Ring us, Mr Vodafone... to show you're listening

REGULAR readers of The Mail on Sunday will not be surprised by the record fine imposed last week on Vodafone for its woeful customer service. After all, it’s an issue my colleague Laura Shannon has been zealously reporting on for the past year. Always splendidly, often in splendid isolation (no other newspaper has had the balls to take this corporate monolith on).

Although the mobile giant has paid for its sins, do not think for one moment that a line can be drawn in the sand. That a bad Vodafone has suddenly become all righteous and customer-centric. Fat chance.

For a start, £4.6million is peanuts for such a corporate monster. It represents a tiny fraction of the £2.1billion final dividend it recently paid shareholders. Indeed, it is probably less than the petty cash that Nick Jeffery’s secretary keeps tucked away in case her boss – head of Vodafone’s UK operations – needs some emergency funds.

This fine, imposed by regulator Ofcom, will not change Vodafone’s business culture. The only way it might have had an impact is if the executives, not the shareholders, had had to pay it. Food for thought for Sharon White, Ofcom boss.

Most worrying of all is that while the fine relates to Vodafone’s catastrophic customer service failings between January 2014 and November 2015, the mobile giant is still delivering sub-standard service. We know because letters keep pouring in from dissatisfied customers. It also continues to rack up the highest number of complaints that land at Ofcom’s doors – that is complaints per 100,000 accounts. If rivals Tesco Mobile, O2 and Three can record no more than one, two and three complaints per 100,000 customers, why is it that Vodafone attracts 23?

Vodafone said last week it is ‘determined to put everything right’. Fine words. But until we see some action (and the complaints stop flooding into our offices), we will remain sceptics.

The introduction of an email address where customers can log complaints would be a step in the right direction. As would an immediate overhaul of both its derisory 191 phone and web chat services. Pick up the phone Mr Jeffery and tell us you’re on the case.