
If the answer is not on the screen in front of them they give you an answer to a question you never asked.

Vodafail is crap. Poor reception and poor service (can't even speak English). Then again, you have to be a little ignorant to have gone with them in the first place! Lesson learned this time around, huh?

iam on the phone to customer service now and i have been waiting for 50 min just to speek to someone its stupid and the biggest wast of money and time if vodaphone knows how doggie there company is they should just call it quits cause there is no way people are going to put up with this bull crap is it really that hard for a company as big a vodaphone to provid the servive there offering everyone knows ther they have enough money for it

I have been a Vodafone customer for a while now for the simple fact that I liked there cap plans, but as a single mother with 5 young children, I like to travel away, but it's quite stressful not always having reception incase something happens, my battery life decreases rapidly trying to get reception, not only out of town but in town too, calls drop out, msgs aren't sent, then they get sent twice or three times and each time are at cost to me. Each time I ring for customer service I'm given the run around and transferred to many different operators, who then have to transfer me back and forth again, And that's after I have been on hold for a good 20 mins or more, my calls are sometimes disconnected from them for no apparent reason, they ask you to leave your number for them to ring back in a set amount of time and they don't always contact me, it recently took me 4 days to have my plan changed and now I have been told I have to pay for the my normal plan as it had already started and then my new plan I'm now on. Which I had made the phone call before my old plan was set to run out.. alot of the times I text to get an updated balance to keep an eye on my credit, I'm sent back a msg stating the service is currently unavailable and sometimes I have exceeded my limit due to not knowing the available amount left. My sessions for Internet is timmed out and unable to load due to loss of reception. Msgs that have been sent to me can take up 12 hrs to reach me, some phone calls aren't coming through which are very important.

Hi i am from perth w.a. i signed up for he mobile broadband in jan this year the service reception is so poor the signals used to drop frequently. i started to call them in july when i moved to new place the signals problem became wrost.when i called they assured me the problem is going to be solved with in 20 days and they r going to call back.until now i made many calls regarding this problem the time of answering call is 1hour-1:30 hour.this month i got a fine of $45 parking fine, because i am on the phone talking to them.
1.They fail to provide the customer service as well technical service.
2.Providing false information as i got dates noted when i called them they said i called 3-4 times.
plz some one tell me how to sue them, get compenstation

Coverage for broadband plans (and my iphone) is ridiculous! Called 'customer service' (waited over an hour to speak to someone) and was told to try my device in another location. I don't care if it works in another location, I need it to work at my house. Very frustrating. Staff in the stores don't seem to be able to solve any queries either (they seem to be just as disgruntled as the customers) as they have to call the same phone number we do!!!

I'm currently on vodafone's $99 cap. I have been with then since the old analog days and in the last 3 years i'm ready to have a sense of humor failure!! The coverage problems seem to happen whenever you step out of the sydney basin anywhere up or down the east coast and also massivly inland, a 3hour blackspot between yass and griffith is not ideal in anyones books!! The data download on the iphone is appaling any slower and i fear my phone may lapse into a coma!! and thats when i actually have 3g coverage. the sutherland area seems to be the worst for coverage in my opinion.
Now for the customer service. I have no problems with other cultures however you can not solve my problem if you do not understand my question!!! i would love to have my problem solved within the first 5 minutes of the phone call however currently it takes five minutes for the operator in India to get my name correct!! I spend in excess of $1600 a year with vodafone, and they are just about to lose that now and if that seems like only a drop in the ocean will consider 5000 people pulling up stumps too woops vodafone now it's more like $8 million. all i want is good service that i pay for i know things happen in big networks and thats ok but 3 years of crap and lost income is too much!!

Very poor service at Westbourne Park. calls drop out and signal strength rarely above 1 bar. Frustrating with the number of phone calls that need to be remade or returned because of drop outs.
Maybe the current management team at Vodafone was secretly installed by Telstra to boost their share price?

constant drop out in service, the worse customer service when calling there 1300650410 number ive waited 2 hours then been hung up on, this happened twise over to days...billing me 181.00 on a 29 plan ...

