I am about to relocate from Lower Hutt to Ashburton. Currently on HFC Max and enjoying my experience with it. Knowing this would not be an option in Ashburton, I did my research and most providers are pricing themselves around the same mark for Fibre services. So decided to stay with Vodafone and get the Fibre Max plan ($99/mo). I'd done my research so knew what I should be walking into

OK, started with the chatbot Hana to try and get to a human to do the service move/changes... After Hana told me she'd get a sales person to chat with me I waiting online with the chat open for over an hour.... Nothing.

So logged into my My Vodafone account pulled up my a services details and then submitted the house move dorm with all the required details... Except the form does not ask anywhere about service changes. So after submitting the form I found an 0800 to call for if you are moving house.

Called and got through to "Roy" (very obviously not his real name). Roy was very nice and very helpful. I explained the situation and what plan I want to. Move to, etc and Roy took my details and said he'd arrange the change in address part of things, he was great and at the end was telling me he wanted to get me the best price possible (I've been a very loyal customer so thought, yep - they are looking after me, great!). He's telling me that yep, he can see my service will be under $90 (I'm thinking great as the listed retail for Fibre Max was $99/mo), but he say that he can probably get me a couple of other discounts and get the price down by another $20 per month, but he's going to have to pass me onto his colleague who will do that.

OK, Roy transfers me to "Kylie" to handle the services side of things, and Kylie's accent is far, far thicker than Roy's. Now I'm having to get her to repeat most stuff as she isn't coming across clearly. And this is where it's all starting to go down hill rapidly. Kylie starts to tell me about all the plans and asking questions about the household etc etc so I finally end up stopping her and telling her I knew which plan I wanted, it is the Fibre Max. So she then tells me a little info about it, and comes up with a price above the one shown on the website - it's now going to be $103/mo. So I question her on this and she tells me it's the open term price. I told her I was happy to be on a term plan but she continued to insist it should be the open term plan and then she's trying upsell it further to add a router/modem into it also - which I've not asked for - and was going take the price up to $107/mo!! Again I had to stop her and tell her that I already know that I do not need the new modem as the Vodafone website say that as I am relocating that I take the existing one with me. And had to be very forceful with her as she kept trying to add a new router into the mix! She finally conceded that yes, I did not need the new router, that I was correct about taking the existing one with me, and that the plan cost was $99 per month. (I'd been through all this with Roy already who'd confirm everything I wanted to do was correct)

NEXT she asked about what I have on pay monthly - I informed I wasn't on a Pay Monthly plan with Vodafone and that I was on a 2 year contract elsewhere which I would not be breaking. She insisted 3 times the she should move me to a Vodafone Pay Monthly plan and when kept telling her No!, she then turned around and told me she would set me up with a new Pay Monthly number!!!!!

At this point the practices of this sales person are well beyond dodgy and into icoercion!! These practices are so damn concerning. I had to out righ stop her again and told her I would not be doing that. I was really, REALLY felling like I was on the phone with scammers who were trying everything to get the contents my bank account by playing "good sales rep / bad sales rep" .

The move of services I'd given them was Feb 1st to disconnect my Lower Hutt address, and Feb 2nd to connect the Ashburton address. She checks something a few times (apparently) and says there's no issues with the new location and it was going to be all good and easy to do. But then at the end of the call she is talking about that the billing changes will happen tomorrow (so today), even though she has the dates and she knows it's not to happen until Feb 1st/2nd.

Immediately after the call I logged out of My Vodafone and chevked my Services and it shows no services any more what-so-ever!! My HFC Max is no longer listed. Nothing is.

I have zero confidence that anything is actually going to happen as it should and it's all just looking and sounding like one huge clusterf*ck!!!

And I am hugely and extremely disappointed in the outright deceptive and pressure sales techniques being applied out of this off shore Call Centre under the Vodafone name!

Should I be going to the Commerce Commission and alerting them to these practices? Whatever happened to the good will Vodafone used to show their customers with great retention deals etc. All that happened today were huge attempts to screw me over.

I sincerely hope that how this played though is not normal and that Vodafone are not leveraging the good/bad sale rep thing as a tactic to rip people off. I'd hate to think how many people might have already been duped by the shady (at best) to illegal (at worst) sales practices. Vodafone need to now review the accounts of everyone that Roy and Kylie have delt with to see how many others have been fleeced and to correct every one of those affected.

Can people please ping New Zealand based Vodafone representatives so they can be made aware of the BS going on!


TL:DR - Extremely bad experience with Vodafone sales team, over moving house (and plans), deal with off shore Vodafone Call Centre. Due to BS and Upselling price went ~$90/mo > ~$70/mo > $103/mo > $107/mo > $99/mo