So do I have a contract or not?

[DThompson]

I went to the Bluewater store in person on Saturday to move from PAYG to PAY Monthly.

I signed up for the 16Gb entertainment pack on a 12 month SIM only contract. I was given a new SIM card and told:

1. It would take 24 hours to activate the new card

2. The request to port my number from the PAYG to PAYM would be made on Monday as they don't work weekends, and

3. The number would trasfer over on Tuesday. I should just swap the SIM over then this happened.

All straight forward.

BUT, on Saturday afternoon, I recieved a PAC number by SMS. I didn't think this was necessary, but thought nothing more of it.

Today I decided to use the online chat to check things were progressing as I'd heard nothing else - I was kind of expecting a "We'll be transferring you today" type of message, so I thought it best to check.

After 1 hour and 43 minutes of chat and being passed around three different people, I'm completely lost.

They can find no record of the account number (shown on the order form), or any record of the (temporary) PAY Monthly phone number (also shown on order form). Needless to say when I pop the temporary PAYM SIM in, it say's no service.

They tell me to contact the store - but (1) it's too far away to 'pop' into, and (2) when I eventually got a phone number, it only goes to voice mail, and no one returns the messages.

So. I have a PAYG number which may or may not be transferring today to a SIM that's not active on an account that may or may not exist and no one at Vodafone can offer any kind of explanation or assistance. On line support just says talk to store, store doesn't want to talk to me. 

Any suggestions?

[BandOfBrothers]

My suggestion @DThompson is to await a member of the Social Media Team here to catch up with your post and I'm sure that they will help you. 

[hrym]

I totally agree with @BandOfBrothers.   It's possible that this is simply a matter of systems catching up.   I suspect that the timescale the shop gave you was optimistic, but the team here will be able to do the necessary delving.   Just sit tight.

[DThompson]

It gets worse to be honest.

I phoned complaints and fair play to the guy, he did eventually find my account. Apparently it's on the 'old' system (Crystal) and not the new system (Siebel?).

That said it turns out the temporary number they have given me isn't really that temporary and belongs to a bloke name Anthony, who like myself is going to get mighty annoyed when my PAYG number ports over his number at some point today. 

When asked why in three hours no one else has found the account, I was told I should have told them I was a 'UNC' customer - what that means the could not say, or how I would know that, but apparently, only the 'Small Business Team' can deal with my account, even through I'm not a small business.

Except actyally they can't - while they can see the account, they can't actually do anything with it as the system only alows the originating shop to do that. The same shop I can't get to, and who don't answer or return phone calls.

So I sit here wondering whether myself and the hithertoo unknown Anthony will become brothers bonded over a spurious phone number port, whether he's a big spender or not when he's running up my bill, and whether the good folk at Bluewater will ever return my calls

[DThompson]

Well that's really done it now.

Old number ported off my PAYG Sim to somewhere - not on my SIM, and my new SIM doesn't work as its not associated with any account, and my 'small business' account has no numbers associated with it.

So I lost my number and can't make calls either.

Absolute shambles

[DThompson]

Apparenly "Anthony" was also in the Bluewater store on Saturday morning.

They've really screwed this up. 5 hours on the phone / chat to support now... 

[hrym]

It sounds as though you've been signed up to a business account.  I'd like to say this is unknown, but sadly it isn't.   I believe business accounts may still be on the old billing system.

There will be an issue here as the forum team only deal with consumer accounts, although I believe they have managed to unravel similar issues before.   I'm not convinced by "only the shop can deal with this" and I have a feeling it might be an advisor passing the buck because they (possibly quite genuinely) can't.

You should have the option of cancelling the new contract and starting again (assuming the cooling off period applies to business accounts...)   I'm not even going to speculate about the PAC issue, but I hope the transfer can be stopped.

Hang on for the forum team, as they're best placed to at least start to get this unravelled.   Don't beat your brains out trying to do it yourself, as I very much doubt you'll get anywhere.

[DThompson]

I think you're right - multiple errors compounding each other:

1. For some reason they have signed me up as a 'Consumer' account, but on the small business system.  I just requested a standard pay monthly sim. None of the paperwork mentions business, I have no idea why they did that but it does mean than virtually no one can access my account. 

More worryingly, I was advised that I didn't have an account and just to sign up for another one. If I had followed this advice each time given, I would now have 4 accounts.

2. The allocated me a SIM in store, with a number. They also allocated exactly the same SIM to someone else on the system afterwards (I have the physical SIM though). This meant I have ended up with an account with no numbers / SIM assigned, an account not accessible by the main customer services teams to boot. I am staggered the system allowed them to do this. 

3. The Port took place in so far as it removed the number and deactivated by PAYG SIM, but because the target SIM was already alloacted to another account, it failed to re-attach anywhere! Best advice I've been given is just to wait and see if it fixes itself at 8pm. Again I don't understand why the system would not verify the target is available before killing the source SIM.

4. In order to get a SIM associated with the account, I was repeatedly told I needed to return to the store (not an option). After many many hours of debate they have finally managed to allocate the SIM I was given (sans phone number) to the account - time will tell whether this has worked or not pending point (3) above.

The online support team were generally okay - handicapped by their systems, and their systems not having sight of the accounts on the 'other' system caused a lot of confusion. The store were appauling - not only did they mess up in the first place, 30+ calls to the store - all to voice mail, and of the several voicemails I left, none returned. Even the online teams could not get in contact with the store.

Overall though, I have to say I am far from impressed with the service from Vodafone. The systems should not allow these mistakes to take place in the first instance, and they should better direct the support teams to the right place.

[hrym]

The forum team will take your details away form the board and can look into this offline, rather than while you're hanging on.   They'll be able to get things moving in the right direction.   Just wait for them.

[DThompson]

I have now solved the issue and the porting team have been able to re-attach my old number to the account, and the account to the salvaged SIM. 

Of course all of the nice customer tools such as the Vodafone  Mobile App don't work for me now I'm a 'business' customer (even though I'm not), but I have my number and I have a working connection again.

My next question is how do I find out my current data usage? The portal I now have access to is very different to the PAYG one and as I said I can't use the app (which is a huge shame as I thought that was excellent). I dare not ask to be moved over to the correct consumer system for fear of breaking this fragile truce!