Hi,
Hope you are doing good (but I am not, and saddest part is it does not matter to you?). I am writing this Email to share my experiences about your customer care and Vodafone Store services.
I Needed to make some Calls to Saudi Arabia and Someone told me that Vodafone offers Gulf Calling Card which is a good way to save money on ISD calls. So in order to save my few rupees I made a call to your customer care and enquired about World Calling Cards (WCC). I was given information about this WCC with a price tag of 299 and talk value of some 271 Rupees.
I visited a local Vodafone franchise Store at New friends Colony, New Delhi to get this card. It was not available there so they referred me to Vodafone Store. So on tuesday evening around 7 PM I visited Vodafone Store at Gaur Green City, Indirapuram Ghaziabad. after waiting for around 30 Minutes I got my chance to share my concern with the Customer Care Executive. He told me that WCC are not available at their store. When I requested to arrange one the Customer Care Executive deposited 299 rupees and promised to send me a code the next day by Eleven AM.
When I did not recieved the Code, I visited the store again at 12 PM. He promised to send me the Code and fortunately I recived it within next hour.
As per His directions I forwarded the message to 111. In reply I got the message saying, ‘Hello, thank you for your request on Pinless dial service for calling Cards. We will get back on the status of your request in the next 30 Minutes. Thank You.’ I waited, but could not receive any reply within next two hours.
It was very urgent for me to make calls so I called up the customer complaint number 198. The executive there listened to me. Got all my details. Asked me to hold the line. he came back in some 3-5 mins. Took my details again and then asked me to hold the line. Then after taking around 7-10 mins of mine he said he do not have any information regarding World Calling Cards. For the same I need to call some other number.
It dissappointed me badly. If he did not have the information about World Calling Cards then why he made me waste my ten minutes (that too during my crucial office time.) I asked him to register a complaint for the same so as he should value time of the next customer. Well, I got a complaint number and also a number 50119 to call up and take further information about my WCC. I called up the number and the lady picked up the call half heartedly. As if she was engaged in some more important work then taking a call from a distressed customer.
Well, I spoke about my concern once again. Before I could make up my point she said that world calling cards are discontinued and vodafone does not offer any such cards. When I told her about buying one from a vodafone store she told me that they must have given me some old card which is not in use now. Her reply confused me further. I told her about sending a message to 111 and asked her to inform me about status of the card ie whether it is active or inactive. but she maintained that she had no further information to give.
After that I made many other calls to customer care and everytime I got a reply completely different from the previos one. Finally I searched google to get information about your WCC and got the procedure to check Balance. I checked the balance and It happened to be 271 rupees. I tried to make call to the number but it could not connect. The error Message said you are not entering Zero Before the number (while my screen Showed me to big Zeroes before 966).
So, I called up the customer Care Again. The executive told me that server is down and he can not help me before 4 AM in the morning. I asked him to listen to me and offer any help he can. So he listened to me and told me that I need to add 5018 before the ISD code and the number and Call will connect. I did the same but the call Could not connect. So I called up 198 again. This time I was told that I need to add up the PIN number printed on the card. So I did the same and Called up by Dialing the PIN, then the 00 then the ISD code 966 and then the Number. But Call Could not connect.
So I called up 198 again and this time I was told that my WCC is registered for PIN Less Dial so I can Call up the number without dialing the PIN. I tried the same but the call could not complete. I called up 198 again and was told no help could be given before 6 in the morning as Vodafone servers are down.
So after three visits to the Vodafone stores, innumerable calls to customer care I could not use My WCC. The Worst Part is I not only wasted the money but wasted my time to in making calls to your customer care.
Also, Everytime I called up I got different information from the customer executives. If it would have happened with one agent It could have been considered isolated case of misinformed agent. But all agents seem to give wrong information which make me believe that vodafone is really not very serious about its customers. It is a vicious circle Kinda situation for me, the 198 complaint section refers to Vodafone store, the Vodafone Store refers to Corporate Customer Care and the process goes on.
And I Should also mention over usage of the words ‘Sorry’ and ‘We value your time’. Everytime I complaint about an agent giving misinformation the agent listening to the called said sorry on behalf of the other one. Almost Every Agent who spoke to me said he is sorry for the trouble faced by me but none of them solved my issue. This sorry word without actually feeling it irritated me the most.
I Know I am dumb person, or who would write a thousand word email to customer care after being pissed off by so many customer care agents? Better flag this email as spam rather then calling Sorry because that will hurt me the most.
Regards
A Vodafone Customer
(This is a letter written by a vodafone customer to the Vodafone Care, If you have similar experiene about any telecom company you can also write here)
