KEY POINTS:
The wrath of a sleep-deprived Baptist pastor has come down on Vodafone after he was woken constantly in the early hours by text alerts saying he needed to "top up" his cellphone.
The Rev Roger Spackman of the Te Atatu Baptist Church was told that he was one
of "many, many people" who had complained.
But Vodafone was not initially aware it was the cause of the problem.
A customer service call taker was appalled that the baptist pastor was being hounded by "nuisance texts" at 2am, constantly waking him from his slumber over the past six weeks, Mr Spackman told the Herald.
"She asked if I knew who was sending them. I replied, 'Vodafone'."
There was complete silence on the line.
"She was horrified that even though I'd asked about four times for them to stop sending the messages at that time, they continued to do it."
After the embarrassing pause, the Vodafone service representative told Mr Spackman that she knew the reason for the glitch, and that "many, many people" had been complaining.
Mr Spackman said it was apparent that prepay customers on the Txt 2000 and Best-Mates schemes had been receiving recent warnings that their top-up fee was due.
Shortly after this a follow-up text was being sent to confirm or advise non-payment.
"The stupid thing about this is that they send them in the early hours of the morning, waking people up for no reason at all," Mr Spackman said.
"How come a company that makes millions a year can't sort out a simple command line in their computer programme that sends out the texts at a more appropriate hour."
He said he had no option but to leave his phone on overnight.
"I need to be available for emergency situations. We have people that call who could be suicidal, who are terminally or chronically ill, or who are dealing with a crisis such as a death. It is not an option to turn it off."
His complaints seemed to have fallen on deaf ears over the past six weeks, he said.
He had also complained about the amount of spam being sent to his phone. However Vodafone had deemed its messages "targeted advertising" and told the pastor this could not be helped.
Vodafone spokeswoman Elinore Wellwood said the problem was attended to yesterday, "but not because of your inquiry".
Vodafone apologised to Mr Spackman, she said, and texts to customers would be sent at 8.30am from now on. Vodafone was also investigating his spam complaints.
