Call to Vodafone helpdesk: :1 hour 31 minutes and counting

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Call to Vodafone helpdesk: :1 hour 31 minutes and counting

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Lizard Networks

#1192255 9-Dec-2014 14:52

hsvhel: Johnr
Reading through threads and having needed assistance myself over the months, its not said enough; Thank you for your time and efforts within this board.

Absolutely, Johnr deserves Plenty of thanks for what he gives here!

automaton: I would have thought there is enough in this thread, the Vodafone FaceBook page, and the previous thread linked to above, to warrant a story in the NZHerald, or similar.

To be fair, this could be said about many isps facebooks.

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

johnr

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#1192257 9-Dec-2014 14:55

I can confirm for a few hours today there have been issues routing calls to staff to take calls, This was resolved in the last 30 minutes

matisyahu

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#1192289 9-Dec-2014 16:09

Just went into the local Vodafone shop to sort out an extra set top box to be returned - oh, I can return to the box but I'll need to ring up Vodafone to cancel it because I can't cancel it at the store. My face when I was given the news:

Is it just me but could a large amount of this anguish and unhappiness be resolved if people in the store could carry some of the load and deal with the account related issues?

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

MikeB4

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#1192319 9-Dec-2014 17:17

kawaii: Just went into the local Vodafone shop to sort out an extra set top box to be returned - oh, I can return to the box but I'll need to ring up Vodafone to cancel it because I can't cancel it at the store. My face when I was given the news:

Is it just me but could a large amount of this anguish and unhappiness be resolved if people in the store could carry some of the load and deal with the account related issues?

Too logical :P

JimmyH

2886 posts

Uber Geek

#1192345 9-Dec-2014 19:01

I had a dreadful palaver with them a couple of years ago, when I was tidying up a relatives estate and closing their account.

I kept going round in circles. They wouldn't do it for me because I wasn't the account holder, and insisted on speaking to the account holder. I explained multiple times that they couldn't speak to the account holder because they were dead. Wash, rinse and repeat. Plus, they were adamant that they would take legal action if I simply shut down the AP without cancelling the account.

After going through this chain of logic, in the end the person on the other end had a genius solution to the impasse. They would action my request to close the account, if I would "just put the account holder on the line to confirm that I was authorised to act for them". Then they seemed confused when I asked whether they would accept a confirmation message via an ouija board, or whether they would prefer a seance.

After customer service like that, I have refused to deal with them ever since.

saeran

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#1192352 9-Dec-2014 19:13

That's one thing I've found with Vodafone, there's a lot of account stuff you must do over the phone, and you can't do in-store.

I've noticed with 2degrees that you can do all account stuff in store. I know they're not a landline and broadband retailer, but they are a telco.

matisyahu

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#1192356 9-Dec-2014 19:20

saeran: That's one thing I've found with Vodafone, there's a lot of account stuff you must do over the phone, and you can't do in-store.

I've noticed with 2degrees that you can do all account stuff in store. I know they're not a landline and broadband retailer, but they are a telco.

The better comparison to Vodafone would be Spark - you can go into a Spark store and do all your stuff in their store or over the phone. If you have a network of stores it makes absolutely no sense not to given them the ability to handle all the issues at the shop front plus it might work as a great way to spur on impulse purchases at the same time: "well, while I'm here I might as well get that new case for my phone".

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

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mattbush

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#1192364 9-Dec-2014 19:43

VF certainly don't like being easy to deal with.

Andib

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#1192365 9-Dec-2014 19:51

kawaii:
saeran: That's one thing I've found with Vodafone, there's a lot of account stuff you must do over the phone, and you can't do in-store.

I've noticed with 2degrees that you can do all account stuff in store. I know they're not a landline and broadband retailer, but they are a telco.

The better comparison to Vodafone would be Spark - you can go into a Spark store and do all your stuff in their store or over the phone. If you have a network of stores it makes absolutely no sense not to given them the ability to handle all the issues at the shop front plus it might work as a great way to spur on impulse purchases at the same time: "well, while I'm here I might as well get that new case for my phone".

The issue with Vodafone is the multiple Billing systems.

Mobile - Siebel
Vodafone DSL - TPII
Vodafone UFB / Cable / ExTCL - Clarify

All stores have siebel so can do pretty much all Mobile Queries.
AFAIK Only a few have TPII access and very few store staff are trained in it. While I was working for them I had never heard of a store having Clarify access.
The only real thing they can help you with instore with Broadband / Phone is signing up.

<#
.DISCLAIMER
Anything I post is my own and not the views of my past/present/future employer.
#>

matisyahu

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#1192375 9-Dec-2014 20:13

Andib:
kawaii:
saeran: That's one thing I've found with Vodafone, there's a lot of account stuff you must do over the phone, and you can't do in-store.

I've noticed with 2degrees that you can do all account stuff in store. I know they're not a landline and broadband retailer, but they are a telco.

The better comparison to Vodafone would be Spark - you can go into a Spark store and do all your stuff in their store or over the phone. If you have a network of stores it makes absolutely no sense not to given them the ability to handle all the issues at the shop front plus it might work as a great way to spur on impulse purchases at the same time: "well, while I'm here I might as well get that new case for my phone".

The issue with Vodafone is the multiple Billing systems.

Mobile - Siebel
Vodafone DSL - TPII
Vodafone UFB / Cable / ExTCL - Clarify

All stores have siebel so can do pretty much all Mobile Queries.
AFAIK Only a few have TPII access and very few store staff are trained in it. While I was working for them I had never heard of a store having Clarify access.
The only real thing they can help you with instore with Broadband / Phone is signing up.

