Hi Per, thanks for your reply. I got the same answer from the support team on the phone last week and the week before that, but I just can't understand why wouldn't Vodafone just pick the phone up from a store and send it? That isn't fair to current (paying) customers.
On the other hand, if this was a known issue I would have appreciated receiving a heads up from Vodafone before and after I made my purchase (I would be perfectly happy with an HTC One M8) but over the last few days I've had to contact Support in order to get updates. My partner placed an order for the same phone a few days later and it's the same story all over (no warnings, no updates, no solution).
We're not impressed with the way Vodafone is handling this issue at all...