Vodafone complaints

little_sister_4

I'm having a serious issue with Vodafone and have sent them the following email to several addresses, it's been 4 days now and I've had no response and I still have no money therefore I have only a few pounds of electric left in the meter and I can barely afford to eat one meal a day.

Thanks, Vodafone.

Formal Complaint

I wish to make a complaint regarding a fraudulent payment taken from my card, and the treatment I received from one of your call centre agents.

On Tuesday 1st December I checked my bank balance to find that my last £30.00 (intended for food and electricity) had been taken from Vodafone, purporting to be a payment for a top up.

I do not have a Vodafone top up phone, indeed I do not have a mobile at the moment, I am using my mother's contract phone which I pay for on my own card using the automated payment system.

With this in mind, I am adamant that this money was taken from my account fraudulently and I would like it back.

I went to the bank to report a fraudulent payment being taken, and was told that I needed to contact Vodafone with regards to confirming or denying if the payment was taken by yourselves. I called 191 from the contract phone I am using at the moment, and was assisted by a gentleman whose name I don't recall. The call must have been made around 1pm. He was extremely rude and unhelpful, he was patronising and refused to help me because I was calling from my mum's phone. I work in a call centre and am totally aware of Data Protection rules, but I did not require any information from him regarding my mother's account, I just wanted to know how to go about finding out why this payment was taken from me when I do not have a Vodafone PAYG phone and have not done for years.

He left me in tears and when I tried to explain my situation again he then said that his department did not even deal with my query and passed me over to PAYG. The girl I spoke to was very helpful indeed and asked a floor manager to help with my query.

Unfortunately it turns out that they cannot access my bank details to check when the payment was taken without me writing to Head Office. The £30.00 taken fraudulently from my account has left me with no food, no money for electricity and no money for stamps or envelopes to write to head office. Time is a factor here as I need that money to be able to eat and heat my flat. I am not currently in a position to borrow money.

I was disgusted at the treatment I received from the gentleman at the call centre, I felt humiliated and as if I'd been treated like a criminal even though it was not my fault that someone had used my bank details to top up their phone. I don't even know how they could have got my details as I do not ever leave my card unattended, if I do not have it on my person it is always locked securely away in my room or in my locker at work.

After my experience with Vodafone I do not wish to ever have a Vodafone contract or PAYG phone ever again, and my Mother is also keen to cancel her contract when it is up for review in February. I always considered Vodafone to be my provider of choice but I feel let down by the service I provided, most of all by the fact that you took money from my account with absolutely no way of knowing if it was my phone or not. This is really disappointing for me as Vodafone was always my mobile provider, starting back in the late 1990's when mobile phones first became accessible to the public. Signal and service was always reliable, but I am now in a position where I feel that I was treated badly, and that your security measures for people topping up PAYG phones is not reliable.

I would like you to return the £30.00 that you owe me for this fraudulent transaction or I will take this complaint as far as I can.

It may not be much money to you, but for me it's a matter of desperation as that money is needed for me to live. I am currently writing this email from a friend's computer as I cannot get online due to lack of electricity, I cannot heat my flat and I haven't eaten a proper meal for a few days.

I would also like you to consider reviewing your training processes for call centre staff. As someone who is a call centre agent I know how demanding the work can be and that people can sound difficult, but making me cry was not the way to help, I was quite blatantly in distress and he was not listening to me at all.

I'd really appreciate a response on this one, especially with regards to returning my money, as I feel it is only fair. I hope to hear from you within a week or so.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Veitch

usuf05

Hi, i am a really unhappy Vodafone customer. I will explain why below.
I requested my pac code to move providers i soon got it in the post with a letter. The letter said they were sad to see me go and to give them a call to see if they could keep me as a customer. I stupidly rang them on Monday 23/11/2009. The man i spoke to convinced me to stay with Vodafone on existing plan which is as follows 750min, internet (now included in my plan free),250 texts which he would increase to 1,000 stop the clock (had already)for £34.26 on my same length of contract i would get the htc hd2 + 16gb mem card for around £125 and that the htc hd2 would be coming in stock the following day. I am still waiting for the device to come in stock even today (30thnov!!). I called up Tuesday, wed, Thurs and Friday since i was told that it would definitely be in on Tuesday, then on thurs then Friday!!! Why did everyone lie to me about the stock? The lies even went as far as telling me the quantities they re getting ‘we will be getting 1000 units on Thurs then 2500 units on fri’. Each time i called to see if it was in stock the advisor would steal the previous advisors sales by saying would you like me to call you when its in stock later on today! I just want my phone please.
Regards

then today................:

Hi with ref to me not being a happy vodafone customer. !I had been promised on the 23 rd nov 09 that I would be getting the htc hd2 on my existing length and tariff. !Today I called 191 to find out when vodafone would be getting more stock of handset !and to my suprise lee smith started his usual lies that vodafone had decided to no longer stock device at all and that they had discontuned it, !I no this to be a complete lie because vodafone have been saying on their offical forums that they will continue to stock it and it would make no sense not to since it was so popular. !I have since learned that vodafone will only be Serling it online. !My situation is this I have got a quote saved on my account but now can't get the handset over the phone please help me otherwise with a deep heart I will have to leave vodafone to go to 02.
Regards mr khan

i have now had enough can someone please proovide me with the email address for the ceo or board of directors. cheers

Brido1888

Hi Folks

Phoned vodafone a few months back to lower my price plan, they said i couldnt do it until half way through my contract which was November, so i called in November and asked to put it down, the guy said it can only be done a fiver at a time so i was to call up every month until i got to the price i wanted. Fair enough i thot, so it got put down by a fiver.