I am self employed and have recently found that my phone is suffering massive drop outs even in cbd. I am currently trying to cancel my plan and I have been on the phone with them for now over 35 mins. The customer service centre will not tell me my details of contract ie how long to go. I must stress that I have never een a late payer

This is a verbatim copy of a 5 star review of Vodafone from an apparent employee on http://www.productreview.com.au/showitem.php?item_id=35012

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"Overall: I am tired of reading all these reviews and them just constantly saying, "the service with vodafone is crap" The merge between 3 and Vodafone has affected the 3G network immensely. Vodafone are aware of this situation they are trying to improve it by putting up more towers and in the next 18 months looking at introducing a 4G network. With the storms occuring this summer it has become very difficult to fix the network. It's not as if Vodafone are turning a blind eye to the issues all the customers are facing. Vodafone knows the service is constantly dropping out. It mainly effects the touch screen smartphones, eg. Iphone, N8 & HTC's. The issues happening with Vodafone is the network not the customer service itself. With the network being down there is a high demand on phone calls to the customer care team, who are situated in mumbai, so yes the people who answer the phones are of indian relation. They try very hard to help find a solution to each individual customers enquires, but you have to understand that just as much as we have trouble understanding them, they also have trouble understanding us and our accents. So being racist and carrying on saying that you are getting frustrated with the team is just childish. They wont have all the answers and until we recieve information from Vodadone Head Office themselves we don't have much information that we can forward on to our customers. WE KNOW THAT CALLS ARE DROPPING OUT. WE KNOW THAT THERE ARE HIGH DEMAND ON PHONE CALLS TO THE CUSTOMER CARE TEAM. WE ARE TRYING TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM. ITS THE NETWORK ITSELF NOT THE SERVICE YOU RECIEVE FROM A MEMBER OF VODAFONE."

End Quote:
It appears highly likely that Vodafone management are fully aware that they cannot provide the service they contracted, yet still they are advertising furiously, and signing gullible customers to a failed service. This is tantamount to fraud.

Adam, coud you please pass on the above link to your new media mates; they might like to pick up on the 'poor Vodafone support staff' angle, given the shortage of other 'news'.

I am right this minute, 103 minutes to be exact, on hold waiting for a Vodafone representative to speak to me but get this, at the 43 minute mark I was connected to a Customer Service dude, he put me on hold to address my issue and two minutes later I was back in the que! Now if that's not enough, exactly the same thing happened to me yesterday, wait, there's more! The second Customer Service dude I spoke to promised he was going to monitor my issue (Nokia N8 unlocking) and ring me back at 9:30am, no call! Still more, it probably won't surprise any of you but over the last week I have spent a total of 12 hours and 15 minutes on hold waiting to speak to someone who is powerless to help me, after all this I am no closer to resolving my issue than I was before I picked up the phone for the first time. I just signed a contract for 10 Infinite 45 plans with handsets, if Vodafone don't let me out of my contract this is going to end up in court for sure. They are the most useless company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with!

I have decided I am just going to cancel my contract as I have been paying between $100 - $150+ per month and kept my side of tthe contract, however Vodafone has failed to keep their side of the deal as I cant use the phone: Call drop outs no Internet coverage messages take 5+ days to come through sometimes. I have been loosing Business because clients cant get hold of me of leave messages and I dont get back to them, simply because I DONT receive them!!! Then you go into the shop and they cant help you have to sit on the phone for 30....40....50+ minutes to finally speak to someone that can barely communicate in the same language and is no help!!!!!

Fair play Adam Brimo, I started something similar to you about 2 years ago after I got so pissed off with Vodafone I bought www.vodafoneaustralia.com.au - presumably forgot to renew their domain name!

I posted my own horror stories up there for all to see and eventually got a phone call from their lawyers so I gave it back to them.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080630060319/http://vodafoneaustralia.com.au/

Nice one.
Douggie.

I haven't really had reception in my house for quite a while. My messgaes are taking anywhere between 2-13hrs to be received and I have to drive 5 mins or more from home before they come through.
Charlestown Square has a new section opened up and the reception is piss poor. You go and talk to their customer service about it and get told it's being looked at. Every other person who is in the same part of the shop has reception why can't Vodafone? he funny thing is they have 2 stores in Charlestown square and they don't care.
The customer service side is also poor, phoning them is a joke. I rang them the other night and was on the phone on hold for over 70mins each time and ended up hanging up as I got no one. I rang back the next morning only to get straight through this time and it was an Indian call centre (I think). He was helpful, but I don't think he understood my problem.
My new Nokia N8 is another problem. This seems to be too much hard work for them and they don't know anything about this phone either. The girl told me to take the battery out of my phone (when I need a special torque screwdriver to do this) before I sent my phone to them for repair. Look up about phones which you are selling. They had no idea with this phone before and after it came out. I seem to know more than what you do!

