Vodophone…a Customer Satisfaction Epic Fail!

Today is a good day.  Why you ask…well its simple.  Today I got back the near two hundred pounds that Vodaphone took from my bank account.  Let me tell you a little story.

On the 28th of August I looked at my current account and discovered that two hundred pounds was missing.  Now that is not small change to anyone.  Asking in the bank I was told it was a charge from Vodaphone against my good lady. Which was odd since she no longer had a phone contract with them having cancelled and paid if off a month plus earlier moving to another provider.  I, being a civilised fellow, thought that a quick call to the company would resolve this and get my money back.  But no….

On the evening of the 28th my wife made half a dozen calls to their call centre and I kid you not the workers there not only did not help her but they all ‘accidentally’ hung up on her during the calls.  Eventually finding a decent chap we were told that they simply did not know why they took the money as we had no account!  Don’t worry we will sort it out they said.  Time passed, time passed.  We phoned back and tried again the next week and were promised a speedy solution and a return of the funds.  Well that was the 31st of August and here we are on the 9th of September.  That is, in the age of Paypal and instant communications, nearly two weeks to get a resolution.  Just not good enough.  Not at all!

I had to cancel plans, cut down my expenditure.  No one suffered but I feel strongly enough about this to say that they just ‘stole’ the money and then sat on it.

Well done Vodaphone you moved me to make a blog post like this something I avoid normally.  You will never get my custom again.

GBS

2 thoughts on “Vodophone…a Customer Satisfaction Epic Fail!

  1. I find, when dealing with this sort of situation, that call centres are useless.

    The trick is to call their head office and at the switchboard, ask for “whoever deals with legal action against the company”. Presto, you’re talking to the legal team.

    First thing — take their name. Then they find it MUCH harder to drop the call.

    “Hi, I’ve got a question — we have no contract with you, but you’ve taken 200 pounds out of one of our accounts with no authority. Would you like this to be a civil recovery matter, in which case to which address should we serve litigation or should we approach the police to report your commission of fraud?”

    In general this is the point where people say “Erm”, then they panic slightly and then and start trying to prevent things getting worse.. Remember to ask for compensation for your time, effort and distress.

    The legal team in large companies can Get Things Done and problems solved in a way the call-centre staff can’t; it’s pointless arguing with them, they just simply aren’t allowed to do stuff that isn’t on their script list (which is why they drop the call because they don’t know what else to do).

    Whereas someone from corporate legal showing up saying “do this refund right now” actually gets it done.

    • Hello Katie,

      Thanks for the comment. What you suggest is pretty much what I did. It is just a shame that I again expect people to be civil and gentleman like and they are not. We got it sorted out and all is now well.

      On another note, I like your hobby collection and enjoyed the pictures off your ‘fysh’ links too. Got to see more 15mm.co.uk and Alternative Armies on there though!

      GBS

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