[Resolved]  Vodafone — Cheats! Vodafone walks out of commitments given to customers!!

My name is Rajeev R. Singh (Mobile Number[protected] and I have been a customer of Vodafone since 1999 (initially with Hutch Prepaid and later Postpaid). Of late (since the time that Hutch became Vodafone) I have been totally dissatisfied with the services provided by you all, and even though I have such an old number, and was a high usage customer, I decided to switch to Airtel and took a new plan from them. Reasons for leaving are many, and if you are interested in knowing why I wanted to leave, I have listed the primarily ones after my complaint. My complaint is as follows:-

1) I I have already mentioned, I wanted to surrender my connection, as I had already taken a new Airtel connection. To do this, I called up your customer care. They referred me to a 'special team' which I came to know was instead a 'retention team' to prevent customers from leaving.
2) The retention team representative asked me why I wanted to leave, and on hearing me, offered to help me retain my Vodafone Postpaid connection on a Lifetime Plan. The following were offered:-
a) Waiver of Rs. 49/- as monthly CLIP charges.
b) Waiver of Rs. 21/- as monthy charges for voicemail for 6 months (to be renewed again if I request after 6 months).
c) Free F & F one number for 3 months.
I agreed to retain my number as a secondary number, subject to these offers. (Airtel becoming the main number as they have much better plans for me!) I was given the following Service Registration Numbers:[protected], [protected], [protected] for the retention offer.
3) However, upon receiving my Bill, I was horrified to learn that I was charged for CLIP and Voice Mail. Upon calling up Customer Care, they told me that the 'offers' related to CLIP and Voicemail that had been made to me had been rejected! How could they have rejected what was already committed was beyond my comprehension. That too without anyone bothering to inform me, the customer. I asked them to get me in touch with the 'retention team' once again.
4) The retention team was aprised of the situation by me, and I was told by them that actually the offers were not rejected and that 'this time' it 'would not be repeated'. I told them categorically that in that case, I would make payments of the bill which included the fees for lifetime plan, CLIP etc., only upon hearing a confirmation from Customer Care that actually the offers that Vodafone made to me stood. This time I was given the following Service Registration Numbers:- [protected], [protected], [protected].
5) I did not make the bill payment, as in case I did so, I would be trapped into the Lifetime Plan with Vodafone walking out of the offer conditionalities that went with me being retained with Vodafone.
6) I was told that I would recieve a confirmation call back from Vodafone. Needless to say that true to Vodafone tradition, no one has bothered to call me back. Hence I am not aware whether Vodafone can stand by its commitments made to me.

My request to you is as follows:-
A) Please inform me whether Vodafone would be able to keep to its commitment to me as per the offers made to me given vide point no 2. above.
B) Please ensure that I am not charged a late fee in the next bill for the current bill not paid by me, which has been witheld pending confirmation as mentioned above from Vodafone's end. The bill would be paid immediately upon hearing the confirmations from your end. In case I do not hear the confirmation / or Vodafone can not stand by its commitment given to me, I would pay earlier usage charges and surrender my connection. In that case I would not pay the Lifetime Plan charges, CLIP etc.

Looking forward to an early response from your end. In case you are interested in knowing why I wanted to leave Vodafone, please scroll down further.

Thanking you,

Yours Sincerely // Rajeev R. Singh
Mobile Number :[protected].

Some compelling reasons for wanting to leave Vodafone

1) Vodafone has been stressing only on marketing gimmicks like 'happy to help you'. Introduction of this latest gimmick coincided with it becoming really difficult to get through to the customer care system. options of the IVR have changed, giving the customer lesser options. There is now no 'straight' option of requesting to directly connect to a customer care representative. The fellow is hidden behind so many irrelevant 'options'. It has become as inaccessible and unprofessional as Reliance's customer care system. Also, the levels of competence of your representatives, whenever we can get them to talk to us, has become substandard. More often than not they appear to be faffing around, without adequate knowledge.
2) No one from your system ever calls back, even when they say they would. Yes and there are no exceptions to this rule. Ask anyone if they have ever received a promised 'callback' from Vodafone!
3) Since it became Vodafone, there has not been a single new Postpaid Plan introduced which is attractive. There has been some poor rehashing of plans though. In case new plans have been introduced, they are not reflected on your website.
4) On our handsets, the practice of getting to know the whereabouts of where we are located has been replaced with scrolling advertisements like 'sensx*123*308#@ 40m'. I wonder why am I subjected to this, even though I am registered with the 'Do Not Disturb' registry.