I am sick and tired of having no network and no internet.
my service is dropped regularly and in particular I have not had an internet service on my phone for days now.
did not matter whether in sydney or up on the central coast where I live.
I am sick of ringing them only to be talking to someone in a foreign country who is unable to help properly as they have a very limited understanding of what they are doing.
I want something done about the call centers in foreign countries that all the big businesses are using now.(they are all cheating us now)
I want it to be illegal to give our jobs to foreign countries.
Its not right to do that to Australians needing jobs and its not right to force australians to deal with people who cant be understood.
this is not right and I believe it is providing us with VERY POOR service.
I believe these companies to be making the complaint process as difficult as possible so people just give up.
I suggest people also look at ways of making the government outlaw these call centers.
I have had so many calls end in total frustration after talking with people who are in India or the Philippines that are unable to handle 99% of our problems.
If the answer is not on the screen in front of them they give you an answer to a question you never asked.

My son Ben is close to 19, has been anaphylactic since about 1992 and has been using 3 as his phone provider.

His and my reasons for having a 3 account were:
1. Sharing with Telstra for coverage
2. No problems with roaming
3. Excellent rates/caps
4. Most of his mates were on 3 and therefore there were a lot of free calls.
5. He added a 2 year contract (under my name) recently and got an iPhone 4 (he's delighted with it) however, the reduction in service for the same cap price is a worry and we are now locked in to the poor service for another 20 months or so...

Now we have no certainty of service with the combination of 3 and Vodafone - coverage reduction since 3 and Vodafone joined forces has meant that his Cap of about $40 is now costing nearer $80...

Bottom line is that we had found a good compromise on price and service with the 3/telstra arrangement. Now with the changes it is possible that his life is at increased risk - he carries Epipen and drugs to combat an anaphylactic reaction and whilst 000 should always work, certainty of service to call his support network (parents and siblings) if an attack occurs is severely reduced.

Where do I start? Tried to sign up to new Pocket Wifi, try to sign up to the service online, page keeps crashing. So I call the customer service line, half an hour wait. When I finally get through, the operator puts me through to the department she thought I needed to speak to. Once I was put through, the consultant told me I was in the wrong department and would put me through to another department and guess what? Another 30 minute wait. In frustration, I went down to Highpoing VIC which has TWO vodafone stores. The first vodafone store was out of stock, when I went to the other store, they couldnt find me on the system, and then when they finally did, the system was 'down' and they couldnt sign me up!!! I've had enough of Vodafone's incompetence, everytime I ring its a half an hour wait, I will be moving when my contract expires

thankyou for starting this site
the service is terrible in both ways reception and customer service
they dont seem to care
i cant run a business with the un-professionalism shown by this company
terminate my contract please

I have continually had problems with Vodafone since i signed up to a 24-month contract. I regret the day i made the decision to do so. I got a crap phone with a faulty battery. The process to put a complaint to their customer service centre was a debacle. I was on hold for over an hour and transfered from one department to the other. No one knew who would resolve it. The worst was that they activated two services under my name yet another phone number.

Now my family and friends always complain that my phone continues to go on voicemail, they never receive my messages. It is futile to have a phone from them since it acts as a dumby phone only. I am tired of all this. Why should i bear the cost of something i am not even using.

After suffering 2 months of service that was getting continually worse by the week. I decided to spend the next couple of months being shuffled from one department to another before finally being told my area all of a sudden required a new tower. I was then told I would be released from my contract with no early termination fees. Great, except I had to go through the same torturous process with my vodacrap mobile broadband. This was finally resoved in September 2010. I then received a letter from a credit agency through vodafone for an early termination fee. No bill no letters no calls just a letter from a credit collection agency. Now as I try to get my wife out of the same rubbish I went through we spent a whole day using the call back service before being cut off, directed to wrong departments, left on hold for 45 minutes before being hung up on and having no success at all. I will try again today and let you know the outcome. Funny thing is I just received in my in box a bill from vodafone for overdue amount from my mobile broadband. Get ready Vodafone I am dialling now. In all honesty people how can this company survive this, crap service, non existant customer service and a product that has such a bad name. I am willing to bet that this company will cease to exist in the next year.

Advertised prepaid handset offer, tried to buy for 2 days[hours worth of my time]when I did get on, offer had changed.Contacted Vodafone ,handsets still on offer for much larger price,however there reply was hand sets no longer available.Customer service a joke.STAFF KNOWLEDGE - ON LINE STORE WOEFUL.Customer for years.Lost me.

