Firstly, finding a corporate complaints number in our day and age may as well be like trying to find a unicorn…
After 12 years at this point, as a specialist in business development/commercial & sales strategy (and all that entails), it’s likely I can find your direct contact details, regardless of your role or where you work, in a matter of minutes, through various connections, sales channels or web searches etc. this is down to working in sales environments, commercial departments and B2B telemarketing centres across the UK and Europe all my working life…
That said, my intention here is not to seem arrogant, it’s to stress the point that if I personally struggle to get hold of the relevant people to complain to, with 12 years + experience, how can we expect as a society for the ‘every-man’ (or woman) to find the details they need, let alone succeed in any kind of resolution, if a big business tries to take advantage of them?
Following a recent 11 month disaster of a time with Vodafone, I thought I’d highlight this point and ask, how can we as an economy change the way these commercial and convoluted operations work, to better support their end user, namely the person on the street who simply wants to text a colleague, or call their mum at the weekend…
Around September 2015 I casually wondered into my local Vodafone shop and asked whether I was due a phone upgrade any time soon, I was told it would be next year, but I was entitled to an iPad upgrade and could get my hands on the new iPad mini for no extra cost. Happy days! However, that was the beginning of a slippery slope I’m still struggling to clamber up today, as I write this blog…
At the time I was asked to sign into another maddening 24 month contract, which I did, as we all do to get our hands on the latest technology.
Unfortunately, little did I know that instead of transferring my current details over, the Vodafone rep, for whatever reason, signed me up to a completely new contract without my knowledge… So at this point unbeknown to me, I walked away from the store with my phone contract intact, a brand new iPad mini contract and with my old iPad contract still running, when it should have simply been upgraded…
So as a consumer I’m thinking great, and I’m happy in the knowledge that I will only be paying for 1 phone and 1 iPad as usual… But… Life’s just not that simple!
A friend asks if he can buy the redundant old iPad for his daughter, which I didn’t have a problem with and I carry on with my life.
As a few months pass my fiancé, who’s also Financial Controller for my businesses, asks me why I’m getting debited such high amounts for my bill every month… Maybe I’m calling overseas more, downloading things etc. and I need to reign it it. I’m not, so I can’t.
At this point, around 4 months into the increased bills I think, maybe it’s just an oversight on my part and I start to look into it. I then go back to my Vodafone store and ask what the issue is, only to be told that I have 3 contracts instead of 2. Then they say that I have to call their hotline and they will sort it over the phone as they have been overcharging me via direct debit for this duration…
I go home and that evening I call the Vodafone customer services, who tell me they can’t do anything. They say that the only way to resolve the issue is to go back to the store again, find the specific girl who set up the new account and get her to write on her notes in their system that she made an oversight and was incorrect in doing so, I then need to call them back and they will firstly credit the money onto my account and then they will eventually pay that back into my bank…
So, 6-8 weeks of trying to get into the shop on numerous occasions, while the girl in question is on or off shift and I still don’t catch her. At this point I complain to the store manager and he has one of his team sit down a work out 6 months’ worth of overpayments that amounts to around £600.
I’m then told that they have cancelled the iPad, credited the account, but they have to take another £32 for that month as they can only cancel with 30 days’ notice, but they’ll pay me that back later and that once the full amount is credited to my Vodafone bill they will refund me into my bank.
Well, a bit of red tape and unnecessary additional billing & crediting… Happy days again! Finally resolved! Or is it……..?
A few days later and we see another overcharged bill… I call the customer service line again and talk to a legendary salesman who tells me how useless the shop guys are and convinces me he’s finally actually cut off the old iPad and it’s definitely happened this time… A new era begins, or so I believe…
A month later I’m overseas in Europe and my phone says ‘No Service’ where there should be a signal bar… Bit of a bugger I think, because I have around 14-15 business voicemails on there that I was waiting to access…
At the time there was a bit of internal government/military dispute in Turkey, so the locals where I’m staying tell me that the signal may be due to Turkey having a range of signal pylons there and that’s potentially why I lost service…
I decide to wait until I’m back in the UK, making the assumption that in 48 hours when I fly home my service will likely just pop back into play if I ‘turn it off and on again’ – However, when I get back to the UK that’s not the case…
In a taxi on the way back from Luton airport I decide to use my hours worth of travel wisely and resolve this by using my partners mobile to call Vodafone. At this point I’m told that they didn’t cut off the old iPad when I was in the shop that day, despite me confirming and reconfirming that they’d got the right device at the time… They’d cut off my sodding mobile… The mobile that I’ve had on contract with them since 2009… You can image the happy fluffy feeling I get at this point before my tirade begins!
So, after 45 minutes ranting, while bent double over the back seat, having to use the taxi driver’s phone charger from the front seat so the battery doesn’t die after a 4 hour flight and I’m finally told that the matter is resolved… They apologise for my phone being cut off, which is their oversight, they will cut off the old iPad now but need to bill me another £32 for the 30 days’ notice again, but not to worry as they’ll credit that to my Vodafone bill then pay it back into my account at some point… and no, I didn’t write the same thing twice, I’m going through their groundhog day process where they keep billing me an extra £32 every time I try and remedy their fuck up.
