Can Pythian help Vodafone Australia?

I can’t stand this anymore so here it goes…

We have just hired one more DBA in our Sydney office (welcome Andre!) and we need a new mobile phone. We were trying to contact Vodafone representatives multiple times today starting early morning but they keep saying that their system is down and they cannot subscribe us to anything or validate our previous requests. They also confirmed that they lost many customers today — well, most of today’s new customers for sure and pissed of quite a few existing clients.

Let’s say that average new customer would spend about $50 per month for the next 2 years so we get to $1,200. How many new customers does an average store subscribe every day? If there are 3 sales persons on average and they do 10 new customers per day then we have 30 new clients. How many Vodafone stores? I probably can find the number but I just assume there are 300 stores. Today, those stores lost new subscribers worth of more than $10 million of revenue over the next 2 years. This is only lost revenue for new clients. Granted, some people are loyal enough (like me) and can swallow and wait until tomorrow but most will just walk into a Telstra/Optus/Virgin Mobile store nearby. I don’t even account for independent stores and internet/phone sales.

Now, if you are from Vodafone Australia and know where the problem is… and if the issue is somewhat related to the database, please, please get the IT manager to call me. Will you?! Believe me it’s cheaper than $10 million and I really want this phone contract done fast as well as expect reliable customer services from our mobile phone provider. I’ll make the discounted offer! ;-)