Seven reasons why Spanish Vodafone SUCKS
When you move to adifferent country you should be prepared for little cultural differences, quirky habits that come with the territory: in China, they spit in the street, in Italy they shout a lot and in Iraq, well, maybe just don’t go there.
Spain has its breathtaking nature and warm hospitality, as well as confusing opening hours and crap plumbing. Fine. I was down with the whole manana-thing. Until I tried to get an internet account.
Now I know Vodafone isn’t a Spanish company. It’s as British as queen Victoria (which, according to the great Edmund Blackadder would mean “Your father’s German, you’re half German and you married a German”).
Vodafone.es, however, is a Spanish company, and it is (1) the most customer unfriendly piece of manure I have ever come across. And (2) not really looking for new customers either. I had to move heaven and earth, and basically cough up a lung, to get an internet contract as a FOREIGNER. Granted, it’s a lovely connection, albeit a bit on the slow side. However, trouble really started when I also wanted (3) an online password. I guess giving this FOREIGNER a contract was one thing, but letting me access my own account was taking the whole thing way further than they were prepared
to go.
A sweet but deluded man at Vodafone headquarters informed me that I would be able to find ‘everything’ at Vodafone.es. Yeah right!
(4) There is an English version of this terrible excuse for a website, but, bless them, they only translated about half the text. So IS no online customer service. (5) The search engine yields only results that don’t even contain the words you were looking for! And (6) when, in desperation, I turned to Google to find customer service, or any number at all, there was nothing. Not a sliver.
Now, I am not a rookie Googler, so I managed to find my way around this, but I have (7) a sneaky suspicion that keeping the customer service numer a well kept secret is simply a silly way of saving money. Aha. Well, I am outing Vodafone!
The Vodafone customer service number is +34-607-13-33-33
I hope you all ring their phones off the hook!
I hope Vodafone has to employ hundreds, nay, thousands of people extra to man their phones!
They messed with the wrong girl here….
Though in all fairness I must admit that when I did finally reach their o so hidden customer service a lovely Spanish chica with perfect, Queenlike English, answered all my questions very patiently.
December 20th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
You should try Dutch Ziggo some time… They’re horrible, too. Let’s hope you can continue using the internet without problems for a while now.
January 2nd, 2009 at 6:52 pm
My suggestion? Invest in an extremely high-powered, very large dish, and tap into the Internet that way over someone’s exposed, free wireless connection. You could also try satellite, but I’ve had problems with that on stormy days, and it doesn’t work well with VPN and sometimes times out on sites where you switch into the secure mode with https. The other problem with my satellite was that the hawks would land on it and mess up its fine-tuned direction, so I had to keep adjusting it. But then one of the hawks landed on the middle piece and busted it with their large claws. So I gave up on satellite.
January 19th, 2009 at 5:43 pm
Vodafone Spain are cretins they are second only to the “Customer Service” (oxymoron surely!) team at Air France…
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July 6th, 2009 at 3:02 pm
I’m going to write an article about how poorly Vodafone Spain treats non-Spanish speaking customers. Anyone have a good story to share? Send me an email at vodafoneproblems [at] gmail [dot] com.