An argument ensues, they then agree to give me the £32 early as a credit, because then at no stage am I out of pocket when they bill me the £32 later… They tell me they will pay me the full £632+ into my account and that they’ve cut off the old iPad and that my phone will be reconnected in 2-24 hours but probably earlier than 24 hours…
I’m also offered 2 months free billing (on the line rental might I add) for my troubles… That equates to £around £70, against 3 days or so without any phone access and an hour on the phone in the back of a taxi, might I add, not including the previous months of rigmarole… Rubbish freebie there! Not happy!
But….. Is it Happy Days?! Lots of hassle and un-necessary anxiety and stress, and we finally have a resolution and I’m feeling like the lady has reconnected me and done me proud! Or has she…
27+ hours later… I’m confused as to why my phone is still not active and to all who are unaware it looks like my business has gone down the pan, as I’m receiving emails as to why clients (some at Global Board Director level) can’t get in touch, telling me that my phone has been disconnected… Pretty bloody embarrassing as an international businessman!! I call Vodafone again…
They’re quite confused, apparently in the fine print it says reconnection (of the phone that should never have been disconnected) will take a maximum of 48 hours; but usually the worst case is 24 hours and they need to look into it with no idea of when it will be definitively reconnected… I have to hang up and leave them be until they resolve it…
A further 24+ hours later, beyond their 48 hour maximum window I am chasing them and they promise it will happen, however they can’t deal with the final compensation until after it’s reconnected… It eventually is connected the following day…
I decide at this point that rather than jump on the compensation immediately I’ll get on with running my businesses and give them a call when I have some free time, because if I spend an y more time on this I’ll just be burning big revenue and letting customers down.
Today, my colleagues notify me that a figure of around £500 has come out of our business account from Vodafone, while I was actually waiting to put some money in… I call them, shout, swear, rant etc. and I’m told that I was charged for the cancellation of my phone contract, they billed me around £1100 for the remainder of the phone contract… A phone contract that they were never supposed to terminate in the first place and have since re-connected, but, due to my swearing (which although not nice, I feel is validated at this point) the manager of the team won’t take my call so I hang up after around 30 minutes on the phone and dial in again… An hour later still on the line for the 2nd time after explaining the majority of the above to 3 different staff in 3 different divisions of Vodafone and I’m told they will have to look into it and call me back… Have you jumped out of the window just reading this yet?
I mean… Frankly I’m bored writing about it and you must be bored reading it, so what are we supposed to do as a society about this type of red tape…
Whether or not you sit within the vast mental health spectrum is irrelevant at this point to a degree, because any human being would get frustrated at 11 months of incompetence when a company this big is just sitting on your money and generating revenue & interest off the back of it. Imagine how many thousands of people are going through that at the same time? And if each if them is paying thousands out into the corporate coffers, coffers that gain interest consistently off our residual income?! It’s disgusting!
If you take my issue and consider that they have effectively taken an average monthly wage from my bank account at this point, then multiply that by the thousands and thousands of people who have the same sorts of issues daily and further consider those who don’t have the energy, mental stability, time or patience to contest this year upon year; then just how much money are these companies draining from our economy and frankly from the common man/woman on the street, only to line their own corporate pockets prior to evading any relevant tax most likely… And what sort of interest are they making on OUR money, while we struggle to make ends meet day to day in an effort to fight for it back… this is why we are sitting in a ‘cost of living crisis’ regularly!
I mean… I just don’t know how to affect a change here… And Vodafone won’t be the only ones who do this… That’s just one major company, of a range of major companies in one specific sector of business… There are hundreds of sectors and thousands of businesses at the top of the ‘corporate food chain’ who are rinsing money off joe public on a daily basis.
Where do we go from here? And should these businesses be held accountable and made to provide those individuals compensation relative to the grief and the anxiety that they cause every day?
Luckily for me they took money from my business bank account, so I am fortunate enough to be able to afford a bit of time to rant and get it back, if indeed I do ever get it back, but there must be so many people on a fixed monthly wage, without spare savings, who would be getting bank charges and having other payments bounce while they try to fight their corner and I can guarantee that Vodafone and those like them won’t be levelling the playing field for those inconveniences, meaning that the little guy has an even harder slog to contend with when trying to affect a change in their lives for the better…
What a corporate will never understand is that they are jeopardising peoples monthly food bill, their rent, their chance of a mortgage, their kids school fee’s/clothes, their engagement ring, their annual holiday, their car maintenance and every other aspect of their lives that may also create stress in its own individual way…
How do we, as a unit, make these companies operate in a more humane way? We are people for god sake… Or will it always just be a case of…. Computer says NO?!
THE BIPOLAR BUSINESSMAN 