February 2020 update
Vodafone named UK's worst mobile
phone network for eighth consecutive year

The largest providers are the worst for customer service, Which? finds

I've largely given up bothering to update the list the range of atrocities perpetrated by Vodafone - since the Ombudsman is pointless, Ofcom are useless. As long as they have more customers than they know what to do with, Vodafone has no incentive to get its act together.

But now we have a government that wants to make an effort to sort out broadband and telecoms, maybe someone with actually deal with them?

 

This is WAY beyond a joke by now,  Vodafone.

Here's the big fat bottom line: if your service worked, and your management were competent, you would not have accumulated such a large number of dissatisfied customers, such a poor global reputation and me on your case.

Top tip for you Vodafone - if a customer is so utterly fed up with your attitude, then the best advice is to talk to them and fix the problem. People do not wantonly waste their time with your company, they only do it because they believe they have no alternative - or face getting a black mark on their credit reference if they simply do what any sensible customer is entitled to do - stop paying for a service they are not getting.

Most of us realise that the frontline staff (with exceptions) are generally doing their best within a system that is so poorly managed that the inevitable meltdown is happening. So this seems to be the guilty party:

I'm Jeroen Hoencamp, the Vodafone UK CEO.
 

I'm committed to ensuring we provide the best service possible and am therefore passionate about listening to our customers. If you'd like to give me any feedback about a great experience, or to report an issue to me, please use the form below.

And this is what my management has resulted in...

Dear Jeroen

Please take a look at http://vodafone.isadisgrace.com and then let's discuss your company's fast collapsing social media disaster.

Your "people" will tell you I am a serial nuisance - only because Vodafone is a serial offender.

I can't believe you are aware of customer reactions in your various "social media" interfaces - social it is not.... there is a full on sh*tstorm under way, and it is not slowing down. You simply cannot ban everyone who hates dealing with Vodafone from all your sites!

Now, if I am one of those fated awkward users that manages to trip over all the obscure and unlikely events that mean I am finding every one-off exception in your otherwise competent service, then please give me a (freefone) phone number and direct email address to reach competent people directly..?  But I think we both know I am not the only one who has been driven to extreme distraction by the run-around of woeful Vodafone support process.

You have >90k employees worldwide - you have 411 million customers  - yet you cannot provide anything approaching a proper 24x7x365 support service.

You spend fortunes on advertising and marketing, yet you overlook the long term inescapable truth that personal recommendation is the best and most enduring form of sales tactic. As for high profile sponsorship, you pay money to buy the souls of allegedly honest people and businesses - who are then obliged to say nice things about you. Your sponsors must be feeling the pressure to distance themselves from Vodafone.  You may have saved Lewis Hamilton and McLaren the angst of deciding, but social media sponsorship means those involved will be obliged to watch very carefully how their brands are inevitably taken down with Vodafone's unremittingly poor image as widely reported on "social media".

One scandal - such as the use of sock puppets pretending not to be anything formally connected with Vodafone - patrolling the eForums and defending Vodafone - and even threatening users with plainly dysfunctional services that their credit records will be damaged if they do not pay Vodafone on time every month - could spell total social media and marketing disaster...

In fact, the entire idea that user forums should replace a responsible in-house support service is turning round and biting you in the fundament at every step. Exactly how many people have you now been forced to ban from the forums for losing their cool and being honest about their feelings for your failing business?  You know you fall short at every level of customer service and responsibility. You put a huge amount of effort into marketing and social media. But you spend so much on ads, sponsorship and promotions that most media owners are probably nervous to recount the stories of Vodafone incompetence.

Your user forums contain numerous postings from "contributors" who are so obviously in the direct or indirect employ of your company or its "agents" to defend it an aggressive way, that a direct employee dare not. So it's little wonder that when they are tackled on this issue, the questioning forum user gets banned!

You say "Vodafone is the only British network operator." You know your customers hate dealing with foreign call centres - so your foreign staff are (farcically) obliged to give out English names like David, Alistair and Kate. Your board is mostly foreign, and famously you do not pay British tax on your global earnings - so being British does not seem mean anything other than another PR opportunity.

Meantime, the costs of this saga at £150 per hour (a normal lawyer charge rate) are adding up all the time (currently over £7450!) and will be recovered by legal process in due course, so you will be saving yourselves money.

As usual, they're all out...

Below are stories of utter exasperation. For a long time I have suspected Vodafone's online presence is managed mostly for PR and marketing promotion rather than customer satisfaction - and here are further examples of this hopelessness. (Can you imagine how much time I waste trying to sort this out?)

The basic problem is that no company should ever be allowed to become as big as Vodafone - unless they can pass ongoing assessments and tests of their consumer service. Vodafone is a part of a grisly cartel of de-facto monopolies and needs to be broken up and operated in-country as separate businesses with local staff and responsibilities. Vodafone's frontline telephone support is very charming and tries hard, but behind the scenes, Vodafone appears to be managed by cynical folks who understand that most complainants can be kicked into the long grass until they give up in despair. 

The first that happens when you call 191 is that you are asked for your PIN, so they plainly know who you are and what number you are calling from. Yet the first thing any human does is ask for your details and PIN again! Are they completely incapable of operating a joined-up service? 

Only by causing these rascals financial pain will anything ever improve; so here's a thought for all dissatisfied Vodafone users who feel locked into a 24 month con-tract. You can almost always find some fault or inconsistency with Vodafone's service or website such that you can claim that the service is unfit for purpose and that you are cancelling - but ALWAYS also demand your money back to establish that you are not simply using the complaint as an expedient to escape the remains of a deal you did in haste, when briefly bedazzled by a new shiny thing. And also insist the amount of time you spend trying to resolve issues with Vodafone's chronically understaffed support scheme is paid to you at a reasonable £120 per hour of your wasted time, it soon adds up.  

Anyway, let the hassle begin... (it all began in 2009 ...)  but this page is the really meaty stuff that seems to have proved what I have long suspected, that the many visible crashes and failures in the online service are indicative of rot at the core, and an unreliable billing system.

And when you need it, here is the simple-to-access Vodafone complaints form although even that now gets passed into the usual automated process, and you will end up going round in the usual circles of incompetence.

Misleading advertising : Vodafone ad banned over misleading emergency services claims

Which? Tech daily says Vodafone voted worst phone network

Vodafone (and the other cartel members) explain why phones that cost £40 to make are sold for ~£400  to BBC Watchdog; and then explains why its coverage is lacking to Watchdog.

VodaFAIL News: December 2nd: UK cops: Give us ONE journo's phone records. Vodafone: Take the WHOLE damn database!

The Guardian wades in November 2014: Please Vodafone release me, let me go

More Guardian comment in November: Victory against Vodafone for schoolteacher billed £15,000