Hanging Up on Vodafone

Lessons learned:

• Companies, like Vodafone, make it extremely difficult for you to terminate a service.
• Staff are only doing what they have been told, try hard not to blame them.
• Sometimes you need to seek alternate paths, away from the obvious route.

The first revision of this blog post was going to be a rant on the problems I had trying to disconnect my Vodafone mobile broadband service. In the spirit of trying to keep positive on life, I thought some constructive criticism would be better.

To begin, I signed up to the mobile broadband service in June 2008  for 5 GB per month, $39 per month on a 24 month contract.  This was one of the best deals available at the time.  I predominately used it commuting to work, and it came handy while on holidays or when the home ADSL service was unavailable.  I had good days with this service, and terrible days too.  Between problems with USB modem detection and inconsistent coverage, I usually had a 50% chance of getting on first go, and then a 50% chance of staying connected on my daily journeys (within 15km of CBD) commute.  The experience over the two years was barely passable as satisfactory.

My actual usage varied from what I initially thought I needed, and I found myself to consistently use less than 500MB a month.  If you take that into a pure $/MB view, I was only using 10%, wasting $35 per month.

Very recently,my work laptop died just one month out of the Vodafone mobile broadband contract.  With no immediate plans for it to be replaced, I decided to terminate the service.  This should have been a straightforward task, so I decided to visit my local Vodafone outlet.  The guy there was helpful enough, confirmed my contract had ended, but couldn’t cancel the service.  He cited that I would need to agree to some legal clauses which would be recorded over the phone.

The next day I called the number given to me at the first store. At 12pm, on my lunchbreak, I attempted the vodafone customer service number. After getting through the IVR, I waited 30 minutes before I gave up.

That afternoon, I visited one of the Vodafone stores in the Brisbane CBD.  Again I was told to call the Vodafone customer service line.  I explained the 30 minute wait time, and I was advised that it would be busy now (approx 5pm), and told me to call at lunchtime when it would be quieter.  It is quite frustrating that a simple task as I perceived it couldn’t be achieved immediately in store.

After I got home that evening, I tried three times to call customer service.  Each time I cited to the IVR, as per their recommendations, to ‘cancel my service’.  I was played a standard message of ‘we have more calls than usual’ and then had my call disconnected.  Clearly a ploy to imped my request to terminate.

To test my theory that service cancellations were given a low priority, I tried for a fourth time.  I was now within 15 minutes of my first call that evening, and I had 15 minutes to go before the call centre closed at 8pm.  I rang again and told the IVR I wanted an ”account enquiry’.  I few moments passed and I heard on hold music,  and there was no message that they were all busy.  Finally some progress.

Twelve minutes later, I was answered by a gentleman who was part of the accounts department.  He helped me reset my PIN, but had to transfer my call to a separate team to perform the cancellation.  It was now 8pm, and my hopes of getting through to someone was diminishing quickly.  Thankfully, a representative answered, and after I abruptly stopped their cross-sell and retention effort, I had the cancellation scheduled for the next business day – no legal questions asked.

I’ve never met an organisation so unwilling to assist with a basic, legitimate request.  Had this had been resolved upon first contact, Vodafone would have been perceived by myself in a positive light, and I would have been happy to recommend their service.

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