There is actually no snark at all in the subject of this post, it's a question based on my experience yesterday.
I agreed to buy my son a Vodafone Smart Prime. Since we were in the Courtenay Place area, we called into a Vodafone store to discover they were sold out. We were told they'd been exceptionally popular. I get that, since the price seems good given its specs.
We went to a couple of nearby stores that usually sell Vodafone products, with the same result.
I decided it would be more efficient to head home and call some of the Vodafone stores in Wellington.
On multiple occasions over several hours, I called the Lampton Quay, Porerua, and Queensgate stores, In every case, the call went to voicemail.
I called 777, who were unable to tell me which stores had product in stock, although they did attempt to call the same stores for me, with the same results.
I didn't want to order online from Vodafone, because past experience has been that their delivery times can be over a week and I wanted to see if there was a quicker way of getting the device.
I understand that some people may call their Vodafone store when they should be calling 777 for customer service, and that must be frustrating for staff who have legitimate customers in-store. But not answering the phone at all prevents customers from making legitimate inquiries about stock, and there seems no alternative means of getting that information.
In the end, we bought a different device from Mighty Ape. It'll be here today and my son will stay on Skinny. He would have ported to Vodafone if we had bought the Prime since it doesn't do WCDMA 850.
The loss of his 19 bucks a month will make no difference at all to Vodafone, but it was a pretty frustrating experience. There's something ironic about a company offering phone services who won't pick up their own phone.