Dear Vodafone

Sent via form at:

http://vodafone.custhelp.com/app/ask

Dear Vodafone,

I have been a loyal customer for the last four years with your company.  I chose your company for many reasons:

1.    I like the branding, your red is so much cooler than Optus’ crappy yellow and Telstra’s antiquated ugly colours and that hideous logo.

2.    I love the Dandy Warhols and that Bohemian song.  They must have made a lot of money with that song.  What ever happened to them?  Are they still around?  Or have they converted all their royalties to a crack habit and memories of being the most memorable song on a mobile phone commercial?

3.    I also love the voice of the woman who does the announcements, she’s got such a lovely tone. When she tells me that she can’t connect the call or that there are problems with the network and that I can’t connect to the internet however, I just want to punch her in her smug little face.  What does she look like?  Is she attractive?  Is her name really Lara?  Or is that a pseudonym?  If it is a pseudonym, why did you choose Lara as a name?  I mean, it’s a nice enough name, but why not ‘Betty’, or ‘Shauna’, for example?  What’s the criteria for choosing a name?

4.    I also like that the rates are cheap.  How do you keep your costs so low?  I hope you aren’t using backyard sweatshops and paying people below the minimum wage to keep your costs down.  Is that what you’re doing?

I have noticed of late that when I call people, I get cut off during the call, sometimes I call back four or five times during a conversation, it makes the calling experience better, to be honest.  The disruptions keep my conversations short and to the point and often work as an excuse if I wish to terminate a discussion prematurely.  I also get a little bit more exercise running around trying to find a signal to make calls, I’ve lost quite a few kilos already, not that I need to lose all that much, don’t call me fat, alright, what have I ever done to you to call me fat?

I also love that when I don’t pay my bill on time, no one at Vodafone seems to care.  I never get reminders, all the outstanding amounts just get rolled over onto the next bill and the next and so on and so forth.  How do you run a business like that?  I mean, as a customer, it’s great, you’re giving away calls for free, practically.  Every time I ring the customer service line to whine about coverage, calls constantly dropping out and to complain about my general deep dissatisfaction with the service in general, I get a gentle reminder by the operator that my account is three to four months in arrears.  Sometimes I pay the bill, sometimes I get distracted and can’t be bothered.  There are so many distractions around, aren’t they?  Some of my biggest distractions of late are:

        

1. YouTube – There are just so many things to look and laugh at.  The Chubby Cuppy Cake Kid, the cat attacking the TV screen, even looking at the world’s biggest pimple being squeezed.  They’re all just so damn addictive, what is it about these things that make us so enthralled by them?  I’m not sure … Thoughts?
2. Facebook – Why I have to know that someone I went to high school with; and hated; is drunk or having trouble sleeping is absolutely beyond me.  Are you addicted to Facebook as well? 
3. Reality renovating shows.  That expression ‘as interesting as watching paint dry’ has taken on a new meaning in this case.  They are so boring, yet I simply must see who is eliminated for not putting a decorative tile in the right sequence or who is having a hissy fit because her beige and cream colour scheme is being challenged by someone who wants a Moroccan flare to the room.  It’s so boring, but I can’t get enough of them.  Have you ever renovated?  I did once, it was the worst experience of my life, everything cost three times what I had planned for, I gained a mutual hatred for neighbours and I learned that tradespeople seem to be living in a parallel universe where time seems to run on a different plane – ‘I’ll be over at about two’ generally means that they might be there within the next three weeks.  It’s funny, isn’t it?
4. Interactive word games – Online scrabble, or ‘Words With Friends’, is the biggest time waster of them all.  I’ve lost weeks of my life trying to beat friends, or even strangers, into having the most intellectually superior words.  This game is actually a pretty healthy obsession, at least it gives you the opportunity to learn new words.  Did you know that ‘Callipygian’, or its derivative, ‘Callipygous’ are adjectives for ‘having well formed buttocks’?  Or that a ‘vexillology’ is the study of flags?  They are two examples of words that I’d never heard of before.  Online word games have often caused strains in my relationship.  I remember one such altercation where I woke my partner at 3.15am because a friend in Canada had had her turn in the game and I couldn’t go to sleep without having a word which used an X, a J and used the triple word score.  My partner didn’t help and, unfortunately, didn’t speak to me for the rest of the week.  I’ve stopped playing those games now, they always seem to end in delirious tears.
5. Vexillology – Finding out the origins of flags is a new passion of mine.  Isn’t it interesting that Nepal’s flag is so oddly shaped?  It’s actually the world’s only non-quadrilateral flag.  It’s actually a combination of two ‘pennons’, which are triangular in shape.  These were common in the Western world during the middle ages.
6. Squats and other exercises to tighten the buttock muscles – A newly formed quest for being the most callipygous person in my circle of friends has led me to buy countless contraptions on the internet and off Television infomercials.  The fad lasts a few weeks at most and then I generally end up selling the items again on eBay or giving them to someone else.  How are your buttocks?  Do you ever continue with regimes to keep them tight?  I never see them through.

