It is not often we are rendered speechless by a reader’s story but that of a reader called Ronan is just so incredible that it almost beggars belief. He started his mail by saying he was contacting us “out of sheer desperation” and by the time we finished reading it we were almost in the same state of desperation ourselves.
Last August Ronan decided to switch his broadband and landline away from Sky and after some research he settled on a Siro package from Vodafone. It was for 500mb broadband and landline. He made the switch through Bonkers.ie.
“A few minutes after the switching request I received a phone call from Vodafone arranging all the necessary details including installation. I asked at the time to port over my landline number and they said: ‘No problem, we will do that once SIRO is installed’.”
All was well so far.
He says he then rang Sky to cancel their service. “They told me there was no need as I had given Vodafone my UAN they should handle it and because of this I wouldn’t need to given the 31 days’ notice, just ring them again when Siro has been installed and they’d check if there was a port in request.”
The next day he received a welcome letter from Vodafone outlining his new contract.
So far so good, right?
Then he noticed an odd detail. He had been assigned a new phone number rather than been allowed to keep his existing one. Not only that but he had been assigned an 01 number.
"As I live in north Cork this wasn't much good to me. I rang Vodafone and they said it would be sorted immediately and that the phone would be ported in two to three working days after installation. After installation I rang Sky again and spoke to an extremely helpful and professional staff member who told me to contact Vodafone to ensure they would port the number because I would risk losing the number if they failed to do so."
So Ronan rang Vodafone and he was told that all the issues would be sorted in two to three days. “The next day a manager from Sky rang me to enquire if Vodafone were going to port over the number. I relayed to her what I was told and she told me that I would receive an email from Sky when it was done.
“Roll on another month and still nothing had changed. This time I contacted ComReg, who advised me to initially escalate the matter with Vodafone. This I did and the next day I received a phone call from the person who normally deals with ComReg complaints in Vodafone.”
Ronan says he was assured the problem would be resolved and he would get a call back. The phone call never came and the matter was not resolved.
He got in touch with ComReg again and got another call from Vodafone “to state has [it] now resolved the matter and credited my account with €61, which was the amount I was continuing to pay Sky. He said he would email me and ComReg to say the matter was resolved. An email duly arrived from ComReg saying that the matter was resolved, case closed.”
Or so he thought.
“In the meantime I noticed on the My Sky app that nothing had changed, I rang Sky and they told me that no one had contacted them from Vodafone to arrange a port over. I then decided to cancel the Sky broadband myself and enter into the notice period. After this I contacted ComReg again who contacted Vodafone, Vodafone sent a screenshot to ComReg allegedly showing that they had ported over my number. I asked ComReg for a copy of this email and screenshot from Vodafone but they refused.”
Fast forward to October 16th. Ronan had left Sky by now and was assuming everything was in order. His daughter was feeling sick. “We rang Southdoc, the out-of- hours GP service, and we gave our landline number for them to call us. No call came, we assumed they were just busy with the Covid crisis. But then family started ringing me on my mobile telling me my landline wasn’t working. I discovered that I could make calls but not receive them, with the strange exception of Vodafone numbers.”
So, he then once again begins the process of contacting Vodafone.
“Vodafone fobbed me each time. I asked for a manager to generate a complaint number but there was none available or they would just cut me off, all this after hours of listening to the most mournful hold music, including the rather ironic lyrics ‘It’s Not Time for Playing Games’ and ‘Should I Try, Should I Really Really Try’.”
Ronan got in touch with ComReg again who told him it was a new issue and to get a new complaint number.
Last week he heard that Vodafone had allocated him the wrong telephone number but they would endeavour to fix it.
He thought to himself “finally” but there was no finally. “On Sunday evening I got an email from Vodafone with a welcome letter telling me that they had re-contracted me on a more expensive plan with no mention of the landline.”
Original contract
He spent the rest of the evening on Facebook messenger looking for answers. Then he rang Vodafone again on the Monday "and after eventually getting through to a manager was told I would be put back on my original contract, the landline would be fixed, I would have €65 credited to my account and that he would call me in the afternoon.
“None of these things happened. Instead, today I got a new contract by email for a 100mb broadband package for a more expensive price and notification of an installation on Thursday. Once again I ring Vodafone and after one hour on the phone they informed me that I requested a downgrade to a conventional landline as I didn’t want VoIP calls, I never once said this to them. I am absolutely at my wits’ end with these people, please assist me if you can.”
We contacted Vodafone after which it made contact with our reader and the issue was resolved last Friday morning. In a statement the company said it apologised “unreservedly for the distress and frustration this has caused our customer and sincerely regret that we were not able to come to a quicker resolution. At Vodafone Ireland we strive to empower our colleagues to demonstrate excellence in customer service in every interaction. This customer experience was not to the standards we set”.
