Vodafone India Fails in Facebook Reputation Management

The dislike-stamp, Image courtesy of Gigjets

Just because you have a few thousand fans on Facebook, it doesn’t prove that you own social media. The online battle ground is still very much run on social ethics and not by the politics of boardroom.

Dhaval Valia, a consumer of Loop Mobile for last six years, switched to Vodafone India on April 15 because he wanted 3G services. Unfortunately the service was not available in Kandivali where he lived, which Vodafone initially communicated that the area has 3G network. Valia fought against Vodafones’s false service level agreement (SLA) that Mumbai had complete coverage of 3G (Kandivali is part of Mumbai).

After a month of debate, Valia finally got the Chief Marketing Officer of Vodafone India to admit that it was misleading to the customers. As compensation, Valia was then offered a free two-month 3G plan worth Rs 2500 ($55). Being a media-savvy person, Valia shared the incident with its community on Facebook as he knew that there were others too who were in the same boat.

The above status updates got ten ‘likes,’ a dozen comments, and also caught the eye of Vodafone. This was not at all accepted by Vodafone and it went on to file a defamation case which was admitted by the Indian counterpart of Vodafone:

Yes, we have a situation with one of our customers, despite several efforts on our part. Owing to certain unusual and improper dealings and communications by the customer, especially with our women employees, we were forced to take legal advice in this matter. We do not wish to comment any further in this regard.

However, Valia was not deterred and in return he filed a case against Vodafone for hacking, tapping, and tracking customers personal activities on the Internet.

Vodafone cannot legally access his private conversations. Also hacking, tapping and tracking the customer’s Internet activity is a criminal offence and Vodafone, prima facie, seems to have done exactly that. What’s even more grave is that they have passed this information to a third party, their legal agency, without my prior consent or approval.

The story received much media coverage and after a fortnight, Vodafone had to drop the case. On Thursday June 17 Valia received an email from Samaresh Parida, director of Strategy at Vodafone India, stating that the company is withdrawing the legal notice against him.