I’m not one to air my dirty laundry, but Vodafone have come between me and my ability to tweet… which is not cool. I present to you… a story slightly longer than the Hobbit… My recent experience with Vodafone.

After dropping my phone which smashed rather horrifically, I had to get it repaired.

I’m insured for my phone, luckily, which meant that my ability to interact with anybody from afar was in Vodafone’s hands. No problem, I thought, and headed into the Vodafone store. I was served by the guy who didn’t care, calling me over and then selling about 10 people phones, mid-way through conversation with me, before telling me that the guy four people behind me in the queue had been given the last courtesy phone by another member of staff.

Having been the person dealing with grumpy customers in my last job, I’m aware of the stresses, so don’t ever get moody with people. So I happily left in the knowledge that my iPhone would soon be fixed and I would be back to normality once I received an email and text to tell me it was ready for collection.

A week later, having heard nothing, I called Vodafone for them to say they had no record of me ever handing my phone to them. Then, they found it, and told me it had been in store for three days but nobody had told me.

Again, I told them that was fine. Mistakes happen. I went back to Vodafone. The man I was served by embodied my entire experience. He was the epitome of Vodafone insurance. Wandering over to the cupboard, he calmly returned to tell me he didn’t have my phone. After assistance, he managed to locate my phone in the cupboard of phones. It came as a surprise that it was in this location. He asked me which day I got the text, so I explained I hadn’t got one. His response was three words. The only other three words he uttered. It summed it up. His day was going as well as mine. “Fuck up, innit”, he explained. He was right.

Now for my job, I run social media accounts and report live on football scores all over the world, so not having a phone is more than a huge inconvenience. After proving that I hadn’t happened to have guessed my name, date of birth, mother’s name and 100 other answers, I happily got home, buzzing to unbox my phone which had been replaced with a brand new one. And then it happened. They had given me a new, but broken phone. It wouldn’t set up, kept crashing and had the option for wifi completely greyed out.

Spending the whole night troubleshooting with Apple, they confirmed that the phone was faulty, so the next morning I sacrificed my only lie in of the week to return to Vodafone.

I was told it would be £15 to look at the phone. The broken phone, which they had given to me the day before, broken. Following this, I was informed that it was in fact… broken, and that they had to begin the entire process again. At this point, they tried to charge me my excess for the second time.

My phone is now back with Vodafone, so we can only hope it goes well this time. In the mean-time, I have my boyfriend’s old iPhone 4 which freezes, can’t download apps, restarts every now and again and loves to freeze for minutes at a time.

In the last week or so, I have however learned to appreciate the little things more. I spend 3 hours a day on trains, which are certainly different without music, and have got into conversations most days with strangers, which makes the journey go faster. I don’t always know what the time is, what’s on my calendar, or when trains will even arrive, but it’s added a sense of mystery to every day. I can’t take photos, record videos or scroll on Twitter, but I have also got more sleep without the distraction of a phone.

Thanks for that Vodafone,

Over and out,

Holly