Dear visitor,
Since its inception Vodafail.com has made a significant
contribution towards raising awareness of the problems and issues faced
by Vodafone customers.
Vodafone Australia customers have had the opportunity to voice their concerns, their fears and their troubles from every corner of Australia and beyond our borders.
You have gathered the courage to stand up for your rights as consumers and to make your voice heard.
Each and every person who shared their story should have a sense of pride in this achievement and the changes that have occurred since the start of Vodafail.com.
More recently, traffic to Vodafail.com has declined significantly.
Having achieved the goal of raising awareness and promoting concrete action in early 2011, we have now reached the point of closing Vodafail to new complaints.
The site will remain online for as long as possible as a
reminder and an example of what is possible when we share our experiences.
It has been a privilege to run this initiative
and I'm am forever grateful for the help and support I've received. In
particular I would like to thank Melissa, David and Travis for their
continued efforts over the past 15 months. I'm also thankful and humbled by the support of ACCAN, Choice magazine and a wide range of media outlets, blogs and websites.
You can still browse existing stories and find out how to file a complaint if you are experiencing problems.
Until next time,
Adam Brimo
Share Your Pain
| ACT (1140) | Everywhere (19206) | NSW (7557) | NT (170) | QLD (3578) | SA (987) | Somewhere else (224) | TAS (242) | VIC (3573) | WA (1735) |
16483 Someone from NSW thinks vodafone is response to the letter from the CEO of Vodafone. at 31 Mar 2011 06:41:52 PM
Dear Nigel,
I hope you don't mind me calling you Nigel, but seeing as you addressed me by my Christian name, I thought I'd pay you the same discourtesy. I'm sure we have never met personally. But then, Vodafone has always had a somewhat cavalier attitude to customer service, and not only in my experience. The letter of apology (3/3/2011) you sent to me and thousands of other customers was a kind of hilarious insult, and I think even the type of people that subscribe to bestiality websites collectively scoffed at your vapid excuses. I'd have thought it was a risky career move to apologise to your customers in the Telco business, seeing as it's an admission of guilt, which for my money makes you liable to compensate people for legitimate grievances-but that's an unpleasant topic to bring up at this fledgling stage, so we'll come back to that, but for now, I'll say this: apologies don't put dollars back in our pockets, Nigel. If you really wanted to apologise by 'snail-mail,' (which is apparently faster than your connection to 3G) you would have to bulldoze about 500 000 hectares of Tasmanian old growth if you wanted to be comprehensive about it. You say, in the second paragraph of the introduction, that you 'aim to provide our customers with an excellent customer experience and the best possible value, but recently our network and customer service performance, particularly in December and January, fell well below the standards we set for ourselves.' Fuck me, Nigel. That statement alone starts my mind spinning like a one-armed bandit. There's so many goddamn dirty questions (or confirmations of my suspicions) that you've thrown up for all to see that I don't know where to begin. I'll get to most of them in due course though. Pour yourself a Scotch.
Firstly, if the network coverage and customer service had only fallen below par in the months you mentioned, I might not be writing this note, but the fact is the service - both network and customer - has always been an abomination in the face of value for money and basic, honest, human decency and conduct. Secondly, I was amazed to discover that you have standards that you set for yourselves. What, pray tell, might these 'standards' be? It strikes me as standard practise in the Telco industry to yank customers around by their contracts like a choke chain without ever revealing what kind of obligations the service provider has to them, the paying customers. Let me stress that: PAYING CUSTOMER. That's right, old son, you work for me, for all intents and purposes or at least, that's what you should be doing. But all you do is take my money while alleging that you are providing me with something in return. In shabby reality, you're not. I am routinely overcharged for a service that I cannot even use in my own home or suburb. And it's patchy at best throughout the region. You might think we're a bunch of parochial morons out here in the sticks, but cellular technology has been available to us for at least ten years, believe it or not. Word is we'll even be getting the internet soon. Does Vodafone offer internet connections? I'm thinking of getting 56K dial-up. I don't have a landline yet, but I'll get one, because I'll be damned if I'm going to put up with your bullshit any longer.
