Vodafone Woes

The zoo zoo is making news, but what actually needs to make news about vodafone right now is the pathetic service they provide and the rude customer care associates they have employed. Vodafone needs to rethink its tag line happy to help since for past 1 month they have been very unhappy to help or rather too indifferent to even care about the customers problem and have caused more anguish.

The story goes thus. as a very loyal vodafone customer, I refused to take an IDEA or LOOP connection as soon as I landed in Mumbai. After nearly 10 months of being a pre-paid connection customer I decided to change to post paid and approached a Vodafone Mini Store to change my connection. I curse my stars for this decision. The nice smiling customer care associate and the store owner or who ever he was confirmed that they would activate my connetion in just a day and made me pay for a 400/- Rs post paid sim. They also asked me to insert the sim the next day as the phone can only be activated if it is done so. the next morning I got a call from vodafone customer care stating that the address verification had been done and my line would be activated that evening. a day went past and my line was not activated. I called up customer care and they assured that the line would be activated in 2 days. I waited for 2 days and no one called me to state why the line was not activated or when the line would be activated
I called up the customer care number 111 only to be told that they cant activate my account since the address proof was not valid which I thought sounded foolish since they verified and confirmed my existence and I had provided them with my rent agreement copy, my marriage certificate and my pan card copy. When i stated that, the lady on the phone said that the franking on my rent agreement had to be done on all pages. well sadly the Govt of India believes in franking only on the first page and hence I had no choice but to accept what the govt says. This irritated me and I asked them why they had confirmed that my line would be active by the previous nite if there was a problem. The call was transferred to their supervisor and the lady rudely told me that it was not her problem but I had to check with the store where I purchased the sim card. Yeah Right!!! so Vodafone states that giving wrong information to a customer thru their customer service line is not their problem but someone elses.
I went back to the store only to be asked to submit an NOC and identity proof of the owner of the house which we have rented, which I did after a week. Next I was given the same assurance and i waited for nearly a week for verification and activation. No one from vodafone called me to inform the status till I got bugged of waiting and called them.The customer service associate as usual told me that my documents were not enuf and asked me to submit a ration card.The last I knew ration cards are applied for by people who want to avail the govt approved antyodaya scheme and fortunately I dont belong there. I had clearly asked while applying if bank documents can be applied for as proof, which the guys rejected. The Customer service associate Raj Sagar had no knowledge about what I was talking and also refused to connect me to the duty manager or his supervisor who could help me with this. on top of it he was rude and abused and raised his voice to state that He would not transfer to call and I can do whatever I please and disconnected the call. So much for being "happy to help" In the end I was frustrated and my husband decided to call on my behalf. The call was transferred 5 times and everytime we had to state the problen that we faced to each and every one of them. In the end my husband spoke to a supervisor named alex who wasnt of much help. when my husband stated that if they could not accept a genuine rent agreement document which the govt doesnt frank on all pages but puts the franking seal on only one page, we have no alternative but to forge the document and present it to them. The stupid supervisor said" Yes Sir!!!" shocked by this my husband asked again if he approved of submitting forged documents and the answer was the same. My husband repeated the same thing again and asked again if the Supervisor and vodafone endorsed submitting fake documents to get a new connection. The supervisor said," yes Sir I agree with you".
So if you are planning to apply for a new vodafone connection, be prepared to undergo such torture and meet such dumb associates who do not believe in their own company tag line. I would be glad if vodafone spends more money on training their associates than on advertising IPL Matches. As far as my phone application is concerned. I am going to stop my pre-paid vodafone connection and shift to IDEA or LOOP who in my opinion have better connectivity in mumbai than Vodafone.