I've decided to give Vodafone a shot after a few years on 3 then EE. I had a few locations that were annoying where I'd have no signal on EE and although I do believe 800Mhz 4G will likely sort those eventually I didn't fancy waiting an unknown amount of time for that to go live everywhere I needed it.
Combine that with an amazing deal which means I'm only really paying Vodafone around £7 a month for the same plan I had with EE I decided I should give them a go.
However... Jesus H. Christ are Vodafone bad at taking my money and also bad at providing any sort of support at all. I genuinely won't list all the things that have gone wrong because simply no one has the time to read it all, some highlights so far:
- Their shopping cart crashed 3 times preventing me from placing my order, I eventually had to use a different browser as apparently their cart isn't compatible with Safari on OS X right now...(!!).
- My order confirmation email and number were useless, no one at Vodafone could find my order at all.
- Spent 50 minutes trying to get through to customer support before giving up, there's only so much Ellie Goulding on loop you can listen to.
- They have no dedicated business support team or number it seems, despite being a business customer I'm lumped in the queue with everyone (not my experience on o2, EE or 3).
- Finally got someone helpful by ringing sales instead of support and they advised me that my order needed several forms of proof sent to Vodafone including a signed letter on headed notepaper confirming what plan I wanted exactly (remind me what the point of the online order system was again?).
- SIM card arrives today but comes with nothing, no welcome letter or anything. Just a SIM card in the post.
- Try to use the online number port form, select the option before starting the form that I'm a business customer proceed through form only to get this error: "The number you've entered may be a pay as you go or business number. You can only enter a pay monthly mobile number.". WUT.
- Speak to people on live chat (having gone via the business live chat link) and every single person I speak to says I have come through to non-business support and to use the business link. No amount of explaining to them convinces them I have.
- Are you getting bored yet?
- Decide to ring sales again to try and get some help, lady says she'll transfer me to the correct team to get this sorted out. ONE HOUR AND THIRTY MINUTES LATER I give up on Ellie Goulding again and hang up the call.
- Kick up such a fuss on live chat about the hold time they ring me despite apparently not supposedly being able to (I was told before by others). Get put through to dedicated porting team. They try to start the port the number but there is an internal error in their systems. Get put back on hold, finally she starts to say it's going to happen and then the line goes garbled. For two minutes. I give up.
I won't bother you with the other bits like my account apparently being created without any account number at all so no one can find it and leave you with the exciting news that my number is apparently going to be ported across tomorrow. I really REALLY hope their network is better than their support and ordering systems otherwise I'm out of here faster than you can say EE.