Yes, a landline. I guess that way if I have to call the police or any other kind of emergency service, the phone connection is less likely to DROP OUT like it does when I use my mobile phone to call them I hate to have to sue you over some grievous, long term injury that I could sustain on my property. Did I mention that I'm a young woman living alone in a relatively isolated area? Yeah, that's right, I live a whole twenty minutes north of the largest regional centre in the Illawarra, and about twenty minutes south of a phone tower at Maddens Plains. In fact, I believe there is a phone tower in Thirroul, which is five minutes away from me. It's built between an Anglican church and a primary school, though the primary school is for Catholics so, I wonder why I can't call a friend on a lonely night, let alone the police or an ambulance? To the best of my knowledge, emergency services are not equipped to receive Morse code, or read smoke signals, which is about all I have at my disposal if something terrible happened. That was the first lie one of your sales reps told me - that Vodafone has 98% network coverage in Australia. Evidently, while the girl in the shop looked me in my good eye and said that, she neglected to mention that the 2% not covered includes a good deal of the Illawarra. Seeing as this was happening at a store in Wollongong, I don't see any excuse for it whatsoever, though I understand that honesty is not the best policy when you're in the snake-oil business. This brings me to a proposition - no - directive that I have for you:
Seeing as you were foolish enough to admit what a monumental balls-up your engineer gimps and sullen service reps made of December and January, I think it's only fair to expect some kind of compensation. I wonder if you would feel the same? It strikes me that you probably didn't become a CEO by lying down like a smack-whore on the nod and getting fucked by every ruthless exploiter that stepped over your body. Well, I don't intend to let that happen to me, so if you've got a problem with this strong suggestion, try and put yourself in my shoes. I bet you can. You don't get to be the boss just because you've got a smooth complexion or do you? Anyway, how's this? You pay me back the two bills I paid during December and January. By the way, nice timing on your Egyptian-style destruction of the communications system, dude. Right smack bang on the summer holidays. So - the bills amount to $84.89 (Dec) and $81.00 (Jan). If I hadn't somehow mysteriously exceeded my cap ($79), which always seems to happen, the sum total would be $158 for the pair, but seeing as your corrupt and/or terminally stupid Nazi debt-collector types like to overcharge me, it amounts to $165.89. There was no way for me to investigate this apparent skimming, because I have a couple of things going on in my life. Like commuting, working and sleeping. Having been on the phone to Vodafone for eight hours (total) one day, I don't feel particularly inspired to deal with your maniacal rhetoric on a monthly basis over a couple of dollars. But goddamn it, you know you take your cut well as I do, and I think that's a lousy way to make money. It's for bums. You grift people who give you their bank details like idiot tourists buying imitation Rolexes in third world countries. You're nothing but a bunch of hawkers, con-men and scabs. Your marketing department is run by pimps. The whole operation appears to be based - almost completely - on deceit and subterfuge. It's as if your organisation is run by an army of street thugs, and the call-centre workers are on the front line but I'm not saying the others are any better. I don't want you to feel singled out here, Nigel, but as the CEO, I would imagine you should be held responsible for the conduct of a major corporate entity whose moral compass has apparently been hurled into a snowdrift in the Arctic Circle.
Anyway, a few more stipulations regarding the money I am invoicing you for. I would, obviously, like to be released from this 'contract' I'm allegedly bound to. Seeing as you don't appear to take the contract seriously, I don't see why I should. When you show me your policies, codes of conduct etc, (which I was told were internal documents' when I asked to see them) I might entertain the idea that this contract' is in any way legally binding. You want to hope it is, because it's sure as hell not based on good will, is it? Telcos in this country have been getting away with treating people like shit and charging them for it for years. That is not going to happen to me anymore. So, I'll take the $165.89 - every cent, thanks - and be released from the contract without severance fees or string attachments of any kind. That deal goes a damnsight further than fair, Nigel, and you know it. We're talking about real money here, not that Monopoly-fantasy-call credit horseshit you use to dupe the rubes out of their shiny pennies. And I know that $165.89 ain't much to either of us, really, but I'm asking for it because it's money you admitted you don't deserve. Billing cycle begins on the first of the month. Failure to pay within the first 12 days of the new month will result in a $25 penalty fee!. If you are indeed 'working as hard and fast as [you] can to show [the customer] the changes and improvements [Vodafone is] making,' I want to see the evidence. In the form of cash, old mate. Money talks a hell of a lot louder than second-rate apologies beefed-up with pointless technical details. I hope I'm not being presumptuous, but I'm sure you are aware of this.
Explanations don't come easy in your business, do they? It was easier to get an apology out of you than it is to contend with the unmitigated stream of bullshit that I get from both automatons and humans that man your call-centres, which I imagine resemble some kind of third world sweatshop. Believe it or not, I am a professional - a civil servant, no less - and that is how I am able to pay these inexplicably inflated bills you keep hitting me with. Unfortunately, it also means that after a day of dealing with the disabled that I do not have the patience or inclination to deal with your half-bright service reps when I get home. Not that I can call you from my home, because, as I may have mentioned earlier MY PHONE DOES NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT NETWORK COVERAGE. I hope I'm being plain enough for you to follow me here, Nigel- in fact, it's quite pleasant writing to you, because I haven't been transferred to five different trainee phone monkeys who are pretending that the manager is out to lunch. I suppose you have a harem of PAs to screen your mail, but I pray to the heathen gods one of them hates you enough to pass this letter on to you.
