Bad Service at Vodafone

Forums › One New Zealand (including Vodafone, WxC, Farmside) › Bad Service at Vodafone

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amiga500

1484 posts

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Inactive user

#108566 4-Feb-2008 21:09

Staff at a My Mobile shop say that this problem is confined to people with pre-pay phones. Please see my thread which I started before reading this one.

mikal

172 posts

Master Geek

#108576 4-Feb-2008 23:06

LukasSvo:
freitasm: Well, the whole thing is porting existing, connected numbers. If for any reason you disconnect a number before porting then you lose the number.

Well, that's actually not obvious at all and certainly doesn't cover all situations.

I left my old company - I had the number transfered to me on hold for seven days. I then wanted to take that number and port over to a new telecom account at my new company. This is not an improbable scenario!

I have never done this before and it's not obvious that I actually needed to setup a vodafone account in between getting credit checked etc and the whole account sign up process. It's not obvious and nor did Vodafone (or Telecom) explain what needed to occur.

It's a poor result for the portability project in my mind. Regardless of how technical this is, it's still poorly explained and documented for the end-user.

Fully understand where you are coming from but as you said,
You have never done this before so you were not an expert in the porting process yet you went off and requested your mobile number transfer without consulting either Telecom or Vodafone? Or you did tell Vodafone you were porting your number off? Or you told Telecom you had your number in reserve not allocated?

Yes you do experience really useless service at some stores and exceptional at other stores.
Some stores it feels as if the rep couldn't of passed School Cert or NCEA Level 1, with a real lack of any intelligence and look like they've been smoking someting chronic all morning before they came into work.

But thats retail and those people don't last very long. I guess its about finding a store that has good service and you keep going back to them e.g. in your case Portables Plus.

ninjabear

460 posts

Ultimate Geek
Inactive user

#108590 5-Feb-2008 01:39

The first mobile in palmerston north is bad.

I wanted to be put on the mega plan and wanted to add two best mates. She said that their were problems in their system but would call vodafone to help me set it up within half an hour.I called 777 to see if i was on 1 hour after I left the shop.To my surprise nothing has been done.I will never go back to that shop ever again but apparently the vodafone shop in the plaza is quite professional but Im sure they don't have much experience with mobiles compared to me.heheheh!

LukasSvo

12 posts

Geek

#108667 5-Feb-2008 13:15

Fully understand where you are coming from but as you said,
You have never done this before so you were not an expert in the porting process yet you went off and requested your mobile number transfer without consulting either Telecom or Vodafone? Or you did tell Vodafone you were porting your number off? Or you told Telecom you had your number in reserve not allocated?

With Vodafone I went through a number transfer process - quite straight forward as I wanted the number back from my old company (I took it there in the first place when I started, had the number for 10 years).

Vodafone then placed the number on hold for 7 days so I can setup a new account. What I wasn't told was that if I wanted to port it had to be put on and allocated to a SIM - i.e. a Vodafone account setup - arrggh! I want to port it, not setup an account!

Then after kicking off the process Telecom after supposedly going through the port process for 5 days informed me they couldn't port without it being allocated to a SIM. This was not disclosed up front.

So:

1. Vodafone didn't give me any info on what to do if I wanted to port the number
2. Telecom told me late in the piece the number had to be on a sim.

Both parties did not explain or tell me the process clearly. For what it's worth if you have a number on hold, I think there should not be a step in between to actually then setup an account with Vodafone before it can ported. I'm sure there are technical reasons for it but from a user point of view it makes no sense.

Yes you do experience really useless service at some stores and exceptional at other stores.

A separate issue to the porting process for me. This is very poor from a brand perspective - you see Vodafone so I expect a good level of service. I don't care if it's a digital mobile, first mobile or portables plus. That branding in the shops is not obvious and even though you and I know how's it setup it's not unreasonable for the person on the street to expect good quality service because they see the Vodafone brand. Surely Vodafone has KPI for it's outlets? And doing mystery shopper surveys is easy enough for service compliance checks.

Either way, the poor service in store many people have been having is just unacceptable. For what it's worth the 2-3 times recently I've gone into a telecom store to look at the competing offers I've always had friendly, welcoming service.

