Vodafone UK web titsup blamed on 'holiday maintenance'

Nothing to see here, it's August

The entire Vodafone.co.uk website was down for 60 minutes this afternoon and online account access was out of action for 24 hours - but the blackouts were due to planned maintenance, Voda said.

Between 3pm and 5pm today, the telco displayed the message: "We are making some changes to the site."

A Reg reader told us he had not been able to access the account section of the Vodafone UK site since Monday lunchtime. Vodafone would not confirm how long the services had been down, saying only that they were "aware" of it and that services would be back "as soon as possible". A spokesman said:

We are aware that some of our online services are currently unavailable. This is due to maintenance work and services will be up and running as soon as possible

When we put it to the Vodafone spinner that the middle of the day was an unusual time for planned maintenance, we were told that August was considered a good time for fiddling with systems:

We have carried out this work during what is traditionally the quietest time of the year (as many people are on holiday).

Vodafone refused to provide us with more detail about their systems or whether this glitch with their online services was related to an incident two weeks ago when internal IT fell over and customers were unable to access their accounts for half a day. ®

"Making some changes" to the site: Vodafone site down

Updated to add

A Voda spokesman has been in touch again to say: "There have been intermittent issues with My Account since yesterday evening. This planned maintenance involved us needing to load test new systems. While traditionally maintenance is done very early in the morning, we needed to carry out this work in a ‘live’ environment. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."