Where do I begin? I have not 1 but 2 phones with Vodafone. I have been a Vodafone customer for atleast 7 years and never have I been so outraged and dismissed by Vodafone themselves. I am a pre-paid customer and I don't know if other pre-paid customers are going through what I am going through. However, I have been insulted, dismissed and treated terribly because I am a pre-paid customer. Are customer's on post-paid being treated better because they can use the whole "i will cancel my contract" to get at Vodafone? I don't know. All I can say is the customer service has been appauling, which is disgusting considering they haven't given me any good service, reception or anything. Pre-paid or not, I am still a Vodafone customer and I expect to be compensated for loss of time, personal business and personal stress that has been caused due to call drop outs, messages that don't get delivered etc.

My husband and I pay a substantial amount each month on our contracts with Vodafone. We live in Brisbane and spend a considerable time at the coast. We send photos of our newborn to relatives in Sydney. They received them up to three days after we send them!!!!!! Having calls drop out is the norm for us especially when up the sunshine coast - you'd think we were in the outback! The Internet is very slow and look, I don't know if every other carrier is the same, it comes down hotbox - if you say you are going to provide a service then do so - if you don't , stop taking our money. It's not about impatience and now now now mentality. It's requiring a multiple million dollar carrier to provide service that it promises. Customer Service Reps cop it from customers because of their employers failure to care. They have their frontline on little money dealing with greedy decisions they make in the board room.

Oh and also - having just moved back to Australia after 20 years in New Zealand and on the Vodafone network there for around 6 years - customer service is quite a bit worse here, but what I can't understand is why the network is absoutely fine in New Zealand? I never had any of these issues until I moved to Australia and joined Vodafone AU.

poor customer service, show no regard for customer loyalty, bad reception.
over the last month i have called them 4 times which has been close to 5 hours. my call was always tranferred, i needed to keep calling back as they failed to return to my call despite saying they would do so within 24hours.
i ended having to go into a store, who them had to contact the same customer service number, the sales guy was on the phone for 2 hours!
the matter has still not been resolved and i was advised to contact the ombudsman. i feel it has gone down hill since they took their customer service off shore.
my wife recently swapped to optus, when she had an issue they quickly dealt with the problem, escalated the issue and quickly reimbursed her. they also made sure they contacted her to sort it out. she also received an apology letter in the mail!
the stark difference in our service and treatment really showed me how poorly vodafone were treating us!

My girl friend called vodafone to get a phone number for RACV. At her expense 6 text messages were sent back to her. All 6 messages were identical.One phone number sent 6 times is not even a joke. Its ridiculous. It also seems to take 24 to 48 hours to receive text messages and voice mail. To bad if there was an emergency. What ever happened to customer service. Two long term customer's will be taking their business elsewhere.

Initially I thought it was my handset that was the problem...this is what I was being told by VF - that my handset was not compatable with VF, wth!!!. Dont listen to VF customer service if they tell you this, its not your handset...its them!

Trouble shooting
Thursday, December 30, 2010 in News

Dear customers,
We want to ensure that the network experience we provide meets your high expectations for service quality.
We have been working hard to improve the network and build in new capacity, but if you are still experiencing difficulties with your Vodafone service, we would encourage you to contact us on 1555. If you experience any wait time when you contact us, please select the call back option and we will return your call.
Our Technical Support Team in on hand to talk to you about your experiences, take note of your feedback, escalate the issue to our Network Team, when required, and we will consider cases where we may provide you with account credits, where appropriate, to compensate you for any recent inconvenience.
To investigate the issue, our Technical Support team, will ask you for a few quick questions:
How long have the issues been occurring?
What location / locations are you experiencing difficulties?
On what dates and times have the issues occurred?
What brand and model of handset are you using?
Once we have established this information, here are some of the trouble shooting steps that we will walk you through, which may help to improve your network experience:
Perform a Manual Network Selection on the handset to confirm we have access from the handset to the network
Switch the handset off and on to check if this then re-establishes the network connection
Check for any known network outages or planned work at the locations
Check the coverage at your reported locations
If the issue is not rectified through the initial troubleshooting it will be raised as a fault for our network team to investigate it further.
Following the investigation by our network team, there will be a number of possible outcomes such as:
Confirmation that there is an impacted site and a timeframe for when the site is due to be fixed
There is marginal coverage in the specific area and a timeframe as to when we expect the coverage to improve.
There is conjestion at the site, which we will seek to alleviate as part of our network capacity upgrades.
If the coverage is not due to improve in the short term, or we cannot suggest a device to improve network performance such as Pocket Wi-Fi or an alternative handset, we will consider a number of options such as the possibility of an account credit until the issue is resolved or releasing you from your contract when an appriopriate resolution cannot be achieved within a reasonable timeframe.
Each individual customer issue can have different symptoms, such as problems with making or receiving calls, dropped calls, delayed text or voicemail messages or slow data speeds, and this is why we need to look at each case individually and provide a suitable solution for that issue. Some issues are quickly solved and some may take slightly longer to resolve. We will do our best to indicate a time frame for resolution of your particular issue.
We have a major network upgrade program underway and the sites that will be upgraded to improve coverage in the first quarter of 2011 will soon be published on this website. We will keep this up to date so you get a better picture of coverage improvements that may be coming soon to your area.
Thank you for your patience as we work through these issues to improve your network experience.
Cormac Hodgkinson
Director of Customer Service & Experience
Vodafone

