Vodafone Australia: problems, glitches, errors and failures

3 June 2011:

Masterpiece of the day no.1

Just received an SMS from Vodafone Australia: “We're building a better, faster, stronger Vodafone network. See the full details here http://vfau.me/ntwk1”. Usually, I ignore spam, ads and annoying marketing, but the computer was on and within easy reach, so I thought I would have a look, and… error404.html “Sorry, we can't complete your request right now. Please try again later.”

4 December 2011:

Masterpiece of the day no.2

While trying to recharge my account, I’m getting the following message instead of the recharge confirmation: “An unexpected error has occurred. Call 1555 to complete your request.”

Calling 1555, managing through the automated questions of a stupid machine that doesn’t want to understand that the recharge didn’t work, then waiting another 10 minutes for a human to talk to, and eventually the guy with a thick Indian accent says that there is a problem with recharges but he can’t help, instead I should keep checking my account balance by calling 1512 and see if the payment goes through.

Ok. Will keep checking...

A few hours later. Calling, checking — still nothing. 1512 now has an automated message that enlightens me: “Vodafone is currently experiencing issues with some recharges where credit is not being applied after a successful recharge. Our engineers are working to resolve this issue as soon as possible. If you’ve just recharged, check your balance regularly by calling 1512.”

In the evening, a Vodafone text message arrives: “Only 3 days until your credit expires on 08/12/2011. Simply call 1512 to check your balance or 1511 to recharge now.” What a surprise!

Damn, I know that my balance expires, and I also know that I will lose all my credit and the ability to make calls and send messages in 3 days if Vodafone doesn’t put my payment where it’s supposed to be.

Luckily, luckily, I still have something to lose in my Vodafone account, which means I still can make calls and send messages. For the next 3 days, at least. But what about the people who ran out of their credit while traveling, or when their car broke down away from home, or those who need the phone for their business?

5 December 2011:

Masterpiece of the day no.3

Finally, “Thanks for recharging” message from Vodafone! It took 3 days to do the thing that should take seconds. “A better, faster, stronger Vodafone network”, truly.

And then another text: “A big thanks from us. Recharge on TXT&Talk in next 7 days & get triple the amount of Free TXT & Free Talk inclusions in 24 hrs. Info&T&C http://vfau.co/tatjs”

Recharge? In the next 7 days, while your robot keeps saying “Vodafone is experiencing issues... as soon as possible”? Vodafone, that’s not funny! I've been trying to recharge for the past 3 days to just have my credit extended, let alone triple anything. Looks like one of Vodafone’s systems has no idea what the other one is doing.

6 December 2011:

Vodafone sends another copy of the promotional text (the recharge still doesn’t work) “A big thanks from us. Recharge on TXT&Talk in next 7 days & get triple the amount of Free TXT & Free Talk inclusions in 24 hrs. Info&T&C http://vfau.co/tatjs”

That’s becoming annoying. Needless to say that the offered link doesn’t work either: “404 Not Found. The requested URL /VFMarketing/2011Q3pt3/TxtTalkJumpstart was not found on this server.”

After some technical investigation, it has been discovered that the links included in the Vodafone “special offers” messages are only working if opened using a mobile phone. All attempts to open them from any computer inevitable lead to error 404.

7 December 2011:

Calling 1512, just to see how soon Vodafone’s “soon” is. Guess what? “Vodafone is currently experiencing issues with some recharges...” Five days so far.

8 December 2011:

The recharge finally goes through!

And then “A big thanks from us. Recharge on TXT&Talk in the next 7 days & you'll get double your Free TXT & Free Talk inclusions in 24 hrs. Info & T&C http://vfau.co/tatrv”

No surprises, http://vfau.co/tatrv leads to 404 Not Found, and strange logic: to offer double amount after offering triple.

12 January 2012:

An e-mail from a Vodafone amployee:

Hi Anny,

My name is Brody, and a part of my role at Vodafone is managing the tool that we use to provision short URLs - such as vfau.co/tatjs. Someone forwarded your page to me, and I thought you might like an update on the issues you've raised.

In the past, a major restriction of these short URLs was that they were only able to work on the phones that they were sent to. Thus, when a customer typed it into a PC browser, the page wouldn't load and an unfriendly error page appeared.

Obviously I didn't think this was satisfactory either, and we've recently updated this tool to be smarter about the way it handles different devices (i.e. desktops vs. phones). The end goal is that no matter what device you have - you'll see a website, and not an error. From now on, you shouldn't receive any more short URLs that can't cater for different devices.

Thanks for your time, and for raising the issue. Please feel free to email me with any further concerns related to this.

Brody McKee