Regardless of who works in Vodafone stores and how they are franchised - the service needs to be consistent. Vodafone seem to be letting this slip at the moment.

amiga500

1484 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#108783 5-Feb-2008 21:04

I used to have Xtra as an ISP & the helpdesk staff can actually 'do stuff'. The CSRs at Vodaphone seem to be able to do little more than listen to your problem and say it will be referred to tech. support. Maybe they can help with some issues but with the sky mobile tv issue they have been utterly passive.

paradoxsm

3000 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

#108794 5-Feb-2008 21:41

To port a number in to Telecom:

Prepay 021, You need mobile number and SIM#
Postpay you need mobile number and Account number (Sim number not required but many stores do not know this)

Hmmmm I just thought of something, My prepay account went deactive and it tells me "You are not a valid prepay customer" if you try to make outbound calls though it's still effectively connected as calls ring in and it works on the network, Vodafone are of no help getting it back up and running but I might attempt a port this thursday then port it back so a friend can use it (very good number)

By the way I have had 20+ calls of consistent bad service from Egypt trying to get clients phone working/billing sorted out. This cost-cutting measure is going to snowball into some bad PR for them, they won't (Can't) even help with very simple things like unbilled calls and instead just read parts of the script again and again as they are obviously utterly confused with the whole setup.
I have also had two reps whom were outright nasty.

The NZ call centre when I finally did get them however was a stellar service and fixed the small problem in ten minutes as were members of staff at the stores.

dcwhyte

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#109681 10-Feb-2008 16:56

I recently entered into a monthly plan for Vodem access to the internet paying by Visa card. I subsequently bought a Vodafone pre-paid SIM card for my mobile phone and went online to buy top-up credits. It appears that I cannot uses the same credit card to pay for Vodem and pay for online top-up. I was told by the Customer Services Representative that he couldn't discuss the reason why due to 'security reasons'. Is this outfit for real? Apart from suggesting I use another credit card (why should I? This is the card I use for business expenses, even though it's in my personal name), or - and wait for this - going to the bank and asking them to change the expiry date on the card, the guy could do nothing. What a joke! Any solutions?

Sharesies

Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

sbiddle

30853 posts

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Retired Mod

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Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#109682 10-Feb-2008 17:00

dcwhyte: I recently entered into a monthly plan for Vodem access to the internet paying by Visa card. I subsequently bought a Vodafone pre-paid SIM card for my mobile phone and went online to buy top-up credits. It appears that I cannot uses the same credit card to pay for Vodem and pay for online top-up. I was told by the Customer Services Representative that he couldn't discuss the reason why due to 'security reasons'. Is this outfit for real? Apart from suggesting I use another credit card (why should I? This is the card I use for business expenses, even though it's in my personal name), or - and wait for this - going to the bank and asking them to change the expiry date on the card, the guy could do nothing. What a joke! Any solutions?

Once you link a credit card to a prepay account it can only be used for this account and no others. Whoever scoped out the work for the credit card billing system should have their head read as it's one of the most ridiculous limitations I've ever seen. It doesn't prevent fraud in any way!

cranz

675 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#109683 10-Feb-2008 17:03

Sigh.. Another example of CSR's being unhelpful.

You are able to use the same credit card however it's a bit of a weird process (this should have been explained to you)

Log in to Vodafone website with your Vodem account details
Select Manage my account (a pop up window will appear)
Select Credit Card Payment on the left
Enter your last 4 digits, submit
Select Top Up Preay, submit
Enter mobile number and top up amount, submit

and you're done! This process ONLY works if your credit card is registered against your On account connection!

You are unable to have the same credit card number registered to 2 accounts with Vodafone, so you must use the account with the credit card to top up the other one.

The "security reasons" was probably because you are discussing 2 different accounts, although the CSR should have security checked you on both...

Hope this helps, and I agree with sbiddle, it is the most stupid system limitation

sbiddle

30853 posts

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Biddle Corp

Lifetime subscriber

#109687 10-Feb-2008 17:08

cranz: Sigh.. You are able to use the same credit card however it's a bit of a weird process (this should have been explained to you)

Log in to Vodafone website with your Vodem account details
Select Manage my account (a pop up window will appear)
Select Credit Card Payment on the left
Enter your last 4 digits, submit
Select Top Up Preay, submit
Enter mobile number and top up amount, submit

and you're done! This process ONLY works if your credit card is registered against your On account connection!

You are unable to have the same credit card number registered to 2 accounts with Vodafone, so you must use the account with the credit card to top up the other one.

The "security reasons" was probably because you are discussing 2 different accounts, although the CSR should have security checked you on both...

