How to lose 375k customers the Vodafone Hutchinson way

In what comes as no shock to industry or consumers, Vodafone has managed to hemorrhage 375,000 Australian customers in the first six months of the year. Ongoing network coverage issues, poor customer service and a class action from disgruntled customers have pummeled the mobile carrier’s consumer reputation causing the mass …

[Mike Echo]

Too risky

I thought about going to Voda but after learning of all the performance and customer service problems, I think I had better stick with my current provider. Voda have some great deals, but what is the point of having a great deal on a phone when you can''t do the basics properly? The CEO says they have "turned the corner", but then he would say that, wouldn't he?

[frankgobbo]

vodafail

It's actually a lot better than it's been for a very long time. I was one of many customers who called to cancel my contract, and in the end they kept me by giving me 6 months free (which took me to the end of my contract).

I'm now paying again, but I'm still with them - service has improved dramatically. I work in the Melbourne CBD and live about 5km out and had struggled for months and months with data, calls etc but now everything works pretty well. Data speeds still aren't lightning fast but they do work and are reasonable.

Now i'm waiting for the new iphone to come out to replace my ageing 3GS and I'll decide whether to go Telstra or stay Voda but at the moment I'm leaning towards staying.

[Rob Moss.]

Similar story here

Yeah it's a lot lot better, but it couldn't have been any worse, even if it was switched off. Last November when I joined Vodafail as they had exclusive rights to the HTC Desire HD handset their network was unusable at most times of the day with Internet being nonexistant and calls regularly dropping out after 30 seconds. On the 96 tram home to Carlton at 5pm or so I could rarely view pages and when I could it was up to two minutes of waiting for a page like on theregister.co.uk to load

Now the network is usable most of the time however there are still large gaps in and around the CBD where pages will often time out and signal may drop or keep switching from HSPA/GPRS/3G

Phone calls are dropping much less now but I still use a landline whenever making calls because I just know their service might shit itself at any time and drop my calls

Overall I would say they are getting there but are only half way. If they can resolve the rest of the problems and guarantee the best service currently will become the future's standard service then I'll stay otherwise I'll be moving to NextG

[Originone]

Make that 375,001

Im about to jumpship from vodafail to telstra this afternoon. I live about 10 k out of Hobart CBD and after being suckered in by the cheap plans (in comparioson to telstra at the time) I have been itching to leave for the past year given the frequency of dropped calls on my mobile whilst at home.

Its a little to late to be "fixing" a network now that has been obviously not up to the task at hand for the last 2 years for me to stick by them. Besides given where I am I suspect that any improvement to the network either wont make it here or will be amonst the last places to be improved.

[Mark 65]

Vodafone progress...

5pm 26-Nov-2009 2.56Mbps/0.1Mps 360ms ping

6pm 30-Mar-2011 0.84/0.02 361ms

4pm 31-Mar-2011 0.92/0.2 538ms

1pm 5-May-2011 2.98/0.23 339ms

1pm 3-Aug-2011 0.8/0.08 293ms

Shit before they merged, shit afterwards. I see no progress other than that I get a 4 bar connection where previously I obtained only 1. That means nothing if the speeds don't change. The numbers speak for themselves and if you have no upstream some of those higher downstream numbers become pointless. Some of those upstream numbers are woeful.

These numbers are from Brisbane CBD using speedtest.net

[Equitas]

Why is it .....

that Oz has a telecoms system that's put to shame by countries like mainland China or even most African countries?

[Alan Brown]

Hardly surprising

Whan you realise what Hutch thinks "servicing the customer" means.

[bowespr]

Cold calling is a bad sign

Got another cold call from VHA yesterday offering cut-price all-you-can-eat plans for small business. Sounded like an offshore call centre. When I asked to get something in writing, email or via the Web the operator persisted in trying to push me into a sales call from "someone visiting my area on Friday". Who has time for that! Desperate stuff and not a good sign.