The Mobile Provider Phenomenon

You know the feeling: you are in the middle of an important phone call, you are about to close your biggest deal, about to pay for the most expensive vacation of your life and the call drops. Reception is nil. Zero. Nada, you try to call again a few more times and nothing, the deal is gone your vacation is gone, your money is gone. So you call customer support of your mobile provider (Vodafone in my case) where it takes them about ten minutes to transfer you to the right department, each person asks you exactly the same question you just answered 3 times already, and by the time you reach the right department you are exhausted. The more polite the representative is, the less helpful they are. They mean well I am sure, but by the time they finish with their greetings and niceties they could have solved my problem (or not). I mean if I call customer support I am not interested in “how are you today?” or “it’s a glorious day isn’t it” if I called you it means that I have a problem which needs solving now! So I went to the shop, not able to make a single call walking to the shop, but as soon as I passed the threshold to the shop, lo and behold, full bars, perfect reception. So then they decided to test my phone, the one THEY sold me, clearly they cannot do it in the shop but I need to send them the phone, live without a phone for 5 working days until they come up with a diagnosis: surprise, the phone is working well, the problem is ME, needless to say that they did not send the phone to me but I had to walk yet again to the shop only to find that they sent the phone without a battery…

So back to square one, me paying good money to use a phone that does not work. Ofcom my best friends also didn’t help as they now refer you to the Communications Ombudsmen who then wait 8 weeks before they can intervene. So in a free market best thing to do – move to another provider!!. Needless to say, now that I am leaving Vodafone customer support is as helpful and as efficient as one could only dream and before I even found a new provider they disconnected me – I think they couldn’t be happier to get rid of me and my money. Maybe they marked me as a problem client that mentions Ofcom in every conversation and they were very glad to see the back of me.

So off I go to find myself a new mobile provider to which I am willing to give my hard earned money. Well not so fast, either Vodafone spread the word that I am a problem customer and you better avoid her and her money or O2 is playing hard to get, either way it is not so easy to become an O2 client these days. You can’t join O2 on the phone, if you call them you get a machine telling you “the number you are calling from is not O2 please call your provider. Goodbye”! Seriously? don’t you want new clients? apparently not, but of course if you don’t want me as a client I want to join even more! So off I go to the O2 shop greeted by charming sales people who are keen to get me as a client (finally) but then all system fail, O2 can’t accept new clients (true story). After a few more hours and another trip to another shop when finally the system was back and I was so desperate that I just asked for a pay as you go to get the minimum contact with my new provider. But the following day O2 remembered that they are a business and they do want my money and I got a call from the first shop where they promised me a contract with a better deal than the pay as you go, all I need to do is pop in to the shop and they will sort it out.

So after all my efforts to move to a decent mobile provider I am now still paying for the Vodafone account, for an O2 pay as you go and for an O2 contract, it turned out that it was a faulty phone so still dropped calls, and on top of that in the process of transferring my number from Vodafone to O2 I lost all my contact list – but I showed them didn’t I??

So Vodafone are not giving the service and could not wait to get rid of their clients, O2 refuse to get new clients. Am I missing something here?, do mobile providers have more efficient ways of making a living then the good old fashioned way of getting more subscribers? Or have we reached an era where we are all so dependent on our mobile phones that indeed, mobile providers can play hard to get, give bad service and afford to lose clients because there will always be another client desperate to get a new contract. We lost the battle as soon as we subscribed.