Hope this helps, and I agree with sbiddle, it is the most stupid system limitation

This is fine for PrePay topups but the issue is that you can't use a credit card for both prepay and on account. Once a credit card is linked to an On Account plan for example (such as the VOdem) you are unable to use that number to top up a PrePay phone. Vodafone used to have PrePay Feeder that allowed you to top up a PrePay account from an On Account plan but this no longer exists. I spoke to a CSR about this issue last year and she said there was no way to get around the limitation of the system, you had to link a different credit card to the prepay or buy a top up voucher.

grant_k

3539 posts

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#109701 10-Feb-2008 17:50

sbiddle: ...you had to link a different credit card to the prepay or buy a top up voucher.

Or use HOTLINK.

It's far easier than topping up via Credit Card with all the registration process that entails.

With Hotlink it's done directly via the keys on the mobile itself, and is a far, far simpler process.

I can top up all the mobile phones in our family by just using Hotlink on my wife's mobile. Since getting this setup, I have never bothered with credit card topup again

richms

28191 posts

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#109776 11-Feb-2008 02:24

Hotlink is not available on all banks.

And the idea of it going from my eftpos account is worrying, its not like a credit card where you can chargeback when vodafones systems go all screwey and getting an admission of a cockup and a credit from them is impossible.

No thanks.

Richard rich.ms

dcwhyte

2 posts

Wannabe Geek

#109802 11-Feb-2008 09:32

Thanks Guys - all very helpful and very much appreciated. Not sure if I trust a Telco with EFTPOS access either, but I followed the log-on with Vodem details advice and on going to the 'Top Up" button on MyVodafone, the offer to add other accounts appeared. I had to phone Technical Service Support on 0800 921 021 (777passed me on to this #) and the fellow added pre-paid mobile access there and then. Now, I haven't actually been able to top-up yet using the cedit card of my choice, as the "service is unavailable meantime". To be fair to Vodafone, there is an onscreen statement informing that access will be available in 24 hours. So I'll wait and see. Thanks to all for the input

ajobbins

5052 posts

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#110071 12-Feb-2008 12:50

For anyone who is interested, after reading many threads on here about customer service I have writting up my take on effective customer service here. Perhaps more suited to a blog or something, but I don't currently have one so there it can stay.

del

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#110082 12-Feb-2008 14:00

sbiddle:
cranz: Sigh.. You are able to use the same credit card however it's a bit of a weird process (this should have been explained to you)

Log in to Vodafone website with your Vodem account details
Select Manage my account (a pop up window will appear)
Select Credit Card Payment on the left
Enter your last 4 digits, submit
Select Top Up Preay, submit
Enter mobile number and top up amount, submit

and you're done! This process ONLY works if your credit card is registered against your On account connection!

You are unable to have the same credit card number registered to 2 accounts with Vodafone, so you must use the account with the credit card to top up the other one.

The "security reasons" was probably because you are discussing 2 different accounts, although the CSR should have security checked you on both...

Hope this helps, and I agree with sbiddle, it is the most stupid system limitation

This is fine for PrePay topups but the issue is that you can't use a credit card for both prepay and on account. Once a credit card is linked to an On Account plan for example (such as the VOdem) you are unable to use that number to top up a PrePay phone. Vodafone used to have PrePay Feeder that allowed you to top up a PrePay account from an On Account plan but this no longer exists. I spoke to a CSR about this issue last year and she said there was no way to get around the limitation of the system, you had to link a different credit card to the prepay or buy a top up voucher.

The issue is actually that you can't register a credit card against a Prepay and Postpay account at the same time. The business rules were reqlly quite rigid at the time of the design; A Prepay customer can only use a credit card to top up their own Prepay phone, or someone else's prepay phone. They couldn't make a payment into a Postpay account. On the other hand, a credit card registered to a Postpay account could pay their own account, another Postpay account, or top up a Prepay account.

So, if you de-register the credit card from your Prepay account, then re-register it on your Postpay Vodem account, you'll be able to use the credit card to pay/top up both accounts.

I agree, the busiess rules are the killer for that application, and we were significantly constrained by them when it was designed. It'll also be a lot better once it's integrated into the new IVR platform, so you at least won't be asked to authenticate twice :(

And you're right -the CSR should've been able to tell you to do that; it would've saved you endless frustration.

Cheers,
Del

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