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) |
19554 Someone from QLD thinks vodafone is Extreme fail at 30 Sep 2011 04:13:09 PM
Suffered with extremely poor levels of reception and at times, equally poor customer service for around 18 months.
Reception issues are to the extent that almost all calls are very distorted, and the vast majority of calls have to be made at least twice due to the distortion/drop outs (my itemised bills are testament to this!)
After 3-4 calls to customer care, Vodafone offered 3 months of line-rental at a discounted (50% rate), promising that the network in my area would be upgraded to dual band during this period. I have experienced no notable changes.
I am also a Corporate Friends and Family customer with a Vodafone line that used to be serviced by Mobiz, but needed to be ported to Vodafone when Mobiz closed shop. This should have been a simple process of submitting an application form.
I have now submitted my forms twice, and allowed five weeks for my service to be ported over but to no avail.
The most frustrating part of this all has to be the time spent (2.5hours so far) trying to firstly navigate through the automated portion of the customer care, then trying my utmost to stay calm whilst talking to customer care.
The Australian-based Business Team have been particularly helpful (shout out to Gemma and Aidan), but their offshore counterparts seem to be instructed to LIE and insist that they cannot transfer customers through to Australian-based extensions, unless pressed hard on the matter.
This is by no means a racist rant, and it's clearly not the fault of the operators themselves, but it is poor form of Vodafone to be creating so many hurdles for what should be relatively simple operations such as contacting a specific team member when provided with their precise extension number.
Ultimately, I am almost certainly switching to Telstra shortly, happy to pay a premium for what appears to be a premium service (coverage etc) based on friends and family members' experiences.
Reception issues are to the extent that almost all calls are very distorted, and the vast majority of calls have to be made at least twice due to the distortion/drop outs (my itemised bills are testament to this!)
After 3-4 calls to customer care, Vodafone offered 3 months of line-rental at a discounted (50% rate), promising that the network in my area would be upgraded to dual band during this period. I have experienced no notable changes.
I am also a Corporate Friends and Family customer with a Vodafone line that used to be serviced by Mobiz, but needed to be ported to Vodafone when Mobiz closed shop. This should have been a simple process of submitting an application form.
I have now submitted my forms twice, and allowed five weeks for my service to be ported over but to no avail.
The most frustrating part of this all has to be the time spent (2.5hours so far) trying to firstly navigate through the automated portion of the customer care, then trying my utmost to stay calm whilst talking to customer care.
The Australian-based Business Team have been particularly helpful (shout out to Gemma and Aidan), but their offshore counterparts seem to be instructed to LIE and insist that they cannot transfer customers through to Australian-based extensions, unless pressed hard on the matter.
This is by no means a racist rant, and it's clearly not the fault of the operators themselves, but it is poor form of Vodafone to be creating so many hurdles for what should be relatively simple operations such as contacting a specific team member when provided with their precise extension number.
Ultimately, I am almost certainly switching to Telstra shortly, happy to pay a premium for what appears to be a premium service (coverage etc) based on friends and family members' experiences.
I spent a total of 4.5hours on the phone to Vodafone today, the outcome being 100% waiver of cancellation fees, 100% waiver of outstanding handset contributions on both plans. (10 months and 14 months remaining on contracts.)
The moral is, persevere when trying to get your issues resolved. My connection was terminated 3 times during this process (I won't go so far as accusing them of hanging up on me), but I stuck at it, and managed to speak to both supervisors, then ultimately the manager in the "retentions team".
- Main tips are to be polite, whilst reiterating your frustrations.
- Kindly refuse to be put on hold without receiving extension numbers in the event you get cut off.
- Kindly refuse to put up with the bullshit of repeating your entire story to the lowly operators that answer 1555, and insist that you be transferred to the relevant department/extension. Works best if you explain its in both yours and their best interest not to repeatedly waste time in this way.
- Seek reassurance that the person on the other end will call you back immediately in the event the call drops out.
Best of luck guys.
Problem: In August I closed my Mobiz account and switched over to Vodafone Prepaid. In September and October I have still received invoices for call charges for Mobiz, even though I dont have an account with them any more. The amounts are still being direct debited from my bank account.
What did I do: I called Mobiz. But of course, their phone number on the invoice just sends me to 1555 the standard Vodafone customer care. Talked with 4 different representatives who all followed the same steps within their powers and came to the same useless solution of "try calling back in 48 hours". What does 48 hours fix other than that they wont have to fix your problem?
My next idea: Call Hutchinson Corporate Australia. Straight through to a local operator who listened and seemed to find my problems slightly humorous as if she's heard it all before, but understood what I needed. She put me straight through to a Australian Business Team who followed the exact steps the other people had done before.
HOWEVER, this time the girl (Rebecca) while putting me on hold had already taken the initiative to go and speak to her supervisor about how best to solve my problem. Although she had the same results as the other customer service people I had spoke to she told me that she would make sure she gets to the bottom of it for me. She actually WANTED to help and took down my invoice details, customer details and all of that and said she would personally track down with the accounting and invoicing team what has gone wrong and why no one knows if MOBIZ exists anymore.
Obviously I will have to wait a few days for her to follow it up, but I must praise this person from the Business Team who actually showed INITIATIVE in following up the problem to find me a solution.
It actually would SAVE Vodafone money by employing more people like this team (more expensive local customer service operators) who show initiative and can solve a problem on their own within 10 - 15 minutes, instead of the current system of outsourcing to overseas where the people just follow the set script and don't seem to WANT to help you out with your problems and you end up spending 120 minutes on the phone with no resolution.
Why is it that the Australian customer service representative straight away approaches their supervisor without you even requesting them to, when the Indian customer service ones you have to ask like 5 or 6 times and they still refuse to put you onto their supervisor as if you are going to dob them in for doing something wrong. Obviously there is something wrong with how things are being run down there and the culture that top management are sending down to lower employees.