But in all respects they've had quite some time to move things over. Ihug was bought 8 years ago and still haven't been moved to Siebel (I'd assume it would be easier to tweak the Siebel mobile bill system than it is to move all three to a new system), sign up all new customers to Siebel then gradually migrate TCL customers over to Siebel piece by piece. This has been thrashed to pieces, the whole issue regarding three billing systems, but Vodafone decided that spending money should be avoided and now we have a situation that could be resolved had the billing systems been merged and shunt some of the customers into stores rather than trying to ring up.

"When the people are being beaten with a stick, they are not much happier if it is called 'the People's Stick'"

NonprayingMantis

6434 posts

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#1192436 9-Dec-2014 22:31

hio77:
hsvhel: Johnr
Reading through threads and having needed assistance myself over the months, its not said enough; Thank you for your time and efforts within this board.

Absolutely, Johnr deserves Plenty of thanks for what he gives here!

automaton: I would have thought there is enough in this thread, the Vodafone FaceBook page, and the previous thread linked to above, to warrant a story in the NZHerald, or similar.

To be fair, this could be said about many isps facebooks.

I think that is a little unfair towards other ISPs, in Nz at least.

Whilst other ISPs Facebook pages may clog up occasionally when they have an outage or some other wide event, vodafones is the only one that has been consistently terrible for a sustained period of time even during 'business as usual' times.

And whilst a Facebook page certianly isn't a scientific test of how good an ISP is, it is an indicator.

(And not just by looking at how many negative posts. Take a look at how quickly and effectively the ISP responds to the negative posts and reviews, how many positive posts and reviews there are relative to negative ones (but ignoring posts that are only positive because they were 'bought' with free stuff, like Flip's Facebook reviews seem to be 'thanks for the free 300GB data, here is my review that you asked for')

Obviously you would need to take stuff in proportion too, so a smaller ISP would have fewer negative posts, but also fewer positive posts. You would need to look at the proportion of negative to positive.

quickymart

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#1192539 10-Dec-2014 05:43

kawaii:
Andib:
kawaii:
saeran: That's one thing I've found with Vodafone, there's a lot of account stuff you must do over the phone, and you can't do in-store.

I've noticed with 2degrees that you can do all account stuff in store. I know they're not a landline and broadband retailer, but they are a telco.

The better comparison to Vodafone would be Spark - you can go into a Spark store and do all your stuff in their store or over the phone. If you have a network of stores it makes absolutely no sense not to given them the ability to handle all the issues at the shop front plus it might work as a great way to spur on impulse purchases at the same time: "well, while I'm here I might as well get that new case for my phone".

The issue with Vodafone is the multiple Billing systems.

Mobile - Siebel
Vodafone DSL - TPII
Vodafone UFB / Cable / ExTCL - Clarify

All stores have siebel so can do pretty much all Mobile Queries.
AFAIK Only a few have TPII access and very few store staff are trained in it. While I was working for them I had never heard of a store having Clarify access.
The only real thing they can help you with instore with Broadband / Phone is signing up.

But in all respects they've had quite some time to move things over. Ihug was bought 8 years ago and still haven't been moved to Siebel (I'd assume it would be easier to tweak the Siebel mobile bill system than it is to move all three to a new system), sign up all new customers to Siebel then gradually migrate TCL customers over to Siebel piece by piece. This has been thrashed to pieces, the whole issue regarding three billing systems, but Vodafone decided that spending money should be avoided and now we have a situation that could be resolved had the billing systems been merged and shunt some of the customers into stores rather than trying to ring up.

When I left there in 2005, TCL had been in existence for over 3 years and they showed no sign of merging any legacy billing systems then. The new entity has just made the 2 year mark so far, but I highly doubt they'll be doing it either.
I also don't think that it's just because they have different billing systems that is causing all the wait times (although that's possibly part of it).

PeterQ

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#1192642 10-Dec-2014 09:24

You should try to cancel premium channels for Sky, haven't had any luck yet , been trying yesterday and today still waiting, I've just gone over to Vodafone from Spark and regretting it already

DaveDog

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#1194855 10-Dec-2014 13:30

The state of Vodafone customer services is non existent...

One of our work offices has changed from ADSL to Fibre. I have been trying since July to cancel the ADSL service. I cannot get a response online, I cannot get anyone to return calls. I wouldn't recommend them to anyone...

automaton: Hello all.

Does anyone have any information about the current state of Vodafone customer services?:

- I have just now been on hold to their call centre for 1 hour 31 minutes (and counting).
- We signed up for UFB last Thursday (4th) and were promised a welcome pack in “next couple of days.” Nothing received.
- We have been unable to pay the last two invoices due to an (admitted) problem with Vodafone’s billing system. Nonetheless we have been charged a $17 late payment fee (we obviously won't pay this). Repeated calls (with long waits) and this problem is not fixed. Oh, and we got a letter telling us we were going to be cut off for not paying the bill :)
- An email sent to Vodafone customer service last Wednesday (3rd) has not been responded to.

The impression I am getting is, unfortunately, that this company is a train wreck. Is anyone else experiencing the same thing?

rmt38

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#1195070 10-Dec-2014 17:45

My parents have vodafone, and they dread calling them about things. Either you get someone you can barely understand, or you can barely hear them. Even the music has static, whether called via cell phone or land line. It's not just their elderly hearing, I've experienced it myself. I had to go to the other end of the house where there were no background noises, when on the landline. Or put it on speakerphone, on the mobile.

Their last mistake was trying to get caller id added. Never happened. But they got charged for it. And so on and so on, and sure it eventually got sorted, but it required suffering through a number of phone calls being jerked around.

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