So get through to Level 1, get through to level 2, nope you're not on the account.

Elderly father goes to local store, gets me added. (not sure why store doesn't lodge the fault for him- he has no dial tone, no ADSL)

I phone back to level 1, nope sorry you're not on the account, they try to phone his mobile and after leaving me 18 min on hold I get disconnected.

How hard is it to lodge a fault?

All we want is his phone and internet back on line.

He did, he's late 80's and gave up.

Surely the local store would have lodged the fault for him.

How many days will it take until the request to add a person to account takes effect?

gb67:

 

He did, he's late 80's and gave up.

 

Surely the local store would have lodged the fault for him.

 

How many days will it take until the request to add a person to account takes effect?

 

As others have said in previous posts about Vodafone, welcome to the train wreck that is Vodafone. Its a failing company and its days are numbered. 

Would suggest lodging a request to port his services to another provider, suggest 2Degrees landline a good option.

The customer service levels at Vodafone have declined to a point where customers simply give up in shear frustration. 

@gb67 … >He did, he's late 80's and gave up.<

Do what we (my wife) did in Australia recently and pretend to be the account holder.  My 96 year old mother moved into a retirement facility and Telstra were being impossible even after a week of me trying to get number moved.

In the end my wife put on a old, frail voice and said the usual things like "can't understand anything, can't use mobile, hard of hearing, very upset, birthday coming up and expecting family calls, etc etc", and even feigned crying!  Operator was distraught and put a supervisor on who was VERY sympathetic 😌.

Technician turned up at retirement facility next morning!!!

Despite the sympathies we may have with the OP's situation, I'm not sure if this is a good place to be discussing Rickles's suggestion given the obvious legal implications. 

gb67, have you tried calling with your parents with you? From my experience when I was dealing with stuff involving my mum, a number of providers are fine if you tell them the person is with you and you put them on the line. They may ask some minor questions confirmation authorisation and then get them to put you back on the line. If they really demand to call the person directly, at least having them with you means you can ensure they answer etc. 

If this isn't possible due to distance or other reasons, it's going to get more difficult. As others have said, whatever Vodafone's flaws, if you don't have authorisation pretty much any decent provider will be the same. There are strong legal reasons why they can't deal with you. And unfortunately even with authorisation, if you can't do it from the house the phone is it it's probably going to be more difficult. The no dial tone could easily be a faulty device. (I've been there a long time ago.) I expect normally they'd want you to disconnect everything except a single phone and microfilter if the house doesn't have a splitter. (Frankly it's probably better to bypass the filter.) If you/your parents are willing to take the cost of a callout fee if it's not a line fault, you should be able to convince them even without proper testing with hopefully not too much effort I guess.

Not sure why you're still not added. I would have expected it to take a day or two at most. I suspect something must have gone wrong. Probably on their end, although are you sure your parents don't have multiple accounts with Vodafone? 

As for them not lodging a fault, it seems to me difficult to assess without knowing what happened in the store. If your father goes to the store and says they want to add you to the account and they do that properly (which they may not have done, but that may be a separate issue) and ask him if there's anything else they can help him with and he says no, it's hard to say it's their fault for not lodging a fault. I mean sure they could have pried harder to see if there was a problem, but some would find that offensive or annoying. 

BTW hopefully you don't mind me saying this but whatever happens consider whether this might be a useful lesson for the future. If it's likely your help will be needed, maybe have a talk to your parents whether it's wise to give you authorisation now (well once you sort this out). Power, insurance, Sky if they have that, maybe even rates etc. It's a lot easier if you sort it out before you need it. 

Several years ago, a teenager lost control of his (father's) vehicle outside our house at 4am and wiped out the "bollards" (do these things have a proper name?) in front of our property for power, Chorus and Vodafone - taking out each of these services.

Police contacted the power company, but weren't interested in the telco stuff. I had no problem reporting an issue to Chorus, but do you think I could get anyone interested at Vodafone without actually being an account holder. Gave up and got one of my neighbours, who was a Vodafone customer, to report it later in the day.

I've never had issues raising line faults with providers regardless if it was my account or not.... "hey, line is dead, heres their number/account, can you get it fixed".  Its pretty obvious when a line is down and has to be fixed......

Vodafone will only accept a fault from the account holder.

Thought I would give an update on progress.

Started 16 April when elderly parents rang me to say they had no phone and internet.

After getting added to the account I was able to lodge a fault.

24 April we got ADSL and dial tone but incoming only phone calls.

Its now the 27 April and they still can't phone out.

Turns out the whole thing is around Vodafone changing over from TelstraClear platform to Vodafone platform.

Vodafone your systems are broken.

Found chat the easiest way to communicate but the last 3 days there has never been anyone available on chat.

The 0800 number is a nightmare of pressing buttons to loop around automated messages, but no one wants to talk to you.

Yeah that's right, 11 days and counting with no outgoing calls.

Never have I experienced such appalling service.

gb67:

 

Vodafone will only accept a fault from the account holder.

 

Thought I would give an update on progress.

 

Started 16 April when elderly parents rang me to say they had no phone and internet.

 

After getting added to the account I was able to lodge a fault.

 

24 April we got ADSL and dial tone but incoming only phone calls.

 

Its now the 27 April and they still can't phone out.

 

Turns out the whole thing is around Vodafone changing over from TelstraClear platform to Vodafone platform.

 

Vodafone your systems are broken.

 

Found chat the easiest way to communicate but the last 3 days there has never been anyone available on chat.

 

The 0800 number is a nightmare of pressing buttons to loop around automated messages, but no one wants to talk to you.

 

Yeah that's right, 11 days and counting with no outgoing calls.

 

Never have I experienced such appalling service.

 

In my opinion. Port the number away from vodafone and you personally take over the account.

You should only need the account details and number to process the port online then you should be set.

You shouldn't ever have this problem again as you would be the account holder (also put your parents as an authority on the account just in case).

I have done this for all my parent's and grandparents stuff as I'm sick of the crap that you have to go through and sort out when something goes wrong as im the one fixing it every time.

I remember reading a post from a customer on Vodafone's FB page recently with a similar problem. Phone line out, ongoing for several days (may have been a week, from memory); no one at the call centre cared or wanted to do anything to help, apart from "I'll transfer you to the correct department". This went on for 45 minutes and 9 transfers.
Customer gave up, called Spark, phone reconnected (to them) inside 20 minutes.

I think that speaks volumes about the customer service their call centre provided back then. Doesn't sound like a great deal has changed, IMO.