Vodafone UK Website taken down over night for third month in a row

[Jamesrus]

For the third month in a row, I try to log on to pay my bill during the night in London and the website has been taken down for tweaks. Last month I called to ask if your IT department take it down deliberately for maintenance as I do not want to waste my time trying to log in if it is not avaialble outside specific hours and I was told no, it should have been up. IT do not take it down every night. It won"t happen again. Well it just has. Please tell me the truth. If your website is 9-5 UK time or 8-8 UK or whatever, just be honest. It is so frustrating that every time I go to try and use it, the minute I try to log in I get the silly message about making tweaks. Please can someone advise me what hours the Vodafone Website and the bill payment area is supposed to be available. I thought Vodafone was an international Company with international support but it seems not as phone says call in the morning and the website has been taken down again. Anyone at Vodafone heard about time zones? Great Cell service, terrible website service.

[BandOfBrothers]

Hello @Jamesrus

Appreciate your frustrated with this but I do believe there isn't specific times websites are taken offline for housework or updating. I would assume however this does occur mostly through the early hours to give the least disruption. 

Maybe pay through the day to avoid this. 

There are also alternative ways to pay your bill as set out in > 

How-do-I-pay-my-Vodafone-bill-online.

If convenient the best option is via Direct Debit. 

[tazzajb]

It seems to happen almost every night around midnight.  I wonder if they take it down to perform a regular backup of the system?  Right now it is down and it is very coincidental that everytime I want to use it after midnight it isn't working.

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@BandOfBrothers wrote:

Hello @Jamesrus

Appreciate your frustrated with this but I do believe there isn't specific times websites are taken offline for housework or updating. I would assume however this does occur mostly through the early hours to give the least disruption. 

Maybe pay through the day to avoid this. 

There are also alternative ways to pay your bill as set out in > 

How-do-I-pay-my-Vodafone-bill-online.

If convenient the best option is via Direct Debit. 

---

[Alex]

@tazzajb There may be some occasions we're updating the website/the system it runs off. This will mainly be done at night when it'll have the least amount of impact to our customers. It's very unfortunate that it seems to happen when you want to use it - it's nothing personal! 😂

[G_Ninja]

This thread is several years old, and I have also been frustrated by the same issue for many years. I don't understand what sort of IT it is that you run, that you need to take the customer area down every night, but you clearly have some sort of batch that runs later in the evening, every evening as far as I can tell. If that shouldn't be happening, then please get your IT department to sort it out. If it is intentionally taken off-line, then please can you simply come clean and show available hours on the website so we don't waste so much time trying randomly to find times it is up

[Andy]

Hi @G_Ninja we always try to run any updates and maintenance at times where it will affect the least amount of customers. I will certainly take your feedback in regards to the possibility of showing available hours and pass this suggestion on to the relevant teams 😊

[Alex73]

2022 now and site still down every night I try.

[G_Ninja]

I'm sure they run a nightly batch - probably updating accounts with the daily bills. I don't understand why it has to go down to do this, but maybe they're worried about people viewing their accounts and possibly locking database records causing updates to fail.

As I said in my earlier message, it would be nice if they would just be honest about that and stop pretending that it's 24 hour, but hey! World peace would also be a lovely thing...

[Mark]

I'm sorry to hear you're struggling to access your online account @Alex73. There may be some occasions when we're updating the website and system it runs on. This can have an impact on your ability to access your account. To minimise this impact these updates will mainly be done at night. If you need information from your account and are unable to access your online account, you can reach out to our Social Media team24/7 and we’ll be happy to help.

[G_Ninja]

6 years on and still the myaccount section is unavailable every day from about midnight - and still no notice re hours of service.  Either @Andy didn't pass on the feedback, or vodafone still don't think we matter enough to be informed. If you don't want to advertise the hours, at least change the notice and put into FAQ. The notice says "We're working hard to fix things" - you cannot possibly have so many things to fix that it is down every night for 6 years!! 

Tell us, "we are running our nightly batch and will be back in 2 hours" or whatever the truth is - or get your IT guys to sort out the reason it goes down every night....