Letting off steam about Vodafone

It’s less than 12 months since we had lots of complaints about the Three Mobile phone network and now it’s Vodafone’s turn.

Having seen a “two months free” offer to new NatWest Bank
customers last November, I rather foolishly thought I would
change to Vodafone. I spoke to one of their salesmen who came up with an acceptable deal and confirmed the offer.

We decided that I had another three weeks to run on my current contract so the salesman said he would contact me then to sign me up but, alas, he didn’t and from that point on Vodafone’s service was appalling.

I had to chase the salesman via email and having got no reply,
I chased through the secure contact section on Vodafone’s website and, finally, he replied by email and said he had been on holiday but would call me to sort out the contract.

After another week or so without any contact I thought OK, he’s not interested, and contacted Vodafone sales via the website but a few weeks passed and still no reply. Determined not to be beaten I emailed again and again and eventually got a reply but still no contact, just referrals to other departments.

I thought they must be so successful that they don’t need new customers as they were not bothered about responding to sales enquiries. At this point, three months on, I decided enough is enough and thought that if I make a complaint someone might show a little interest.

I was wrong – all I got were pointless replies that didn’t answer any of my questions and from a different person each
time, knowing that someone else after them would have to deal with my complaint.

I thought this was ridiculous so I asked for the name and email
address of the person who deals with media enquires but I was told they did not have such details.

Then, after chasing, they said they could not give me a name,
email address or phone number as I had to write to them at an
address in Hampshire. By making it difficult, I guess they hope most people will give up – but not me.

After even more chasing they pulled a really odd stunt by sending me the old “credit check” ploy, implying I had been turned down for credit and that was why they hadn’t got back to me.

This was a big mistake as what they did not realise was that
when I first contacted Vodafone, I didn’t give my full name and I had not formally applied for a contract with them (I never got that far) so without my full name, date of birth or my address I have to wonder how they could possibly have done a credit check.

Since going back to them (for the umpteenth time) asking
which name they had done the check on, I’ve not heard a word from them.

So I think now is the time to recruit our army of readers. Please email any problems you have had with Vodafone and we will put all the cases forward and report on them in the next issue.

We will keep writing about the problems until someone at Vodafone takes responsibility for the complaints and actually deals with them rather than ignoring them hoping they will go away.

Please email your comments to chrislocke@constabulary.org.uk

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