Yours Sincerely,
Ms (SURNAME REMOVED)
I hope you don't mind me calling you Nigel, but seeing as you addressed me by my Christian name, I thought I'd pay you the same discourtesy. I'm sure we have never met personally. But then, Vodafone has always had a somewhat cavalier attitude to customer service, and not only in my experience. The letter of apology (3/3/2011) you sent to me and thousands of other customers was a kind of hilarious insult, and I think even the type of people that subscribe to bestiality websites collectively scoffed at your vapid excuses. I'd have thought it was a risky career move to apologise to your customers in the Telco business, seeing as it's an admission of guilt, which for my money makes you liable to compensate people for legitimate grievances-but that's an unpleasant topic to bring up at this fledgling stage, so we'll come back to that, but for now, I'll say this: apologies don't put dollars back in our pockets, Nigel. If you really wanted to apologise by 'snail-mail,' (which is apparently faster than your connection to 3G) you would have to bulldoze about 500 000 hectares of Tasmanian old growth if you wanted to be comprehensive about it. You say, in the second paragraph of the introduction, that you 'aim to provide our customers with an excellent customer experience and the best possible value, but recently our network and customer service performance, particularly in December and January, fell well below the standards we set for ourselves.' Fuck me, Nigel. That statement alone starts my mind spinning like a one-armed bandit. There's so many goddamn dirty questions (or confirmations of my suspicions) that you've thrown up for all to see that I don't know where to begin. I'll get to most of them in due course though. Pour yourself a Scotch.
Firstly, if the network coverage and customer service had only fallen below par in the months you mentioned, I might not be writing this note, but the fact is the service - both network and customer - has always been an abomination in the face of value for money and basic, honest, human decency and conduct. Secondly, I was amazed to discover that you have standards that you set for yourselves. What, pray tell, might these 'standards' be? It strikes me as standard practise in the Telco industry to yank customers around by their contracts like a choke chain without ever revealing what kind of obligations the service provider has to them, the paying customers. Let me stress that: PAYING CUSTOMER. That's right, old son, you work for me, for all intents and purposes or at least, that's what you should be doing. But all you do is take my money while alleging that you are providing me with something in return. In shabby reality, you're not. I am routinely overcharged for a service that I cannot even use in my own home or suburb. And it's patchy at best throughout the region. You might think we're a bunch of parochial morons out here in the sticks, but cellular technology has been available to us for at least ten years, believe it or not. Word is we'll even be getting the internet soon. Does Vodafone offer internet connections? I'm thinking of getting 56K dial-up. I don't have a landline yet, but I'll get one, because I'll be damned if I'm going to put up with your bullshit any longer.
Yes, a landline. I guess that way if I have to call the police or any other kind of emergency service, the phone connection is less likely to DROP OUT like it does when I use my mobile phone to call them I hate to have to sue you over some grievous, long term injury that I could sustain on my property. Did I mention that I'm a young woman living alone in a relatively isolated area? Yeah, that's right, I live a whole twenty minutes north of the largest regional centre in the Illawarra, and about twenty minutes south of a phone tower at Maddens Plains. In fact, I believe there is a phone tower in Thirroul, which is five minutes away from me. It's built between an Anglican church and a primary school, though the primary school is for Catholics so, I wonder why I can't call a friend on a lonely night, let alone the police or an ambulance? To the best of my knowledge, emergency services are not equipped to receive Morse code, or read smoke signals, which is about all I have at my disposal if something terrible happened. That was the first lie one of your sales reps told me - that Vodafone has 98% network coverage in Australia. Evidently, while the girl in the shop looked me in my good eye and said that, she neglected to mention that the 2% not covered includes a good deal of the Illawarra. Seeing as this was happening at a store in Wollongong, I don't see any excuse for it whatsoever, though I understand that honesty is not the best policy when you're in the snake-oil business. This brings me to a proposition - no - directive that I have for you:
