The mess that I am in is how disgusting customers are to us when majority of the employees that work for VHA truly have the best interests of the customer at heart. I don't understand why people think that we live to make our own lives harder by purposely trying to sabotage a customer's experience, when 9 times out of 10, we'd rather not see you again - this demonstrates great customer service, we served all your needs at the initial point of sale.

Yesterday I had a frightening confrontation with a customer that refused to follow company policy with a pre-paid mobile. Instead of complying with company rules, he continued to argue with me and wanted me to prove the policy of which states that I was right in saying that I had to sell him a pre-paid sim with a pre-paid phone REGARDLESS if he was already a Vodafone user. The reason why we do this is so an account is created for the phone in which covers warranty for two years for the handset and when the account is created, it generates an Australian Gov't form in which states that the ID you have given us is correct and current, and to make sure criminal activity with the use of pre-paid sim cards is controlled as much as possible. I had the customer's best interests at heart, yet the customer thought he was right.

He continued to swear at me, raise his fists and threaten me personally all because I wanted to secure an account for the phone incase it was faulty - it was a Nokia after all. He persisted to yell and started to come around the counter to scare me into complying to what he wished. I made the customer by the sim card anyway and strongly advised him to come back into the store when he had calmed down to set up the account or to call pre-paid care. He continued to yell at me and call me offensive names so I left it up to him. I was shaking at that stage because his wife then proceeded to come around the counter also.

If you refuse to read the disclaimer or refuse us the patience for us to explain the disclaimer and you sign it anyway- that's your fault. If you chose to refuse such service which I offered this customer and you lose your receipt - don't come ranting and raving about how you weren't able to gain a proof of purchase of our database because you didn't want to comply. If you still chose to go with a handset even though I have explained its faults that are world known - go right ahead. I am so tired of customers thinking that they know better us when they don't even give the time to consider what they're getting themselves into half the time.

When there is a piece on Vodafone headlining the news reports, the next day is just hell. I'm really getting tired of customers who are trying to use the network problems as a way of getting out of their contracts with a full waiver. Please leave customer care to deal with the customers that have REAL and unfortunate network problems. I'm tired of morons wasting our time and just jumping on the band wagon where there are certain postcodes that are dealing with no network - not just one or two calls that disconnect every few days. No wonder these customers with horrible service can't get through to customer care - some people are just trying to get compensation with no particular newtwork problem.

Sim cards become faulty and corrupt, phones become faulty or are faulty at point of sale without our knowledge and sometimes the traffic is too high to have full signal or recommended speeds. These are out of Vodafone's 'control' and most certainly retail staff.

Honestly, customers have to start taking responsibility for their actions and show a bit more compassion to retail staff. Don't take us saying "I'm sorry but you'll have to call customer care to resolve this issue" as us not caring - this is what we've been told to do. Also, if we tell you that our database is down - it's down okay! It's not that we can't be bothered, it's because we actually can't login to our systems which is just as frustrating for us because we're bored out of our minds. Two weeks ago our database was on fallback for 24 hours and a customer came in that needed a sim swap for a lost sim card. I began to apologise for our database being down and he told me to f off and that I was hopeless before I had time to finish my sentence. I was going to give him a sim card, take his details and perform the sim swap for him when the database was up and running the next morning. Customers don't even give us a chance anymore which is really upsetting.

I have ordered that many customers to leave our stores because of the aggression and disgusting manner in which customers are treating retail staff. Honestly, don't bother telling us at the end of a long rant that it's not "our fault" when you point in our faces and call us hopeless. Remember that we all have phones too and that we're contacted to all different telcos in which we have received poor customer service as well.

This is just as shattering to us as it is to you. I adore working for this company and it's such a shame that this has happened. We don't want customers to be unsatisfied because we're the ones that have to deal with the repercussions. I hope this goes away sooner than later so I can enjoy my job again and give customers great customer service. The same day I was threatened by a customer, I was told by five other customers that they've never received customer service like I gave them. We're not all bad you know. Please remember the more respectful you are to staff, the greater lengths we will go to resolve your issues the best we can.

Also, customers need to realise that 3 and Telstra share networks, as well as Vodafone and Optus share networks. At one point or another, I am certain that you will have poor service at one point or another regardless of what telco you go with.