Vodafone False Promises Rant

MrLucidLJ

I have a few things to get off my chest and some big annoyances with Vodafone that probably a lot of people have. So here are my points:

1. July last year a Vodafone sales person (not directly working for them) came to my door and wanted to sign me up with Vodafone. I usually am hesitant to sign up with people at the door I checked his credentials and seemed fine. The initial offer was to sign me up to up to 100mbps Fibre broadband connection with Unlimited downloads (which is another lie), Unlimited phone calls to any local & national landline, Unlimited calls to any mobile network for the price of I believe was €60 a month which seemed very good. At the time I didn't check the T&C but the broadband at the time was limited to a 300GB CAP and the calls were limited to X amount of minutes can't remember the exact amount.
So already there were lies told about the downloads/uploads, the amount of calls to local & national landlines & the amount of calls to an mobile network. I a also not 100 percent sure about this but do you have to hang up after 1 hour on these packages or there maybe extra charges? I never went over so I have no idea. So with this great offer I consulted my partner and agreed to signing a contract at the door. I signed all the necessary paper work which was fine and even got a copy of the contract.
By this sales man I was told that the Fibre would be in by the end of July last year or at latest sometime in August. This was one of the biggest lies. I was actually with Sky at the time and was quite happy with them and only for his lie would have stayed with them, but with all the false promises I decided to go with Vodafone. At first the process to switch over was good and the speeds were the same around the 10-15mbps mark which was fine at the time because I thought their would be improvements coming very soon.

2. When August came still no sign to where the Fibre was. Now a friend of my partner was actually able to avail of the Fibre services in August of last year and was getting consistent speeds of 70mbps + which is great but when I called up Vodafone they had no idea or any indication when Fibre would come to my area. Alarm bells started ringing then thinking I could at best be waiting till at least the end of last year and even to the early part of this year which wasn't what I was promised but I had to show patience.
During this time I did call multiple times to find out updates to see what was going on and their inability to even find out through Eircom who provides their lines or their own technical team was way beyond theym because they didn't have a clue. I voiced my complaints and said I was signed up to this package where I was promised Fibre in July/August 2014 and months later still no sign. Not to come across bad Vodafone but having your call centres in Egypt is a dreadful idea. While it may cost you less money the people working there have no idea about the infrastructure of Ireland and are going on many assumptions that you provided to them.

3. By the time early 2015 came I came to the realization it might never come and don't chase up Vodafone more to put pressure on them to even find out for me as a customer. I was comforted by many good people on this board providing links to maps where I could keep an eye on when cabinets went live and exchanges sorted out all that good thing. They said themselves it could be a while. I was happy with the speeds I had but I know with double, triple or even better then what I am getting I could do so much more. Like strea Netflix on multiple devices while on Skype or download boxsets to my Sky box, stuff where it can take a lot more time on current speeds but with better speeds it can be done a lot quicker.
I mean I know with a better upload speed as well I could send attachments in emails or any other work I needed to sent at better speeds as well. Finally around April this year there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel where it looked like July 2015 a year later then promised that Fiber would be available in my area I was so happy after waiting nearly 2/3 of the contract but at least Fiber was going to be coming.

4. My elation was soon dashed as when I called mid July 2015 that there were problems with the Fiber. For one the speeds were going to be the same speeds that I currently get which I was shocked by. I can't fully blame Vodafone because it should be the responsibilities of Eircom to improve their infrastructure, but getting the same speeds I was getting was just a kick in the teeth especially when someone close like 500 metres in around that was able to avail of speeds 4-5 times more then what I was getting.
The other major announcement when I called up as well was to find out that if I go for the free upgrade which I was entitled to, that I was forced to resign another 18 month contract I was like :eek:. I couldn't believe Vodafone wanted to do this and not give me the Fibre that I was initially entitled to and signed up with. The salesman was James Murphy. I reckon he was either told or maybe on his on fruition that he should go around and give false promises to people to switch over from their current providers and go on Vodafone so that he could get as many sales as possible, all the time knowing that Vodafone didn't have the set up in place to provide this.

5. After that I was like I was in no way going to sign another 18 month contract to these people after the false promises by the sales person and Vodafone not been able to see what happened. A few months back I asked what was the name of the sales person I had a copy of the contract but lost it in the past year so I knew his first name was James but, they said they couldn't say what is name was or give me a copy of the contract with no explanation. I feel sorry for the Egypt call centre because they have no idea what is going on at all, they are trying to do a job but just like 3 putting your call centres to countries where people are not from that country is a dreaful idea. Imagine if people of Egypt had one of their providers set up in Ireland to have an Irish call centre and have to deal with us we wouldn't have a clue what is going on.
Anyways to finish this all off I called this week to ask have the speeds improved and to give them one last chance to make ammends with all the problems I have had with them. A women said she would send me a copy of the contract through email and she would try see if I wasn't committed to another 18 month contract that I might be able to get the Fibre in even though speeds are not the best. Well since then I MYSELF :mad: have to sent a letter to the Data Protection place in Dublin to ask them to send a copy of the contract I signed and have to pay for it.
I was shocked by this and politely told the person over the phone that I was going to hand up because I was so annoyed over the situation. I still haven't found out if they are going to make an exception about the Fibre but at this point I am strongly leading away from being with Vodafone for my main broadband provider. Also another thing I forgot to mention was that the speeds at times went down during daytime which very rarely happened with Sky and the loss in connectivity was going down at least once a day with them at a specific time around 1am most nights for no reason and sometimes during the day as well for 10-15 minute periods. There was also a couple of times where the Internet went down totally for around 12 hour periods.
This thread is to inform and warn people about Vodafone and give my own experiences of what I have had to deal with them. I would have been happy if speeds had at bare minimum doubled to 30mbps but they remain the same. Ideally I was looking for 50mbps range plus but I would be living in fantasy land if that was the case.

ED E

You signed up on the doorstep. You got burned. Whats new here?

Dont buy anything from door to door salespeople. Its their job to lie.

MrLucidLJ

ED E wrote: »

You signed up on the doorstep. You got burned. Whats new here?

Dont buy anything from door to door salespeople. Its their job to lie.

At least I've learned fro my mistake this is why I find it tough to trust people.