So i called again today to put it down by another fiver and the guy on the fone said the last guy put you on a price plan that cannot be changed until the end of your contract(which is august), i was like he never told me that and i was never asked if this was ok etc. i said so what can be done to correct this error, he said nothing, its impossible for us to change it. He said i think the guy may have made a mistake and thats why he changed it to the price plan your on now. He said there are no procedures in place to correct errors on the price plan.

Now i want vodafone to change this and lower my tariff, why should i be penalised for their mistake and their failure to tell me what the change would bring.

Any body know the best method of getting this overturned was thinking bout cancelling the direct debit until they sort it.

Any advice/help would be greatly appreciated.
Brian

baldelectrician

Escalate the complaint and ask them to revire the call recording.

If they have the call recording it helps you prove you were misled , if they don't they can't prove you were told this was non-changable.

Vodafarce are good at quoting 'terms and conditions' down the line. Ask the to point out the bit that states you can not reduce your tariff any more.

skintassistant

Not surprised that there are quite a few people who have issues with vodafone,
my last contract ran out at the end of october and I also had another contract which my mum was using and I was paying in lieu of rent.

Anyway moved down to london in september and attempted to change the ownership on the phone to my mum via the phone as was told in shop that they couldn't do it and that it had to be done over the phone (I don't get why they can't let you contact the customer service team in the shop suppose its incase they are giving out wrong info or maybe just want ot get through as many customers as possible)
any how called them to be told that the change of ownership team don't open at the weekends and that it can't been done any other way that over the phone with both people there (curious how do they do it when theres people who change their ownership to other people they've sold the phone to via the internet?)
so after sending an email requesting that my contract phone be changed to PAYG with 30 days notice, ending precisily on the end of contract date (28th October) and recieved confirmation of this. On returning up north in October called again mid October and was able to change ownership and was told that it was changed, that my mum would receive her first bill/dd in November and if there was any bill for me I would be contacted.
As of the end of October no paper bill (or even just a notice of how much) was sent although received an email (29th October) to say that bill was available online except when I checked it wouldn't allow me to access it as the account was no longer mine. When I tried calling the customer service team I was told that as I no longer had a contract they couldn't (or wouldn't) assist me and couldn't give me the contact details of who I should contact.

As such they charged me about an extra £10 than what the bill's usual amount was so I emailed the customer service team saying how technically by not supplying me with the bill, access to a bill online or even what the bill amount was and as such breaking the dd guarantee and requesting a copy of that months bill.
Pretty much just getting responses as if it has been copied and pasted together telling me that they wont assist as as the account is not mine (although I am asking for the information from when it was mine) and quoting misinformation such as "Let me quickly access your account and help you with the cancellation" when its already been cancelled! and to request that my mum authorises me on the account.

Also asking for feedback on the email responses is of little use as I have received response from 2 people (apparently) and can only provide feedback on one of them.

little_sister_4

Well, it's been five days now and they have not responded to my email as they said they would... so I'm going to send it off to them again.

What a useless bunch.

Vodafone

Hi There

little_sister - I've just checked with Lee and he has sent you a reply to your email earlier today.

usuf05 - You can get the most recent HD2 information here.

Brido1888 - I agree that if your priceplan was simply reduced by £5 and there were no extra offers with it, that you should be able to continue to reduce your price plan as normal.

So that I can investigate this for you and get you an answer, please could you send us an email from here with a link to this thread and your username? Make sure when you send the email that you include the code WRT135 in the subject line so that your email comes straight to my team.

skintassistant - I'm sure we can get to the bottom of this for you. If you follow the instructions to get in conact with us above, we'll get back to you as soon as we can.

All the best

Kirsty
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK

Mr_Thrifty

Vodafone have the grooviest music on their ads in the cinemas! :j

olip74

Right, this has gone beyond a joke! Today, as I expected if I'm honest, I get a letter from Vodafone instructing me to pay up £386.70 within 14 days or be credit blacklisted and be referred to a debt collection agency.

This is despite multiple assurances (once in writing) that the account had been credited and then a Vodafone staff member actually instructing me to cancel the direct debit. This kind of BS I can do without!

Kirsty, email is coming your way...

Vodafone

olip74 wrote: »

Right, this has gone beyond a joke! Today, as I expected if I'm honest, I get a letter from Vodafone instructing me to pay up £386.70 within 14 days or be credit blacklisted and be referred to a debt collection agency.

This is despite multiple assurances (once in writing) that the account had been credited and then a Vodafone staff member actually instructing me to cancel the direct debit. This kind of BS I can do without!

Kirsty, email is coming your way...

Good morning Olip,

Thank you for your post.

We have received the email and someone will be in touch with you today in regard to this matter.

Ian

Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK