[Resolved]  Vodafone — Customer care, attitude, hampering my business

Vodafone may be one of the largest GSM service provider and still growing in India, but to me Vodafone is one of those companies:

- Whose representatives lie to customers, without realizing what wrath they could bring upon their subscribers who they are cheating to get their petty sales targets achieved. ( recently I received a promotional call from Vodafone executive about converting my prepaid number to postpaid because that way my call rates would be dropped and I'll save some money. That sounded very sensible, as who'd be opposed to saving money, I said yes ( Little did i know about the mess which i was about to get into, Oh God!). Like a professional company they sent their agent to collect my documents for the conversion. I confirmed and reconfirmed with the agent( and Mr. Manik, at Mohali Office ) at least 10 times. Now some issues arose, as I am not from Chandigarh, I don't have a address proof of Chandigarh, so i provided my NCR's residence proof. I politely told them if the address proof is such a big issue, i'm happy with my prepaid and there is no need to convert it to postpaid connection, as this number is being used in my business and can't afford it not to work even for a single day. But they assured and reassured that there will be no problem. That was Nov 4 and till November 18 I realized that my number is still prepaid after paying them a cash of Rs 500/- and supplying all those documents which they asked for. I called them to inquire and Mr. Manik told me that my verification is negative so this cannot be converted in postpaid from prepaid. Trust me, i should have felt bad instead I felt relieved that I will not have to talk to these people and all this three weeks drama will be over. But no its Vodafone... Your Rs 500/- can't be refunded as your verification is negative so they got the right to keep your money. Trust me I was not only annoyed, I was frustrated and very disturbed. Rs. 500 is not that big amount of money that I was dying without it, but the attitude of the person on the phone made me fight for my 500 Rs. I had some energy left, I requested him if he could let me speak to the manager. He told me point blank that they don't have managers or supervisors but only seniors. Finally when I got to speak to somebody else ( Mr. Harish from the same office), Mr. Harish with all his empathies or rather sympathies informed me that this is true, they can't refund me my 500 rupees. At this stage I need to visit a Vodafone store in sec 35, chandigarh and put forward my request and then probably, if I am lucky, I'll get my money after 30 - 40 days. That was the end of the call, I could not take it further. I desperately wanted to go Vodafone store to discuss this but could not and then decided to pay them a visit in the morning tomorrow.

But sadly, story is not finished. In the evening at approximately 9.40 pm, while I was talking to one of my business associate, network was lost abruptly. After trying several times in vain to connect to the network, i thought maybe finally they have converted my prepaid into postpaid that's why prepaid doesn't have any signals, so I inserted the new postpaid sim into the phone so that I'll be able to complete my unfinished conversation with the associate, but guess what even the postaid doesn't have any signals. Can't even call customer service officers or their seniors to tell my agony.

I was suppose to have dinner, but all hunger was gone, didn't have the energy to out a make call from a PCO to that associate of mine. What if my parents will try to call me at this time? What my brother, in Mumbai or fiancé, in Delhi think if they'll get God knows what message, while calling me, which i 'm sure that they'll call me. Tomorrow I'll be explaining to everyone that Vodafone sucks, will switch to Airtel and then probably everything will be fine.

But then does Vodafone know that their paying customers are being treated this way? Are they interested only in numbers and nothing else? Are, we as customers, important only till we don't take their subscription? I have been a Hutch customer throughout my mobile usage era and actually there was a time when I was proud of being a Hutch subscriber... but now I guess will never be able to gather enough courage to use Vodafone again.

- Whose representatives couldn't care less even if the customer is upset or frustrated because of their inhuman, unprofessional behaviour. ( while connecting me to his senior Mr. Manik, a customer service officer with Vodafone's Mohali office, informs his senior ( Mr. Harish, at the same office) that "yaar is customer ne pareshaan kar diya hai, dekh le jara " ( This customer has been a pain in the A**, just take care of him). He didn't even had a little common sense or rather decency to mute the phone before talking like this that too on when he very well knew that conversation could be overheard over the phone.

- Whose representatives if could not resolve a issue would bombard your cell with some 2000+ odd promotional messages even if "Do Not Disturb" service is activated on your mobile number. ( I still have those 2000 + messages in my cell phone because I could not gather enough strength to devote few hours of my time to delete the messages which were forced in my cellphone. )