My Encounter with the Dark Side of Vodafone

I have been a Vodafone prepaid subscriber for almost 8 years and till a week ago I was satisfied with their customer service. My last week was peppered with arguments with whichever person called me and left me utterly frustrated and exhausted.

To give a background, I was recently contacted by Vodafone regarding a postpaid plan which they felt was suitable for me. The executive informed me about the plan - Rs. 399 monthly rental with unlimited local/STD calls, 100 SMS and 21 GB worth of 4G data.

The executive informed me that all I had to do, if I wanted to avail the offer, was to provide a Photo, a photo ID and an address proof to the executive who would visit me at my home. Besides providing this information, the executive asked me one question - "Are you working currently?" to which I replied in the negative since I was looking for employment after my MBA course which would end in 2-3 weeks.

This was the first call. When I asked them to forward me the offer details on my email, they offered me to send a WhatsApp text instead and asked me for a time by which they could contact me again. I got their call after 2-3 hours (like I had asked them to), but did not get their text. When I mentioned this, they told me that I would receive the text soon and told me that they would call me again the next day.

I got the message and when they called me the next day I informed them that I was ready to migrate to Postpaid with the plan they had offered me. Accordingly they asked me to keep my Aadhar Card and photo ready for the executive who would visit me at the time I had specified. A few minutes later I received a call from the executive's senior who basically confirmed the plan which I was subscribing to and the documents that I was going to submit.

Immediately on the next day, the Vodafone rep came and collected by documents and the Postpaid connection plan. Consequently, my postpaid service started from 26th April 2017.

The next day I received a call from the Vodafone rep who had contacted me, telling me that my verification had apparently failed, even though I had submitted the documents they had asked. They then asked me if I was student, to which I replied "Yes". NOW they told me that they cannot offer the postpaid plan to students and that I would have to come down to the nearest Vodafone store to sort things out.

They further offered me an option of giving one of my family members documents as a workaround. This I did not want to do and so I asked them to do port my number back to prepaid from their side. I was informed that this was not possible but they would ask their manager to call me to talk about the issue. I still haven't received that call.

Cut to 6th May, a day I had my exam and had to make a number of important calls regarding a potential job offer. When I tried to place a call, the automated voice recording smoothly informed me that my outgoing calls had been blocked.

After several calls to Vodafone Customer Care (which I couldn't call from my cellphone), I finally gave up, went to the Vodafone store and completed the formalities (gave my documents AGAIN!) to convert my number to prepaid.
All this I had to do two hours before my final exam and was completely disturbed throughout the day. Luckily enough I could place my important calls through one of friend's number.

Today (8th May 2017), I received a call from the same Vodafone rep asking me if I could come down to the store and submit documents for the postpaid connection (which I was changing to prepaid). This call seemed like a condescending question, asking me if I had learnt my place. At this point, I had no energy left to argue with a faceless executive and I just informed them that I had completed the formalities for the switch to prepaid.

Another interesting thing occurred when I place a call to the number mentioned on Google maps to inquire about the status of my application (https://goo.gl/maps/WuDtFJxMLCQ2). Apparently, the number listed is now for some other Vodafone office. The guy there was kind enough to tell me that my number was still listed as a POSTPAID connection!

The time here is now around 8:30 and both my sims (old Postpaid and the new Prepaid) are deactivated.

Frankly, if anyone had asked me 4 days ago, I would have recommended them to switch to Vodafone from any other network provider. Now, I'm trying to find another one myself. It is interesting to note that all of this headache could have been avoided if the rep could have asked a follow up question - "Are you a student?".

I had considered porting to Idea, but then I remembered that the two telecom companies are in the process of finalising a merger which would make them the biggest telecom provider in terms of subscribers in India. Not sure if that is a good thing.

And Vodafone, IF you're listening you have just lost a loyal customer.

Image Credits:-
https://edge.alluremedia.com.au/m/g/2011/02/vodafail.jpg
http://www.reinhardtsmit.com/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/blog/Service-Angry.jpg?itok=PRV-46Nu
Location: Pune, Maharashtra, India

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