I had been a Vodafone costomer for more than 10 years and had little to complain withregards to signal strength and voice quality.Initially, their customer service was also ok(at least in Mumbai).
Last year, I was in USA and Canada for about 40 days and during this period, I could not make any call, either local or to India, despite sufficient balance in my pre-paid account and International Roaming being active on my mobile phone.
I could receive calls, receive and send SMSes but could not make any call.I e-mailed this problem to them and asked them to sort it out immediately as it was causing a lot of problem/embarrasment for me.There was no action on their part.I got an e-mail asking me to switch off/switchon my phone/how to go about selecting networks blah blah.I reminded them, on returning to India, that it was not the first time I had used my phone on roaming and asked them to explain the reason for this poor customer service, accept their shortcomings and refund my international roaming charges.
Incidently, I had encounterd the same problem on domestic roaming a few years back and when I took up the matter withg them, I was refunded the existing domestic roaming charges of Rs.49/-.I quoted the same reference but they were in no mood to oblige.The kept blaming the network/my phone’s incompatibility with the networks abroad etc but could not answer why I could receive calls, send and receive SMSes with such alleged incompatibilities.
One of their customer care executives did call me up to offer fake apologies and assumed the matter to be closed.When I wrote to them that I was not satisfied with the response and this brushing of issue under the carpet will not work, they stopped responding to my mails and SMSes.Every time I would receive an e-mail/SMS promising that they would get in touch with me but I did not hear from any of their customer care people after this.
I wanted them to understand that when a person is in a foreign country, his/her mobile phone is his only contact with his near and dear ones.A deficiency in this service and, worst, no attempt to rectify it despite repeated e-mails was too much to bear.To top it all, the poor customer service which I experienced during my follow up on this matter for almost six months, was the last straw.
I was one of the first people to avail the number portabity scheme to shift to another mobile operator.