Vodafone: The gateway to hell

Thursday, 28th of April 2016

The last few days have been a torture, since I am currently in an open war with Vodafone. The company that I so like back in Lisbon, that was very helpful when I bought my phone or when I had questions about their service, is a nightmare here in London.

I have been going to the nearest Vodafone store, one in Notting Hill Gate, almost every day (and no is not a lie). Since I first arrived, I have not been in another place so many times as I have been there and to be honest, I had never seen so much incompetence and lack of knowledge in one place only.

The all experience started when I went there to see check on prices for the instalation of broadband (which basically stands for internet service at home). I was forced to wait while the employee decided to answer some text messages from her friend, she had her whatsapp messages fully on display to everyone and cleary could´t care less for her customers. When I was finally called, she proceded to tell me some information, but it seems that they always find a way to hide some important things from the client, and then I accepted the service, which was with a promotion of 50% off.

I spent the next few days having to go back to the store since there was always a lack of information and it seems that they needed more personal details of mine every time I went there, before letting me sign a contract. After spending nearly 3 hours there (my personal record), where I was basically silent and seated down waiting for them to do something, it was said to me that the only way I could bring a router device home was if I presented my debit card from an english bank. The problem was that I had not yet received mine, it took almost a week to get it through the post.

When the card arrived, my first move was to go to the store and show it. Again I stayed 2 more hours there when it was supposed to be a short trip. The employee had no idea of what he was doing and had to call someone to help him out. The fact that he thought it was appropriate to flirt with me in the middle of the process, did not help at all, it made me even more angry with all of that.

Finally I had the router and was ready to instal it myself when I got an email saying that an engineer had to come to my house to check if everything is ok before I connect the cables (here is necessary to have a box installed called an Openreach line). I was out of my mind when they said he could only come on the 12th of May and so now I have to wait until that day so a man can come to my house and do exactly what I am able to do alone, and of course they charge the service.

I swear the automatic service that is provided on the phone is a million times more helpful than the people who work at that store, even tough I am talking to a machine for ten minutes and just pressing buttons, at least it gets the job done.

From a girl frustrated with Vodafone,

Mariana Fidalgo