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Once upon a time, I had my broadband with Timico, and my line rental with IDnet. It was a good arangement that worked well. All things considered, I should have stayed with it, but I decided that a bit of saving money would be a good idea, as it was costing me upwards of £50 a month. So when Vodafone had a black Friday deal which would get me broadband and all the phone calls I need for £28 a month, I decided to make a move. In hindsight, my 'cheap for a reason' alarm should have rang, but there you go...
My partner & I work from home, and need the internet for that, so obviously as little downtime as possible was required. This was before Christmas, and Vodafone didn't have any go live dates between Christmas and New Year, so we plumped for the 2nd January. Order was placed on the 25th November, and we got email and text acknowledgments.
Next day, we got a text message saying there'd been an issue with our order but it had been solved. I rang Vodafone, and was told that there had indeed been an issue with the order, but the order had been placed again and all was well. The lady at customer service had no idea what the problem had been, but assured me there wouldn't be any more problems.
On the 14th December, a Vodafone router arrived. A touch premature I though, maybe they're just well organised.....
Not ten minutes later, the broadband went down. Hmmm. Surely not I thought. So I plugged in my Vodafone router, and that didn't work either. Plugged my old router in, that didn't work.
So I rang my existing ISP, and after a bit of back and forth found out out that Vodafone had put the order in early, and cut me off from my existing ISP.
So then I rang Vodafone. Trawled through the world's worst voice recognition system, and got through to someone. She wasn't quite sure what was going on either, but ( in what is a common theme at Vodafone) she'd talk to some other department and find out.
Half an hour so later, she did ring back - the one and only time anyone from Vodafone has ever rang back. It transpired that between Vodafone and BT Wholesale they had indeed cut me off. They couldn't explain quite how. And it would take - get this - upto three weeks to get connected.
So much for organising the go live date for a quiet time at work.....
Anyhow, once I'd pointed out, to put it mildly, that this was a touch inconvenient, the nice lady at Vodafone said that I should go to the nearest Vodafone shop, get a MIFI unit on a rolling 30day contract, they'd refund me all the costs of it, and add 50G data on it as necessary to keep us going till our broadband actually did get set up.
Did that, and it works, to a point. Obviously not to landline speeds, but it kept us going. They did indeed credit 50G on as required, three times as I recall.
Anyhow, I rang a few times between then and New Year to check progress. Order had apparently been magically cancelled somehow, but they'd put it back in a again and all would be well. Their provisioning department would ring me back with progress reports. No one ever did. On the 22nd of December, another router arrived. Maybe they'd sorted things out now? Suprise! - they hadn't
On the 3rd January, ( they day after the original go live date), I rang again. I was told that in fact there hadn't been a new order put in, there was just the original order, that was stuck for reason unknown, and one stuck behind that.
At which point I cancelled, and took my business to Plusnet. Who found out that the actual issue was a 'DN integrity issue' - which they tell me means that the address for the line in BT's records doesn't match my address. Who knows why, but a key point here - Plusnet recognised this and, they tell me, know how to fix it. Make a note Vodafone.
But Vodafone were not finished with me it seems. I rang them yesterday (16th Jan) to update the contract on the MIFI SIM. While I was there, I asked the CS lady to check that the broadband contract was indeed cancelled. She assured me that it was.
So imagine my suprise when today (17th Jan) I got an email, and text, telling me that my Vodafone Broadband would be going live on the 31st Jan. ##~##? Rang Vodafone, and found out that rather than verifying that my order had been cancelled, the CS lady had put another cancellation in. The office that deals with BT had seen this and decided that in fact, I wanted to start a new order! 
I gave the lady a piece of my mind. She assured my the order would again be cancelled, and put a note on the account not to place any more broadband orders...
In all my years I have not experienced such an astonishing shower of incompetents as Vodafone. Customer service consists of a byzantine array of different departments, the key aim of each of them being to transfer you to someone else . In particular, the bit that deal with BT seem be a epicentre of fools. Apparently my order was placed with BT 5 times, automatically cancelled, and seemingly not once did the buffoons at Vodafone actually investigate WHY it had been cancelled.
- With the exception of the lady who rang me back to tell me I'd be offline for 3 weeks, no one from Vodafone has ever rang me back. Plenty of assurances that they would, but they never do.
- Despite the original promise, and me asking twice, they never refunded me for the MIFI. Now that I've cancelled the order, I guess I can kiss that money good bye as well.
Looking for an ISP? - avoid Vodafone, they are the worst company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.
[MOD EDIT: This post has been edited to remove inappropriate content please see Community Guidelines]
