This was just before Vodafone was sold.
Her relocation took place in the week that Vodafone was sold and Vodafone's phone support went caput for several days. Oops.
When we finally got through to relocations several days after she had moved in to find out where things were at it was apparent that nothing had actually been done in advance. We were given a date for Chorus to come and install fibre and get her landline, internet and TV going.
On that date the Chorus technician turned up and went away again. When I rang Vodafone relocations I learned that there were not enough nodes in the street and we had to wait for Chorus to install a new node.
Oops.
You'd think this - at the very least - could have been anticipated by some research after our initial request. Evidently that doesn't happen.
We were given another date when the install would happen. It didn't.
Chorus refuses to speak with customers and insisted that we go through our ISP but after a lot of pleading I found out that they been asked once by Vodafone to do the connection with no indication of any urgency and no follow ups.
By now my mother-in-law has been in occupation for 4 weeks with no phone, no internet, and no TV. She is 89 years old and had medical alarm services attached through her landline at her previous address. None of those are able to be active at the moment because she has no landline.
I rigged up her Vodafone TV box with a connection to our network but Vodafone TV refuses to work unless the ISP is Vodafone, so that's a no go too.
Where are we now? As far as I can tell Chorus still hasn't got past step 1: connection requested. Vodafone hasn't got past "there's nothing we can do".
She does have a mobile phone, and she is able to watch some free TV channels so she isn't Totally Cut Off but this situation is really poor, and if I was involved with Vodafone support I would be seriously embarrassed by this level of support.
Vodafone used to be better than this.
Are there any magical incantations I need to mouth down the phone, or escalated contact numbers I can ring, or arms I can break* to speed this process up?
*not literally
Cheers
Trevor