Vodafone's dreadful attitude towards its customers

JoyR

Vodafone cut off one of my pay-as-you-go sim cards with absolutely no warning. Admittedly I had not used it for some time as it was just in my car for emergencies but on the very day I tried to use it and found it dead I got a message on my monthly contract phone to say that it had been removed from my friends and family numbers. There was about £20 of credit remaining.

Vodafone's terms and conditions state that they "will, on request, reconnect the services and make any previous credit held on your account at time of suspension available."

A month later and even after emailing Guy Laurence (the UK CEO), who hasn't had the courtesy to reply, I am still trying to get things sorted out. In the meantime, Vodafone has cut off my other pay-as-you-go phone, again without warning. Credit on this phone was around £15.

I have experienced other problems with Vodafone's failure to honour agreements and its extremely poor communication.

It strikes me that Vodafone's contract term which allows them to cut off the service when credit remains may well be deemed 'unfair' in legal terms and that their practise of acting upon it without due warning or recompense amounts to theft!

I would like to hear from anyone else who has had a pay-as-you-go phone cut off whilst there is still credit remaining and who has not been able to get the credit reinstated.

Jon_01

All networks will cut off payg number which haven't been used for a long time (between 6 to 12 months).
This is fairly well known and most people make a changeable call or text once every few months to stop it happening.
They have no onus to let you know, if a sim hasn't been used in that amount of time it most likely been lost/dumped or forgotten about. There only so much capacity on the network servers and these unused number tie up space that can be use for live acc's.

JoyR

Thanks for responding, Jon 01,

Probably should have read my terms and conditions more thoroughly but it doesn't excuse Vodafone from failing to leave a warning message about a cut off. It's supposed to be a communications company! A check of their database would have shown the phones in question to be on the friends and family list of my monthly contract phone (with Vodafone).

If a client has paid for a service with my company I wouldn't dream of cutting them off without warning just because I wanted to make more profit! If I did I'm sure they would complain. The more we allow poor service and lame excuses from companies such as Vodafone the more they will get away with!

Colliefrog

This happened to my husband too. He went to Canada with the army for 4 month. When he landed back at the airport he text me to say he was back, then a few days later the number stopped working. He called Vodafone who said the number had been terminated due to inactivity which was a load of bull as he had text me on his arrive back to the UK!!

OneADay

"Inactivity" refers to not topping the phone over a period of time, which in Vodafone's case seems to be 6 months - it does not refer to not using the phone.

mobilejunkie

You don't have to top it up. You just have to make one call every 90 days. I have two PAYT sims with credit and do this regularly without any problems.

OneADay

Thought you had to top up at least 5 pounds after every x number of days or months. Might be wrong I guess but it was my experience (few years back) when I had pay and go phones.

Graham1

Always a good idea to check the T&C carefully, they all tend to bury details like that in the fine print. In Vodafone's case it is:

6.2 Where the Mobile Equipment is suspended because you have chosen not to use the Services (as defined in 6.1(c) above) for a period of 180 days, we will, on request and within 90 days of suspension reconnect the Services and make any previous credit held on your account at time of suspension available. If you have not kept to this Agreement or not used the Services for 270 days, and we disconnect the Mobile Equipment, any credit held on your account will be forfeited.

6.3 We will try and tell you when we suspend, restrict or end your use, but we are not required to.

Vodafone

JoyR wrote: »

Vodafone cut off one of my pay-as-you-go sim cards with absolutely no warning. Admittedly I had not used it for some time as it was just in my car for emergencies but on the very day I tried to use it and found it dead I got a message on my monthly contract phone to say that it had been removed from my friends and family numbers. There was about £20 of credit remaining.

Vodafone's terms and conditions state that they "will, on request, reconnect the services and make any previous credit held on your account at time of suspension available."

A month later and even after emailing Guy Laurence (the UK CEO), who hasn't had the courtesy to reply, I am still trying to get things sorted out. In the meantime, Vodafone has cut off my other pay-as-you-go phone, again without warning. Credit on this phone was around £15.

I have experienced other problems with Vodafone's failure to honour agreements and its extremely poor communication.

It strikes me that Vodafone's contract term which allows them to cut off the service when credit remains may well be deemed 'unfair' in legal terms and that their practise of acting upon it without due warning or recompense amounts to theft!

I would like to hear from anyone else who has had a pay-as-you-go phone cut off whilst there is still credit remaining and who has not been able to get the credit reinstated.

Hi JoyR,

I'm surprised that you've haven't had a reply to your email but as I've now spotted your thread could you email your details to me using the 'Contact us' form on our website here?

When sending the email could you also include a link to this thread within the body of it and state the code WRT135 in the subject line to make sure it comes through to us?

Colliefrog wrote: »

This happened to my husband too. He went to Canada with the army for 4 month. When he landed back at the airport he text me to say he was back, then a few days later the number stopped working. He called Vodafone who said the number had been terminated due to inactivity which was a load of bull as he had text me on his arrive back to the UK!!

Hi Colliefrog,

The above invitation is extended to you as well.

Many thanks and look forward to hearing from you both.

Lee

Web Relations Team

Vodafone UK

Colliefrog

Hi Colliefrog,

The above invitation is extended to you as well.

Many thanks and look forward to hearing from you both.

Lee

Thanks, but we decided to take our business to Virgin who don't cut their customers off unless they've not used their SIM for 365 days. Very handy as my husband often goes away with the army.

JoyR

Hi Lee,

Thanks for the offer to look at this but when I tried to complete the form on the Vodafone website I got this message:

"Error the page you are trying to access is not available. Please contact the administrator for more details."

I get this error each time I try to use the form. After several minutes of filling in the fields and preparing a message it is very frustrating. In fact not being able to contact Vodafone via the form was one of the things that made me so mad with them in the first place.

My frustration was compounded when I tried to contact customer support from a Vodafone payg phone, on which I had £15/£16 credit. All I got was a message to say that I did not have enough credit for the call! What was it actually going to cost me???

For a communications company, you are very hard to communicate with!
:mad: