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Avoid if you travel abroad

lakrsv
1: Seeker
On the 8th of July I left the UK on vacation. The moment I crossed the border to Ireland, I lost my ability to send and receive text and calls. I also lost my ability to use my mobile data.
 
On the 13th of July I contacted Vodafone through Live Support.. I had already tried everything, but tried everything again. We reconfigured my APN, switched to 2G, turned my phone on and off, re-provisioned my sim card and much more.
 
Finally, after approximately 1 hour 30 minutes the representative tells me to restart my phone again.
While restarting my phone, the representative initiated his/hers "exit call sequence" knowing fully well that I was in the process of restarting my phone. Thankfully I managed to get online before they ended the call with me, but this is deeply unprofessional.
 
In the end, the representative was not able to fix my issue. They simply shrugged and told me to wait a few hours. The next day I called Vodafone to follow up regarding my issue. In the first session, after waiting 45 minutes for help, I was finally contacted.. but after being put on hold 3 times, the operator hung up on me. I called again, waited another 45 minutes, and did not receive any help yet again.
 
I asked if Vodafone would refund me for big value bundle, and they answered no. I asked if Vodafone would be willing to cover me buying a sim card in Norway (where I was) but I was also told no. I asked to speak to a manager, they told me a manager would call me within 24 hours (on a different number, my phone didn't work) but I never received a call.
 
In the end this was highly disruptive to my vacation, I was stuck 16 days without 2 factor authentication to access critical work functions and my bank. I could not receive nor send calls or text messages.
I contacted them again on the 26th of July 2021, where I was told that they will not offer me a refund nor cover any of my expenses, and the best they could do is refund my 10 pound big value bundle as credit. I was denied a refund to my bank account.
 
If you are travelling abroad and want to ensure you have coverage to call, text, and to use internet, I would avoid Vodafone. They did not admit fault, the customer support was awful, and from my experience, they do not care about their customers.
 
I will be moving my number to a different provider.
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Mark
Community Manager
Community Manager

I'm sorry to hear you had a such a poor experience when you contacted us about not being able to connect whilst in Norway @lakrsv. As we've no control over the Norwegian networks, we've limited options available to us to help get you reconnected, but it sounds like the service you received fell well below what we would expect. It sounds like you're back in the UK now and your service has ben reconnected, but I'd love the opportunity to feed back the poor service you received and see what we can do to help avoid this happening going forward. As we'll need access to your account to do this, pop us a private message through Facebook or Twitter.