Vodafone Woes!

When Graham Bell called out to his manservant over the first telephone ever built, he didn’t realize that one day, the world of telephony would reach today’s heights. We have phones that flip open and fit snugly in the palm of our hands, and without any wires attached, we can call someone on the other side of the world with the touch of a button. He’d be proud of himself, I’m sure. But if he had any inkling that there’d be something called “Vodafone” in India in the year 2008, he’d never have called his manservant and he would have promptly destroyed his invention and told his sponsors to leave him alone! 😀

Ok, so why do I hate Vodafone so much? Well, it all started when I returned to India from New York in April this year, and realized that I didn’t have a cell phone connection that worked here. So, I stole borrowed my mom’s BSNL sim card and started using it. Pretty soon I came to know that the BSNL connection was little more than a piece of plastic with some metal pasted on it with QuickFix, and that it rarely worked! No STD calls were possible and every time someone called me, I’d begin the conversation with, “The line may get disconnected any second…” 😀

I guess that’s why BSNL is allegedly an acronym for “Bhai Saab, Nahi Lagega!” 😀 (Sir, it won’t work!)

So anyway, I switched to a Vodafone connection, against all advice to go for Airtel (I was a Hutch user a long time ago, before I went to NY, so I thought I’d be loyal) and signed up for a corporate connection exactly 10 days ago. The plan looked good and it gave me all that I was looking for in a connection – STD, ISD, text, local calls, everything. And it was quite economical too! So, I took the plunge and switched to Vodafone. 😀

Three days later, my woes began.

I got a message when I was in Chennai for the weekend that I had used up 80% of my credit limit and that I had to make a payment of 600-odd bucks immediately. I ignored the message, because it was ridiculous. A day later, my outgoing calls and messages were barred! I called up the customer care and made the girl on the other end cry because of the kind of language I used, and through her tears, she told me that I had actually used up so much for international calling and national roaming charges. I realized that Chennai was in another state altogether and that national roaming would be activated. Sheepishly, I apologized and hung up.

I paid the required amount after two days (it was tough surviving for 2 days without making a call from my phone, but I managed) and got my lines cleared up. Three hours after I had paid, the outgoing lines were barred again! 😀

This time the customer care executive who answered my call was a guy and while I was wondering what happened to that other girl (she had kind of a sweet voice) he apologized for the inconvenience and said that he’d clear up the lines immediately. Apparently the payment I’d made wasn’t “reflected” on their servers.

I have had it with these weird things in life! These Vodafone people came to my office to verify my office address and then did the same at my home address! I mean, for fuck’s sake, I’d given them my office ID and my address proof when I took the connection! Bah! Morons! 😀

Anyway, if anyone has any suggestions of how to make a Vodafone guy’s life miserable, please let me know! 😀

Image Courtesy: Me!