Dear Vodafone Boss, I don’t often correspond with people in
your rather exalted position and I am sure you are not used to receiving mails
from strangers. However, in a way I am not a stranger because I send money to
you every month and since the money does not return to sender I assume that you
receive it, even if without any gratitude. It doesn’t matter because the money
is in return for something, and it is that something I wish to talk to you
about.
Normally, I would not address this letter, which I am also
releasing on Facebook, to you but I have no choice. Or, put another way, the
choices available to me do not work. Try calling one of your own helplines and
see how the whole set up is designed to wreck your health for at least a couple
of days after the experience. The other option, indeed the only feasible option
is to brave the traffic to get to a Vodafone shop or Call Centre where you
would meet a lot of exceptionally friendly people except that friendliness is
not enough. What one requires is effective assistance which they are not set up
to provide. It is obvious to a veteran of your Call Centres like me that customers
and frontline workers alike are victims of a cruel and possibly clueless
management practice.
This is what happens: Customer Service (this is a misnomer,
of course) informs customer that the fault has “been reported”. They know and the
customer knows that the whole thing is an empty routine because what it really
means is that there is no more the staff can do for you so your fate is now in
the lap of the gods – gods meaning headquarters (HQ) or somewhere - sinister and
unknowable. Normally, any reasonable human being should have faith and trust
that HQ/gods would react within a short while to a distress call from a person
whose money you collect without fail every 30 days. However, in order for our
relationship to benefit you while possibly bankrupting me, of which more anon,
you have inserted a caveat, to wit, that you have fourteen days within which to
respond.
In practice therefore, if my fault is reported on the first
day of the month your engineer can stroll in on the 15th, walk
around a bit and disappear as happened to me a few days ago. That means the 14-day
clause has been satisfied and you can lean back in your chair and have a drink
or a cigar or whatever you do to amuse yourself. This means I am free to report
the fault again, which becomes a fresh case and of course Vodafone has 14 days
to respond. And so we go on in our merry way until the end of the month, when
of course you collect your monopoly money having passed “GO”. And it is real MONOPOLY
money but treated like worthless paper in a board game. According to the new
unilaterally imposed regime, I would have to pay you 65 Ghana cedis even if I
am unable to use a single kilobyte. This is what is going to happen to me this
month.
I am your broadband customer with a contract for you to
supply me unlimited Internet usage at 46 Ghana cedis every 30 days. Recently
and without any discussion, you have raised the amount I have to pay you to 65
Ghana cedis while at the same time placing a cap of 15 gigabytes on my usage. This
is not only unfair but possibly illegal, unless of course there is a small
print designed as usual to cheat your own customers. You know you can get away
with this blatant cheating and abuse in Ghana unlike say, in the UK because
here consumers are not able to guarantee their own protection: we have no
watchdog groups, our politicians are chasing more power and glory and the
regulator is under no pressure to regulate on a regular basis. We are on our
own.
Now, to get back to my specific situation, I started
experiencing unusual problems in the first week of December. My calls to your
telephone helplines went through alright but I never did manage to speak to one
single real human being. This is how it works when you call a Vodafone help
line, as I explained in my column three weeks ago: “It goes something like
this: if you want English press one, Akan press two, Ga press, Hausa press…etc.
You press. Then it goes on: if you want administration press one, accounts
press two; you press. It continues: if you are calling for mobile press one,
for landline press two. You press. Then, if you are calling about broadband
press whatever. Eventually after a lifetime of this rigmarole you are ordered
to press zero to be connected to an operator. You press zero and wait. You are
then informed that “your connection to the operator failed”! Lately, an
additional joke has been devised. After taking you through the whole shebang the
voice instructs you to send an SMS with your name to some telephone number. No
stand-up comic could devise this routine.
Dear CEO, I have to explain that I depend on Internet access
for my work and that means in Ghana, Vodafone’s FIXED broadband is the best on
offer. Unfortunately, it is a monopoly since Vodafone took over lock, stock and
barrel from Ghana Telecom. If I had access to the Internet, I would quote some
of the flowery promises about improved services Vodafone made before it bought
GT at rock-bottom price. On the contrary, Vodafone appears to have inherited
and carried on the worst work traditions of GT without infusing any of the
promised efficiencies in its work. Since my work depends on the Internet, the
lack of access due to my current difficulties means my eventual bankruptcy. As
you well know, it is only a bad parasite that kills off its host; it is a bad
company that bites off the proverbial hand that feeds it.
As I have said, Vodafone has good people who are eager to
help but beyond receiving customers’ money and “reporting” the problem, they
are powerless, and one gets the impression that they are as frustrated as the
customers and feel unable to do anything about it. Three weeks ago when I went
to one of your shops for help, it took the local manager more than one hour
before she could speak with a god at HQ, and even then she had to use her
personal influence to be able to speak with someone at the next level of
responsibility. Elsewhere, this sort of management gap would lead to a
legitimate question: is this company fit for purpose? Your company gets away
with it in Ghana and only in Ghana.
But things will change. Two weeks ago I put information about
my personal frustrations with Vodafone on social media and within minutes a torrent
of similar complaints came flooding in from scores of people suffering in
silence. Someone reported a Vodafone tweet that said dissatisfied customers can
go elsewhere. I can’t say whether that is true, but the official lack of
responsiveness and the 14-day clause amount to that. In any case, we have
nowhere to go if the issue is about landlines or fixed communications because
Vodafone has a monopoly. That is the crux of the matter. But Boss, things will
change.
kgapenteng.blogspot.com
I am in total sympathy with this line of complaint. I have been a Vodafone customer for about a year and I could fill a small book with bad experiences. Very occasionally I find someone in the Vodafone staff chain who knows something about the technology - the rest of the shop staff seem to be there just to scoop up as much money as possible. The unilateral cap on fixed broadband accounts was INIQUITOUS and contrary to all principles of contract law with which I grew up and which I studied at the University of Oxford (BA, MA). When I raised my account to a higher cost for a better data allowance I was told an unlimited account could still be had for over 300 Ghana Cedis a month. I was paying 200 a month for the new account. By CHANCE I heard from a customer service rep that I could have an uncapped account for 180 a month - to which I changed immediately. I have a USB modem as back-up for the days when the broadband is down. The software was out of date. I went to a Vodafone shop and waited half an hour while an assistant "updated" software. When I returned home I found she had put on the same obsolete software. As an MSc graduate in computing I went on line and did the software upgrade myself. Waste of half an hour walk to the shop, half an hour in shop, and half an hour walk back. I have other instances of Vodafone incompetence - and one or two good instances. However when the telephone was installed the handset was dud and had to be replaced. Vodafone chose arbitrary passwords but did not communicate those to me (until after many visits to various shops I found someone able to explain what the installation engineers did). As a traveller to scores of countries and familiar with many service providers over many years I would rate Vodafone customer service whether by maddening telephone call or maddening visits to shops the worst I have ever experienced. Something needs to be done by Vodafone to restore confidence, and the lifting of these unilateral capping on broadband accounts would be an excellent and highly desirable first step.
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