The butterfly effect - the complete @vodafoneuk #iphone4 story
I have written a few other posts about this, but since I now have my
iPhone I thought I'd document everything for completeness. On the 24th of June I visited my local Vodafone store to get a new
iPhone, I was 12th inline for a 32GB iPhone and they had 11. 8 days
later I had the phone I wanted, but as seems to be the case with me it
was a difficult journey to get it. On the 24th a helpful man at Vodafone went through their sign up
process, did my credit check then found out they had just sold the
last phone. As this was at 730 he said he would ring a couple of local
stores at 9am to try and obtain a handset. At 930 he called me to say
he was unsuccessful, asked me what I wanted to do and we agreed I'd
order one online. By 940 my order was placed and I had my order confirmation email. At
this point Vodafone still had stock online so I made the assumption
mine had been reserved. On Thursday afternoon I had an email asking me to call Vodafone about
my order. It turns out the order had been put on hold as the system
was confused that I already had an account and couldn't work out if
this was a new order or an addition to my existing order. It was this inadvertent account creation that would be the source of
my problems over the next week - the butterfly effect. It turns out that due to this hold up my phone hadn't been reserved
and it was now on back order, however it took me over an hour on hold
to Vodafone to get to this stage and cost me the best part of £20 as
they only provide an 0844 number to contact them if you are not yet a
customer. After a few days of chasing I received an email on the Wednesday that
my phone would be with me by 6pm on Friday. Great. But Vodafone were
still to give me problems. It seems everyone but me had a tracking email to tell them the
progress of their phone. I called at 1pm on Friday to see if my phone
had been dispatched. Turns out it had actually arrived at the store at
10am the previous day and nobody had bothered to call me. To be fair to Vodafone none of this individual issues were major and
they did help to resolve them, but due to the increased demands on
their systems it took longer and cost me money to resolve it. I'm surprised I received no tracking email as it would seem the sort
of thing that would be automated by their system and to top it all
off, my friend who ordered his iPhone at the same time as me to the
same store got his a week earlier - goes to show what one seemingly
innocent event can do! I now have my phone, my number will be ported tomorrow and hopefully I
will be able to put this behind me. As somebody who works with
organisations to implement and maintain their CRM systems I am
surprised that this process was not more streamlined - I think I am
the expection rather than the norm in this case, but a phone call from
Vodafone would have been nice at some point as my feeling is that this
would still be stuck in the system if I hadn't been actively chasing
it.
iPhone I thought I'd document everything for completeness. On the 24th of June I visited my local Vodafone store to get a new
iPhone, I was 12th inline for a 32GB iPhone and they had 11. 8 days
later I had the phone I wanted, but as seems to be the case with me it
was a difficult journey to get it. On the 24th a helpful man at Vodafone went through their sign up
process, did my credit check then found out they had just sold the
last phone. As this was at 730 he said he would ring a couple of local
stores at 9am to try and obtain a handset. At 930 he called me to say
he was unsuccessful, asked me what I wanted to do and we agreed I'd
order one online. By 940 my order was placed and I had my order confirmation email. At
this point Vodafone still had stock online so I made the assumption
mine had been reserved. On Thursday afternoon I had an email asking me to call Vodafone about
my order. It turns out the order had been put on hold as the system
was confused that I already had an account and couldn't work out if
this was a new order or an addition to my existing order. It was this inadvertent account creation that would be the source of
my problems over the next week - the butterfly effect. It turns out that due to this hold up my phone hadn't been reserved
and it was now on back order, however it took me over an hour on hold
to Vodafone to get to this stage and cost me the best part of £20 as
they only provide an 0844 number to contact them if you are not yet a
customer. After a few days of chasing I received an email on the Wednesday that
my phone would be with me by 6pm on Friday. Great. But Vodafone were
still to give me problems. It seems everyone but me had a tracking email to tell them the
progress of their phone. I called at 1pm on Friday to see if my phone
had been dispatched. Turns out it had actually arrived at the store at
10am the previous day and nobody had bothered to call me. To be fair to Vodafone none of this individual issues were major and
they did help to resolve them, but due to the increased demands on
their systems it took longer and cost me money to resolve it. I'm surprised I received no tracking email as it would seem the sort
of thing that would be automated by their system and to top it all
off, my friend who ordered his iPhone at the same time as me to the
same store got his a week earlier - goes to show what one seemingly
innocent event can do! I now have my phone, my number will be ported tomorrow and hopefully I
will be able to put this behind me. As somebody who works with
organisations to implement and maintain their CRM systems I am
surprised that this process was not more streamlined - I think I am
the expection rather than the norm in this case, but a phone call from
Vodafone would have been nice at some point as my feeling is that this
would still be stuck in the system if I hadn't been actively chasing
it.
