The worst company in Britian 2010?... its VODAFONE

mobilejunkie

More like when they contact you with an offer they subsequently renage on and deny.

Vodafone

Hi there

It's awesome to see some amazing feedback from a number of you using our service. It's always very much appreciated.

I can see though that there are a few of you that are unhappy with Vodafone at the moment. I'd really like to help turn this around for you.

If you need any help with your account or there are any unresolved issues you would like to discuss please feel free to send me an email from here with WRT135 in the subject line (so that it comes straight to my team) and we'll do all we can to help. When emailing please include a link to this thread in the body of the text.

I hope to speak to you soon.

All the best for the New Year!

Kirsty
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK

4$£&*(£$&*(!

Kirsty,

I'll tell you what Vodafone can do. You can build a time machine, take us all back to May this year when you started telling us all of your plans to start additional charging for data above 500Mb and listen to us. I emailed you way back then and you told me tough.

Then when the plans were finalised and you started sending out warning texts, you can let those of us who want to cancel get out there and then.

But we both know Kirsty it is not possible for you to build a time machine and it is not possible for you to change what Vodafone did to me and countless others. You had so many chances, it took over 60 letters, calls and emails to Vodafone including the appalling service I received from the Executive Office. Vodafone changed its policy so many times its customers never knew where they stood. You broke your terms and conditions then told us we all had to live with it.

Well I didn't, and I got out. I have owned mobiles since the days your company was predominantly Racal but the network I always used was Cellnet. Over the years I've hopped around all the big operators but never used Vodafone until I signed up in December last year. What a dreadful mistake that was. I have never had such issues when there is a problem, and you are the first mobile operator I have ever had to seek legal advice about.

Since September this year I have been free, in total surviving your network for about nine and a half months. I will never, ever return. Kirsty, I will tell you what Vodafone can do to make me happy. Close down.

Malky

Looks like I'm in the minority here but I've had no problems with Vodafone in 18 months. I don't understand why so many get hung up over the 500mb FUP. I use my Desire HD daily and the most I've used in one month was just over 300mb without connecting to WI-FI.
Does no one have WI-FI access at home, friends or workplace? Does no one have WI-FI switched on at all on their phone. Even when I'm out in the town, I'm almost guaranteed to find a free WI-FI hot spot.

4$£&*(£$&*(!

Malky, it isn't the point that we can use wi-fi or not. I routinely hovered around 500Mb each month and as it was a fair use policy I didn't abuse it. I would go over a little bit though, but not by much. Before signing up to Vodafone I asked the question if this was a problem and got a written response on their forum that no, it wouldn't be a problem and they had no intentions of charging if I exceeded the fair use policy. If I routinely abused the policy they said they would review my situation but I never got to that point.

In other words I checked what I was getting myself into before I took the contract, I got it confirmed in writing, I knew where I stood and Vodafone knew where they stood. That was all up until May.

The reason people are getting hung up as you put it Malky is the way Vodafone did this. They tried doing it on the sly. There was no universal announcement to customers who would be subject to the new policy. Then they introduced a soft-warning message service to try and shy people away, but made sure no-one could cancel at this point hoping they would just change their habits or carry on regardless. Then they introduced a warning stating customers will be charged, clarifying online this new message counted as a formal notification and if your bill increased by over 10% as a result you could cancel.

Then they said you couldn't definitely cancel, you could apply to cancel where someone will review your use over three months and determine it from there (the monthly airtime conditions state a comparison with the previous month, not three months and one person complained saying he had been in hospital undergoing cancer treatment during one of the three months so barely used any data which meant they wouldn't permit him to cancel). Then someone else said they'd used over the limit three months running but was not allowed to cancel.

This issue is less and less about the cap itself and more about Vodafone's handling of it. Very much like the tax issue debate going on right now, yes they did the minimum what they had to on the new charging policy (and even that is questionable around their treatment of some customers including me), but that doesn't make Vodafone's actions honourable or even legally correct. They have got away without a legal challenge as they let the big trouble causers (i.e. me) out of their contracts just short of any legal action. I was very close to it though and they have no idea just how close, at one point I didn't want them to let me out the contract just so I could have had my day in court.

esuhl

Oh dear, CitySlicker - that's exactly why I am so furious with T-Mobile: we agreed a contract, but a month later they tried to change the terms, wrongly telling me I had no right to object (which, if it isn't a criminal offence, really should be).

Much to my annoyance, I had to fight to get them to obey the terms of the legally-binding contract, and at the end of it I had only fixed my own situation. T-Mobile still profited immorally from the majority of its non-PAYG customers by effectively conning them.

If Vodafone have tried the same kind of nefarious scam as T-Mobile then we should avoid doing business with either of them in future.

I hadn't thought of it before, but if this issue cropped up again (where hundreds of customers are affected, but most are unaware or unable to assert their rights), is it possible under UK law to file some kind of class-action lawsuit to ensure that we can resolve the issue for anyone detrimentally affected by companies bullying people out of their rights?

ruggedtoast

I doubt Vodafone UK care whether they are voted the worst company or not. They're raking it in and have, allegedly, been awarded an enormous tax break by the Tories. If anything their business model is more likely to drag down the service of the other providers rather than suffer by comparison.

Vodafone's business model is built around cheap delivery of service to an upper mid market customer base. A lot of their CS is outsourced and mostly unaccountable, a great many complaints disappear because people cant be bothered spending months following them up.

I was miss-sold two contracts but by the time Vodafone gave me confirmation of what I was actually paying for I was so far into the commitment period I accepted compensation rather than the cancellation that it would have been within the 7 days. And that was after literally dozens of emails and phone calls over weeks and weeks.

Do Vodafone care? Probably not, thats two two year contracts from lying that would have gone to Orange (who told the truth and seemed too expensive by comparison) that they have off me. Even with the discount they gave me for the miss-selling they've done well. And they made it so hard for me to work out what they were actually providing I suspect many people would just give up. Times that by a few million and you have a lot of revenue.