My interaction with Vodafone over the past couple of months has been a comedy of errors that has cost me a lot of money and distress. I'd be interested in any feedback about what action I should now take.

The series of disasters started when I got my new HTC Desire a couple of months ago and couldn't connect to Vodafone data. The call centre told me to take the phone & SIM card to my nearest Vodafone store. The store told me my SIM card was too old (SIM2) and convinced me I needed a replacement. $29.95 later, I walked out with my new 256k SIM. Huh - on getting home I found it was the same SIM2, just with larger capacity. So, out of curiosity, I popped in a family member's 32k SIM which worked perfectly. After calling Vodafone again I was told data had not been activated for my prepay account, which was the cause of the problem. They fixed this on their end. SIM upgrade was unnecessary.

In October I called Vodafone to set up Traveller for roaming in Australia. I arrived in Australia to find I had no service at all. Called Vodafone (international call = cost) and was told that roaming should have automatically cut in as soon as I restarted my phone. Half a day later, I still had no service. Since I was in Australia to be with a terminally ill family member and I needed to be reachable at any time, I purchased a Vodafone Australia prepay SIM. I registered online, giving passport details, credit card information, and all the hoopla they require, but the phone didn't activate. Whoopee - Vodafone Australia was having a problem and couldn't activate my SIM card! While that was an Aussie problem, it was still another $65 wasted which wouldn't have been wasted if my NZ Vodafone was working.

On returning to NZ I called Vodafone. Apparently something had gone wrong on their end and instead of activating Traveller my service had been disabled. Nice one!

So, after receiving an apology and $50 credit, I was assured everything was sorted. Data was supposed to be working and Traveller enabled.

Off I went overseas again. I had already checked with Vodafone that roaming would work in South Korea. It didn't. I spent USD$10 in Korea trying to sort this out with Vodafone. Traveller had not been enabled. Instead of any kind of apology I just got a snarky comment that I should have arranged for this before I went overseas (hello! I had received confirmation twice in October and again the week before I left that this had been done!)

I get to France and while the service status showed roaming was active, trying to make calls or send SMS messages failed. Data wasn't available. Incoming calls went directly to voicemail. Despite not having any working services my balance dropped $17. I gave up and bought an Orange France prepay package.

[As an aside, Orange was brilliant - no lost calls and unlimited data for 12Euro a month].

I called Vodafone when I got back and was told that roaming was not available on prepay, which is/was? rubbish, and that I should have done my research before leaving New Zealand. No apology, no explanation. I asked how I could make a formal complaint and was informed that it would be noted as a complaint but since I expected a service they don't offer there was nothing they could do.

Did Vodafone change its services while I was away? Traveller had certainly been available on prepay before I left. I had to give them my credit card details for billing - why would they take this information if it wasn't offered?

Any advice (apart from suck it up and just change to 2degrees or Telecom?)