Blogfromthebarn

On the institutionalised incompetence of businesses, yes Vodafone YOU !!!!


Start Rant...

So, for the second time in three months my mobile ceased to function, nothing, nada, zip, zero, a plain white screen with red words telling me to "contact service". Well, I'm nothing if not obedient so after 10 minutes of pressing the 28 appropriate buttons on a conventional phone (does anyone else feel a little like an experimental chimp ringing these helplines, shouldn't one at least get a banana or a biscuit if we get the sequence right?) I got to speak to some lovely young lady in Utter Pradesh.

Using all her diagnostic skills she ascertained that the problem must be the sim card, how? "because 9 out of 10 times it is".
She advised me to turn it off, leave it for ten minutes then turn it back on again. This is now standard operating procedure for all helplines, if my name comes up, they give me a ten minute task then take their lunch break, very quickly.

Astonishingly the simple reboot didn't fix what was clearly a major fault, the young lady was away from her desk (told you so) and there would be nobody available to organise a replacement until 09:00 Monday morning, why? Because Vodafone have outsourced their replacement service (to a team of the aforementioned lobotomised chimps I suspect).

You'd think that if one of the world's leading telecoms companies was dealing with the replacement of a non-functioning mobile phone they'd find a better way to communicate with the unhappy owner of the phone than by sending text messages, (which can't be received) or having the delivery driver telephone the non-functioning mobile for directions.
Still he found me OK, probably by heading for the source of the wailing and gnashing of teeth and the rhythmic thud, thud, thud of a forehead hitting a brick wall.

Vodafone's fault resolution used to be superb, (indeed I was complimenting them in this very blog only a few months ago) however as cost cutting starts to make it's presence felt I'm afraid they've made their way alongside British Airways, Custodian MonitoringServices and the tight git who canceled the complimentary Financial Times at my gym onto the Stuffy List of Institutional Nincompoops.

...End Rant

posted by Stuffy @ 12:00 pm