At first I got the Sony Ericsson c902 on plan from you guys from about 2-3 years ago and i had to return it 3 times due to the phone being a peice of crap. The fourth time the phone was okay, but there was dropouts, message delays and terrible reception, but eh i thought maybe you guys will fix it.

Anyways i decided to stupidly switch to an nokia n97, the customer service girl on the phone told me that its a really good phone. Anyways after a month the phone was buggy as well, dropouts,message delays and the terrible reception was terribly worse and i thought eh ill return the phone and get a new one.... maybe its the phone?

Anyways i got a new one.... SAME FRIGGIN THING!! I even switched my sim card to another phone and its still terrible.

Lets just say no signal for the phone at all at home for the last two weeks. Customer service and network team played tele-tennis passing the hot potato to each other refusing to acknowledge the issue. Did the SIM swap already. Still failed.

There was no ETA two weeks ago and there STILL isnt any ETA to fix the issue. Giving them another couple of days - then TIO here I go.

the network is already bad enough. and the customer service on the phones are not either because they do not even have any records of what deal we signed up for. even the the staff members are not fully corporated with our complaint as they do not believe what we are saying is right. therefore they are not doing anything abut it. 15 people in my friend circle signed up for a deal and none of them are satisfied as the customer service people lied to us or did not put the deal they provided in the system. their goes our big bucks and goes our respect and loyalty to vodafone. our connection was disconnected because they were on a fault. NEVER AGAIN.

Having been a loyal customer of vodafone in NZ first for 10 years then OZ for the last 3 years I am finally taking the leap to telstra. This decision is based on the poor coverage both with broadband and mobile calls/text that I have experienced for three years hoping things would improve and they haven't if anything the situation has gotten worse. This example is for today I received a message from vodafone advising I had three new messages, my phone hadn't rung and the messages were left the day prior on my phone by friends. For the last week and about 5pm every day I have not been able to make/receive calls or text. Vodafone your customer service is just as bad as Telstras, When I cancelled my broadband account there was a credit of $50 on there, it took three months and many phone calls to get this this money transferred to my mobile phone account as I thought this would be straight forward and easy, I would have been better off getting a cheque posted out! I could go on about the coverage and service problems I have encountered only to be informed from the Customer Service staff that it was the phone I had, a phone that your company sold me. Shame on you Vodafone your roll out of improving the system should not have taken three years and the Customer Service you provide is seriously lacking!

rang up customer service aasking why i dont get adequite reception in my area, was told by an Indian on the other end of the phone, that my area doesnt have very good coverage..... i live in Melbourne CDB!

I just terminated early my 24 month 3G mobile Broadband contract in New Zealand. The service is not that good here in New Zealand either. the 3G network never operates at peak performance and for $75 dollars a month its total rubbish. It doesn't matter whether you are on contract or on pre-paid you still pay a fortune for your phone calls at nearly 90 cents a minute. Up until recently Vodafone New Zealand was charging their customers $1 dollar to speak to a customer service representive at their Egypt call centre. Vodafone never again. terry - Auckland - NZ

At home I get limited reception but often find that calls don't come through ie the phone doesn't ring even though it shows 2 bars of reception - the calls go directly to message bank. It happens when I'm right beside the phone so I know it hasn't rung. Txts sometimes take hours to arrive & sometimes don't get to my phone until the next day even though the phone shows reception. WTF? Very unreliable.