When you talk of bad service, I swear Vodafone is at the zenith of that. That company is a bullying mass of rubbish. Breathe, count one to ten, breathe, count one to ten again… yes that is how mad I am.

My sad story begins about a year ago. I didn’t have a proper office but I relied on the internet..heavily. How did I get by? I started out at Busy Internet and got a small office there, with five of us sharing that space. We were hustling big time, paying an arm and a leg for that little 4 by 4. The internet there worked…mostly. I also hang out in cafés and
bars that had free wireless service…To cut a long story short it wasn’t an ideal working situation.

I brought in my Bonaqua mineral water  when I knew a particular joint with said wireless service was selling that brand and switched to Voltic when they did, all so I won’t be busted for using their internet for several hours without buying anything.  After finally finding my own office space, I called Vodafone. All I needed was their broadband service. The customer service rep on the other end of the line asked if I had a phone, I answered in the affirmative. Two weeks to ten working days, I was told was the period I had to wait. Three weeks later, I had a call from a guy from Vodafone and practically  leapt for joy. After struggling for more than an hour to give directions to this guy, (whom I suspect wasn’t the brightest bulb on the tree) he eventually showed up. I almost hugged the rather surly and burly Vodafone technician when I saw him.

“Where do you me to fix it?” he asked. I showed him where my land line was and made him aware that my secretary and partner would also need to use the broadband service.

“It is wireless” he mumbled as he bumbled round my office almost as if in a drunken stupor.

Fifteen minutes later he entered my office and made the grand announcement: “You have internet!”

I almost cried for joy, it was the year 2012 and what had I done to deserve such favour…Finally I had my own internet.

He looked at me expectantly; I knew the drill and slipped him a twenty. He didn’t smile or say thank you, he just
looked at it and slipped it into his pocket.  He had barely left, when I noticed something.

“I am not getting any connection from my office” I said weakly

“Ahhh the signal is not strong, it’s like that…. you need a cable or a router, but if you look here
you can see that the green light is on, so the internet is working”

After waiting for so long, it finally hit me that I would have to carry my laptop to the secretary’s
office due to the weak signal. I wasn’t too peeved…yet, after where I’d started from, this was still progress.

My secretary tapped me on my shoulder and drew my attention to the fact that our phone line was no longer working.

I told the Vodafone technician and he looked at me as if I was the slow one and said:

“Yes, your phone will not work, the old phone lines are voice only so now that you have the internet, the
voice will not work, but if you call Vodafone it will be fixed”.

True story!  After six months of playing phone tag with Vodafone, my land line was finally fixed.

Did I learn my lesson? Yes, Vodafone sucks but they have a monopoly on this type of service.In the meantime I worked my way through a slew of other internet service providers with less than stellar services..

Fast-forward to present day and I was back to the the devil I knew when I needed a new phone. I contacted Vodafone and had it in record time…3 weeks. The catch, however was that I had to pay for 3 months internet to get the new land line.  I tried to explain to the Bozos there that, I had broadband from them already which wasn’t working that great anyways, so no thank you. I was told by the “Vodafone people” that the phone came with the internet, so basically I had no choice but to suck it up and pay for the 3 months. I needed that phone line, so suck it up I did.

A month after getting my new land line (with my own router this time, because remember, weak signals), my internet stopped working. I called the “Vodafone people”, only to be told that I had gone through 45 gigabytes of data in a month and that I had no data left on my account. I had no idea checking emails used up so much bandwith! Unbelievable! I also had a glo account for my ipad which had 8gigs of data and I could somehow use it for 3 months, to surf, send emails and even watch youtube videos and not run out! Glo is no saint in the services department either, but I digress.

A week earlier, a girl from Vodafone, had called and told me in a chirpy voice how the 15 gigs a month I pay for at GH¢70.00 was inadequate. She strongly advised me to switch to GH¢180.00 amonth (the unlimited bundle). I explained to Shelly (I think that was her name), that there was no way I could use 15gigs a month. Shelly said they were advising all their clients to “switch to the GH¢180.000 package as the GH¢70.00 was causing problems”.

Where do these Vodafone people come from? Earth or Uranus? What keeps them awake at night? Do they sleep? Are they happy with the crappy service they provide day in and day out?

I am back at my free wireless internet pub hangout writing, and very furious, the owner looks like he’s made me out, I can see him looking at me, now he’s talking to a waiter and pointing in my direction ( after all I am drinking Bon Aqua and they have switched to Voltic – dang! I have to keep up). As for the war between yours truly and Vodafone it has only just begun.