Seeing as you were foolish enough to admit what a monumental balls-up your engineer gimps and sullen service reps made of December and January, I think it's only fair to expect some kind of compensation. I wonder if you would feel the same? It strikes me that you probably didn't become a CEO by lying down like a smack-whore on the nod and getting fucked by every ruthless exploiter that stepped over your body. Well, I don't intend to let that happen to me, so if you've got a problem with this strong suggestion, try and put yourself in my shoes. I bet you can. You don't get to be the boss just because you've got a smooth complexion or do you? Anyway, how's this? You pay me back the two bills I paid during December and January. By the way, nice timing on your Egyptian-style destruction of the communications system, dude. Right smack bang on the summer holidays. So - the bills amount to $84.89 (Dec) and $81.00 (Jan). If I hadn't somehow mysteriously exceeded my cap ($79), which always seems to happen, the sum total would be $158 for the pair, but seeing as your corrupt and/or terminally stupid Nazi debt-collector types like to overcharge me, it amounts to $165.89. There was no way for me to investigate this apparent skimming, because I have a couple of things going on in my life. Like commuting, working and sleeping. Having been on the phone to Vodafone for eight hours (total) one day, I don't feel particularly inspired to deal with your maniacal rhetoric on a monthly basis over a couple of dollars. But goddamn it, you know you take your cut well as I do, and I think that's a lousy way to make money. It's for bums. You grift people who give you their bank details like idiot tourists buying imitation Rolexes in third world countries. You're nothing but a bunch of hawkers, con-men and scabs. Your marketing department is run by pimps. The whole operation appears to be based - almost completely - on deceit and subterfuge. It's as if your organisation is run by an army of street thugs, and the call-centre workers are on the front line but I'm not saying the others are any better. I don't want you to feel singled out here, Nigel, but as the CEO, I would imagine you should be held responsible for the conduct of a major corporate entity whose moral compass has apparently been hurled into a snowdrift in the Arctic Circle.
Anyway, a few more stipulations regarding the money I am invoicing you for. I would, obviously, like to be released from this 'contract' I'm allegedly bound to. Seeing as you don't appear to take the contract seriously, I don't see why I should. When you show me your policies, codes of conduct etc, (which I was told were internal documents' when I asked to see them) I might entertain the idea that this contract' is in any way legally binding. You want to hope it is, because it's sure as hell not based on good will, is it? Telcos in this country have been getting away with treating people like shit and charging them for it for years. That is not going to happen to me anymore. So, I'll take the $165.89 - every cent, thanks - and be released from the contract without severance fees or string attachments of any kind. That deal goes a damnsight further than fair, Nigel, and you know it. We're talking about real money here, not that Monopoly-fantasy-call credit horseshit you use to dupe the rubes out of their shiny pennies. And I know that $165.89 ain't much to either of us, really, but I'm asking for it because it's money you admitted you don't deserve. Billing cycle begins on the first of the month. Failure to pay within the first 12 days of the new month will result in a $25 penalty fee!. If you are indeed 'working as hard and fast as [you] can to show [the customer] the changes and improvements [Vodafone is] making,' I want to see the evidence. In the form of cash, old mate. Money talks a hell of a lot louder than second-rate apologies beefed-up with pointless technical details. I hope I'm not being presumptuous, but I'm sure you are aware of this.
Explanations don't come easy in your business, do they? It was easier to get an apology out of you than it is to contend with the unmitigated stream of bullshit that I get from both automatons and humans that man your call-centres, which I imagine resemble some kind of third world sweatshop. Believe it or not, I am a professional - a civil servant, no less - and that is how I am able to pay these inexplicably inflated bills you keep hitting me with. Unfortunately, it also means that after a day of dealing with the disabled that I do not have the patience or inclination to deal with your half-bright service reps when I get home. Not that I can call you from my home, because, as I may have mentioned earlier MY PHONE DOES NOT HAVE SUFFICIENT NETWORK COVERAGE. I hope I'm being plain enough for you to follow me here, Nigel- in fact, it's quite pleasant writing to you, because I haven't been transferred to five different trainee phone monkeys who are pretending that the manager is out to lunch. I suppose you have a harem of PAs to screen your mail, but I pray to the heathen gods one of them hates you enough to pass this letter on to you.
Yours Sincerely,
Ms (SURNAME REMOVED)
Thanks for an awesome read!
Vodafail.com Moderation Team
Vodafail.com Moderation Team
They simply denied it and hoped no one noticed in the time it took them to install more towers and upgrade their network, for which, like Vodafone, they are constantly still doing.
I have noticed a LOT of pro telstra comments on the site. Is this why they charge like a wounded bull, because that have TWAT monkeys running around commenting on forums against thier competitors?
If that's your idea of courage, I'd hate to see your idea of business sense.
- Ms.
Vonaphone Prepaid thank Goodness!!