Fleeced and mis-sold by Vodaphone

smallbuisnesslondon

Hello, I thought I would post the appauling timeline of events in a complaint we have with Vodaphone that started in mid May this year, has still not been resolved and culminated last night with a senior member of the customer services team being nothing short of rude, patronising and unhelpful last night.

I will outline the problems we have had as this should serve a warning to small businesses who are thinking of using Vodaphone. I am also aware that Vodaphone have permission to post, so I will be intrigued if they intervene here, preferably before I start listing the names of the staff there who have let us down and acted in a very unprofessional manner.

We have a small business of three staff and were with T Mobile for three years. We had a shared minutes plan and all phones could call each other free of charge. We had a number of reception problems with T Mobile and decided to look at Vodahone. Our technical man contacted Vodaphone and spoke to a small business pre sales consultant and explained the deal we had with T Mobile and asked for a like for like deal. We were advised and offered a business contract to take three phones with minutes attached and purchase a pack to cover the free phone calls to each other.

We agreed the contract on the basis that we would get free calls to each other and set the contract up in March 2011. It was clear from the first bill that the calls were higher, but we agreed to wait until we had another months bill to see if this was just because it was a busy month for us. The second bill was no different so we contacted Vodaphone. After 30 minutes of investigation, we were told that the free calls to each other was not valid on our account because the package is not available to business contracts, only personal contracts (even though the service had been put on our account and we were being charged for it).

We escalated this in writing to Vodaphone in mid May. Vodafone wrote back stating that they would need authorisation to take the free calls pack off of our account (even though we were being charged for something that was not applicable to our business account), there was no offer of any reimbursement. Since then, we have written more letters and have had little response from Vodafone, so we escalated the matter to Otelo, as per Vodafones own complaints process. On 11 August I was called from Vodafone and a message was left for me that the contract would be cancelled.

I phoned Vodafone back and again, they didn't know who placed the call but ensured us that we would get an email outlining the cancellation. On the 16 August I chased Vodafone (another 30 minute call) as I had not received the mail and was told to call back in the morning as all managers had gone home. So I called back on the morning of 17 August, had another long (45 minute) debate with a customer services advisor and was told a senior manager in the team would call me. He also told me that my business account problems had mistakenly been escalated to a technical team in Egypt.

The manager called me at 7pm. His attitude was nothing short of deplorable. His rudeness excelled so much that I had to tell him that I could no longer speak to him as he was so rude. Examples included him insisting that we were not mis-sold a contract as the free calls plan is an add on, although he could not explain why we were charged for it as it is not available on a business contract. Regarding Otelo, he sneered, "what do you think they are going to do about it?". So much for a formal complaints procedure.

His best offer was to refund some, not all of the additional costs we incurred. When i ended the call, I received a text from Vodafone to say that the pack had been removed (so they removed it without authorisation this time). So we were incorrectly sold a contract, no one could explain why and as I was advised last night very clearly, you are with us till 2013 so like it or lump it.

Our call costs have doubled since we took this contract on. So much for small business pre sales support. I even contracted the pre sales consultant who incorrectly advised and sold us the contract. No response, surprise surprise.

We are going back to Otelo today to inform them of Vodafones view of their role and contacting our solicitor to see how we can approach this from a legal standpoint.

In addition, we will post all correspondance on this matter on this thread and anywhere else suitable to warn businesses on the problems of dealing with Vodaphone.

Guys_Dad

When I ran an IT/telecomms department in London, I topok out a Vodafone contract which was for over 100 handsets, shared minutes and it most certainly DID have free calls between not only the Vodafone handsets, but also the Office landlines.

Now that contract was set up 4 years ago and things may have changed, but I would most certainly take it further.

Also look here http://www.phoneboxsolutions.co.uk/vodafone-business-tariffs.aspx which contains the following statement

"UNLIMITED internal calls between customer's company mobiles and up to 10 landlines "


Now there may be a minimum spend and other catches, but do check it out.

smallbuisnesslondon

Hi,

Thank you both for your input. I will be looking into this further this afternoon.

Vodafone

Hi smallbuisnesslondon,

It's extremely disappointing to read about your recent experience.

I can certainly take a look into this for you in more detail. Can you send me an email to the address here with WRT135 FAO Heidi in the subject with your details?

Please also include a link to this thread.

Many thanks,

Heidi
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK