The dealer, who said he would soon have to lay off staff and possibly even close his doors, said he knew of two other top Vodafone dealers who estimated they had lost in excess of $800,000 in revenue between them over the past six months. Those dealers were unavailable to speak to this website at the time of writing but it is believed at least one is considering joining the class action. Vodafone said it had thousands of dealers who were mostly happy with the company. It said it was working hard to optimise the performance of its network and had seen improvements in call quality as well as faster and more reliable deliver of SMS, voicemail and 3G data services. The Sydney dealer said he was switching many of his clients over to Telstra out of guilt over Vodafone not providing them with the service they had signed up for. This meant he was losing trailing commissions as well as the ability to re-sign the customer. "We are being abused on a regular basis and our store has been vandalised," he said.

"I just hate going to work now; we're going to put security cameras in as we've had people come in who basically want to throw their phones at us." The dealer said his staff arrived to work one morning only to find that someone had vandalised the store with graffiti to the effect "don't spend your hard earned dollars here, Vodafone are liars and rip-offs". He said he saw the abuse and graffiti as an attack on Vodafone itself and not his store staff. Many did not realise that his store was simply a franchise that was independent from Vodafone, and walked in to the store to abuse staff after being unable to speak to someone over the phone. Hold times to Vodafone's call centre have been up to two hours. When the dealer called Vodafone on behalf of customers, the telco had said the problems with reception and call dropouts were a short-term thing that would be fixed in a matter of days. "This is total nonsense and a straight-out lie. We offer the truth now so it does not come back to bite us," the dealer said.

He said he had spoken to many Vodafone customers who had lost out on major work commitments due to the fact that people have not been able to contact them. He gave one example of a model who would have lost a $100,000 modelling contract had she not been switched quickly to Telstra. PiperAlderman partner Sasha Ivantsoff said in a phone interview the firm had heard countless stories of Vodafone customers who believed they had lost money as a result of the poor Vodafone network performance. The class action had swelled to almost 18,000 and the firm was now in the process of asking potential claimants to fill in a questionnaire outlining their problems. It was also talking to a funder to bankroll the litigation. Elissa Freeman, policy director at the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network (ACCAN), said Vodafone's dealers were copping the brunt of collective anger at Vodafone. She said Vodafone recently removed the online complaints form from its website for a week because it was being inundated with complaints. "I don't think there's a Vodafone customer out there who's happy and contented at the moment," said Freeman.

A Vodafone spokesman said the company had been in regular, daily contact with all of the principals at its dealer partners and this information was being passed on to all stores. "We highly value our dialogue with our dealer partners and we always welcome any suggestions they may have on how communication may be improved," the spokesman said. Vodafone initially blamed software bugs on its network issues but, after a sustained backlash from customers, its chief executive, Nigel Dews, issued an apology and promised to upgrade the telco's network significantly. Separately, Vodafone is facing an investigation from the Privacy Commissioner following revelations of lax security surrounding its customer information and claims that personal details were being sold or given to criminal groups. Vodafone has since instituted a number of changes including sacking staff, scrapping shared generic computer access logins and ordering 24-hour password changes.

A former contractor in Vodafone's IT department who contacted this website said at least half of the user accounts in the company used the password "password1!" and accounts of users who had left the company stayed active for at least a month after they were gone. It is impossible to confirm this claim, although the Sydney dealer spoken to by this website said its dealer login password was "password1!". Loading Do you know more? asher.moses@smh.com.au This reporter is on Twitter: @ashermoses