I find myself sitting on the fence with this one as I wholeheartedly agree with some of the sentiments expressed by the original poster but do feel its unfair to single out Vodafone specifically as this goes much wider.
Keeping this simple, and trying to keep it relevant to telecoms, I remember when 3 originally launched. A new player in the market who were offering people more minutes and texts for their monthly fee but who made it very clear that their customer care and back office functions would be offshore. At this time, Vodafone and the other players had onshore customer care. I remember at the time thinking, I'm happy to pay a bit more and keep customer care onshore.
But no, as customers, we jumped ship as we'd rather pay less for a service and complain about it.
Since then, things have moved on, customer care has been outsourced and companies are now fully focused on allowing customers to self-serve via digital channels. Again, it cuts the head count and keeps the costs down for customers.
Even this forum, it started life with a dedicated team who provided hands on customer care. They picked up issues, dealt with complaints, arranged re-grades and basically for many years, were my preferred channel for interacting with Vodafone.
But again, that costs money which is why that is no longer a thing. Not that the forum still isn't great as a peer-to-peer platform. There's years of knowledge on here but it's definitely a downgrade from how things used to be.
But this isn't unique to Vodafone, most companies have gone down this route.
The point I'm making is, we perhaps need to accept that we're part of the reason things aren't as great as they were in the 1990s.
