WARNING - Vodafone experience

bnoc

Vodafone charge international roaming rates equivalent to receiving a call while abroad if your voicemail service is active and callers leave messages for you. :eek:

I went to visit a friend in Lyon (for the day) and I got hit to the tune of £65 because I run my own business and many of my clients leave me messages on a daily basis.

If you have been hit by this then the situation is not lost, you should be able to negotiate a credit to your account. I phoned customer services and was told that it was "in my terms & conditions". I asked them to tell me where it appeared in my terms & conditions, suggesting that if they were able to show me I would pay immediately but if they weren't I'd take my business elsewhere and they could whistle for the cash.

The long and the short of it is that they were unable to identify anywhere in the terms & conditions that defined voicemail as being a received call in so far as roaming charges are concerned so I got PACs for my two phones and told them I was going elsewhere.

There is a silver lining to this cloud - I got a call from contract retentions and they agreed to credit the £65 to my account and I successfully negotiated the following deal on both the numbers I have with them:

£30/mth (including VAT) - 12mth contract
700 cross-network anytime minutes
1000 texts

And both phones got upgraded, one to a Samsung E900 and the other a Sony Ericcson K800i.

:j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j :j

-1-

hi there

i think you managed to talk your way out of that one. the person who said it is in your contract is correct. you are charged for reciving calls whilst roaming. the call was recieved as it went to your voicemail and because you were abroad at the time this is classed as reciving a call whilst abroad. below is the section of the T &C's that explains it. this is taken from the standard Pay Monthly terms and conditions found on the vodafone website

16. You are not charged for receiving calls to your Vodafone mobile phone number unless you are roaming on a foreign network. You will be charged for the international leg of calls to your Vodafone mobile phone number received while you are abroad.

for future use i would suggest switching your voicemail off before you go and putting it back on when you return however you may miss important messages especially if your number is used for buisness.

i would suggest adding vodafone passport. you would have paid a 75p connection charge and then could have recieved a call for up to 1 hour and not paid anything else. vodafone passport is free to add however now your on a promotional price plan you would lose the promotion if you added it.
best place to find the info is on the websire and click on help centre the blue and red speach bubbles on the front of the main page.

hope this helps