Travel and Phones

The youngest returned for Christmas from the UK with a new phone, the eldest had a new phone also, it took 3 trips to Vodacom and cost R100 to perform a SIM swop, which failed and then purchase 2 new SIM cards, which both needed a further visit to get them activated and when I say 'them' I mean only one of them. The kids return to the UK soon and they'll have the same issues when they put their Vodafone SIMs back in.

Every time I travel to the UK I spend a fortune on getting my mobile phone to work.
I have O2 and orange SIM cards for the UK. I arrive at the airport, purchase airtime having swopped the SIM mid flight and turning off everything that uses up the data allowance.  Load the £10 airtime and by the end of the day it’s all gone.

As a result the first thing I do is go without ringing anyone to say I've arrived, try and find a spot of free WiFi to FB, email and message home to say ‘I’m here’ or ‘I’m on my way’

As I fly into London or Birmingham then rely on a train or coach to get to my destination and understandably family do not realise my need to sort my phone out it is usually 2-3 days before I get to a high street store and explain the problem.

And every bloody time...yes you’re on the ‘so and so package, just top up and it’ll be fine’ and every bloody time I end up with 2-3 trips to the store to complain all my allowance went within 2-3 days to be informed ‘that’s because your I phone used up all the data and it takes 2-3 days for your plan to activate’ Well FFS that’s what I said when I came in the store in the first place and asked for your help.

Finally getting the Orange EE phone sorted, I then discover that for some reason when my 1G data allowance runs out I can’t top it up, seriously, the woman in the store in Worcester, then the guy in the branch in Manchester just looked at me and said ‘ooohh it’s very expensive to add more data just for a few days’ and didn’t bloody sell me any and had I been given the price I could have made the choice as to whether I could afford it or not.

I'm sorry you're disappointed Vodafone

'I'm disapointed to see that you have left us :( If you need anything in the future you know where we are!'

This is the final tweet from Vodafone, sent yesterday afternoon, after I finally cancelled my account with them for the following reasons:

It took 9 months to reset my access to the online service. I screamed and shouted, via twitter and my blog, I wrote, I phoned, I visited the stores and nothing, absolutley nothing.


I never recieved a reference letter to say I'd been a loyal and reliable customer for 10 years.

Never recieved a response to a query about a faulty phone.

If you want you can read the other two blogs over here

http://chickenruby.blogspot.com/2011/09/its-shame-its-come-to-this.html

http://chickenruby.blogspot.com/2011/09/update-on-vodafone.html

So I gave up...what other option did I have? I said I'd go OFCOM but was polietly informed that Vodafones offer to cancel the contract at no further cost would be withdrawn and then where would I be? The contract was due to expire in December so I've saved the grand old sum of about £60. I can tell you it's cost far more than that for me to keep fighting, not just my time but the stress, the inconvienence and my airfare.

In the end I beeged my husband to help fund a trip back to the UK, a trip we really couldn't afford so I could go in person and sort this issue out, sort out problems with the banks, the post office redirection service, the other companies that had failed to action change of address for correspondence.

I am angry, I am stressed, I am pissed off and I certainly WILL NOT be using any of these companies again.

And any chance I get to tell Vodafone that their customer care is disgusting. I will.

They took my money, they didn't provide a service and now when I go back to the UK in December I don't have a UK sim card or mobile phone, which means I'll end up spending the first part of my holiday home (again) trying to sort something out.