Where were we?  I’ve forgotten.

That’s right, distractions.  There are so many distractions around, aren’t they?

I’ve been reading complaint letters about Vodafone lately and I’ve been amazed at the volume of complaints.  Apparently the ACCC had logged over nine thousand complaints and that a class action lawsuit has been occurring.  How is that going for you?  I’m hoping that the ordeal isn’t too stressful.  Class action lawsuits are such a drag.  I’m really feeling for Lara, as well.  I’ve read some of the letters and ‘Jim’ of Camberwell, Melbourne, said that he ‘hates Lara with a passion!’.  Poor Lara. 

There are so many complaints about your service and so many people saying that they will ‘never use your service again’ and that ‘Vodafone are disgusting and evil’* and that Vodafone was ‘the worst example of a telecommunications company in the world’, yet Vodafone also seems to have one of the biggest customer bases in the country.  How does that work?  If all these customers are so deeply unsatisfied with Vodafone, why don’t they just go to another provider?  I’m puzzled.  Is it to do with being in a contract?  I don’t like being in contracts, I like to own things outright and not feel like I have a debt to anyone.  I suppose it isn’t really about ‘feeling’ like I have a debt to someone, it’s actually having a debt to someone.  I don’t like being locked down either.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still have loyalty to you, I’m not going to cheat on you, but you have to put out a good service, if you know what I mean?

I was out today and unfortunately I got lost, so, having a smart phone, I quickly got it out and had a look at the map.  Unfortunately, today was one of the days that the data network was down and I got completely lost.  I had no idea where I was going.  I didn’t complain though, but something came over me and I wrote ‘Vodafone Sux!’ in big letters on the footpath in blue chalk.  I’m really sorry if that offended you, I didn’t really mean it.  I don’t know where the chalk came from, I just found it in my bag – coincidence, or what?  I think it is just due to the fact that my bag is filthy and hasn’t been cleaned out for a while, it’s amazing what treasures lie in the depths of my bag.

And now a little wager.  I owe $103 on my account, what say we double or nothing?  I will ring you on my mobile and if I can read out this letter in full without the connection stopping, then I will pay you $206**.  If the connection cuts out, you wipe my debt.  Why not implement this little game with all your customers, it might be fun and who knows, you might even make some money.  Not likely, but it’s a possibility.

If you aren’t the betting type, how about you just credit my account with the money I owe.  Can you do that, please?

Thanks for your time,

Kind Regards,

Andy Leonard

*Yes, I thought that was a bit harsh too, but that’s what they said.

**I reserve the right to read this letter at the speed of my choice, I normally speak very fast, but I might choose to read this pretty slow, for more chance of getting the bills for free.  ‘Sneaky’, I hear you say?  Advertising a service you can’t provide is just as ‘sneaky’, so pipe down, Lara.