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drcuriositySo, yesterday I went into Northlands Mall to pay a cellphone bill that arrived with a bare handful of days due, and to cancel my plan account. It appears that Vodafone's sales staff are rather divorced from customer service - certainly, it was the worst treatment I've had from a telco for a while.
I went into the store to pay the bill, get someone to explain why my bill arrived so late, and to cancel my account - and could do none of those things.
I was told that I couldn't pay the bill there; I had to go to a post office shop further down the mall. The saleswoman had no idea why my bill arrived so late, or who I could to talk to about it. And in order to cancel my account, I have to call 777 - they can't do it for me in person. Which is annoying, because there's a $160 cancellation fee that I was hoping to get out of the way and pay right there and then... but hey, they can't take my money, it seems.
The post office shop down the mall wasn't there. In fact, it wasn't anywhere. I called in at the mall's information desk to be told that the post office desk had been closed, and the nearest one was at the nearest Kiwibank, which was closed. Lovely.
So, I sat down and called 777 to cancel my account. I recorded voice spent the next couple of minutes telling me that because Vodafone was "upgrading" their services, large amounts of account and billing information would not be available. And that during this upgrade, their customer service people would not be able to access that information either. And that I should be careful to monitor my account use over that time. And that the service would be inaccessible until the upgrade was completed on June 30th.
Bloody hell. Seriously, what kind of telco breaks its service for a month and a half in order to perform a systems upgrade? $160 to cut an run is beginning to sound like it's a deal, it's a steal, it's the sale of the fucking century.
Anyway, eventually the recording stops and I get to a "press '0' for a customer service representative", and then to an actual human being. After getting identification stuff out of the way, I tell him that I'd like to cancel the account I'm calling from. He asks for reasons, and I tell him that the phone doesn't do what I was told I could do with it (i.e. I can't load my own Java apps onto it, and the Motorola Phone Tools drivers won't install on Win98 despite being advertised as doing so). He notes these reasons down, and transfers me through to the appropriate department - who aren't picking up the phone. He gets alternate contact details in case they can't reach my cellphone (no, 03 - that's in Christchurch, not Auckland).
So now they're going to call me back some time within the next two business days... which I can only presume means that I'll call them up at the end of Tuesday and try to ascertain what the hell is going on, and how I can stop being on their plan and go back to pre-pay. Huzzah.
Honestly, I'm not convinced that at-least-they're-not-Telecom is enough anymore.
I went into the store to pay the bill, get someone to explain why my bill arrived so late, and to cancel my account - and could do none of those things.
I was told that I couldn't pay the bill there; I had to go to a post office shop further down the mall. The saleswoman had no idea why my bill arrived so late, or who I could to talk to about it. And in order to cancel my account, I have to call 777 - they can't do it for me in person. Which is annoying, because there's a $160 cancellation fee that I was hoping to get out of the way and pay right there and then... but hey, they can't take my money, it seems.
The post office shop down the mall wasn't there. In fact, it wasn't anywhere. I called in at the mall's information desk to be told that the post office desk had been closed, and the nearest one was at the nearest Kiwibank, which was closed. Lovely.
So, I sat down and called 777 to cancel my account. I recorded voice spent the next couple of minutes telling me that because Vodafone was "upgrading" their services, large amounts of account and billing information would not be available. And that during this upgrade, their customer service people would not be able to access that information either. And that I should be careful to monitor my account use over that time. And that the service would be inaccessible until the upgrade was completed on June 30th.
Bloody hell. Seriously, what kind of telco breaks its service for a month and a half in order to perform a systems upgrade? $160 to cut an run is beginning to sound like it's a deal, it's a steal, it's the sale of the fucking century.
Anyway, eventually the recording stops and I get to a "press '0' for a customer service representative", and then to an actual human being. After getting identification stuff out of the way, I tell him that I'd like to cancel the account I'm calling from. He asks for reasons, and I tell him that the phone doesn't do what I was told I could do with it (i.e. I can't load my own Java apps onto it, and the Motorola Phone Tools drivers won't install on Win98 despite being advertised as doing so). He notes these reasons down, and transfers me through to the appropriate department - who aren't picking up the phone. He gets alternate contact details in case they can't reach my cellphone (no, 03 - that's in Christchurch, not Auckland).
So now they're going to call me back some time within the next two business days... which I can only presume means that I'll call them up at the end of Tuesday and try to ascertain what the hell is going on, and how I can stop being on their plan and go back to pre-pay. Huzzah.
Honestly, I'm not convinced that at-least-they're-not-Telecom is enough anymore.
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no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:23 am (UTC)I'm hoping they'll have new/improved plans once it's all over with..
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:25 am (UTC)i haven't had to many problems with them. only once when my text messages weren't working i rung them up. the dude got me to tell him what i had tried to do to get it going, then he asked a "did you try this?" list with EXACTLY what i had just told him i had tried in it.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:30 am (UTC)xoxoxo
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:37 am (UTC)On their online store locator, it's described as "Vodafone Retail Northlands", and offers the following in-store services: "Prepay, PerformsResigns, On-Account, Service Centre".
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:43 am (UTC)Vodafone outlets aren't, in fact, capable of doing anything releting to vodafone accounts unless you bought the phone and contract from there in the first place. They are just like any other place that on-sells vodafone contracts — separate companies that make money on commissions. This means that changing contracts is a bastard.
Basically, to drop contracts, you have to contact the original store you got the contract from. For anything else, do it by phone. Accept that for anything complex, you will have to keep harrasing them until the messages trickle through to the repitial hindbrain that is their accounts department.
It took me about four months for them to sort my contrat mess out.
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 10:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 10:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 10:20 am (UTC)Invariably, we end up paying like $20 in credit card on the site, and then get a message like this:
"You were $80 in debt. You have just paid $20. Your account balance is $63.89 in credit. You are still over your credit limit."
That $63.89 is not only the wrong credit/debit, it's always a number completely unrelated to the original amount, the amount we paid, or any reasonable calculation of the two. I even queried it on the site. After two weeks I got a response back that the number was strange because "the credit card payment hadn't cleared yet." Well, that's interesting, since that's supposedly the point of the text, and I spelled out exactly how that number didn't add up at all.
Not to mention the amount of disbelief I got from the chick who rang to get me to transfer to You Choose when I turned down the "an extra 100 minutes free for a month and then you'll get charged when you don't cancel it, oh and we'll set this up to expire over Christmas so you won't be able to get hold of us" marvelous offer.
*end rant*
no subject
Date: 2007-05-20 09:19 pm (UTC)when i stopped my contract they practically begged me to stay on my plan
and got quite shitty at me
and yes it is stupid they cant take bill payments etc what is the point of them even having a shop if we have to ring 777 everytime we need to do something important
no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 07:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-21 09:29 am (UTC)