Vodafone "Broadband" Dongle

miss-dorset

Last November, 2010, I purchased a new laptop and took out a contract with Vodafone for their broadband dongle. Before choosing on a network provider, the salesman in PC World went through a list of providers, cross referencing them with my home address to see which would have the best coverage thus giving me the best internet access. The salesman said that the Vodafone network had the best signal by far and after reading about their great speed Broadband and good useage tariff, I signed on the dotted line and signed up for an 18 month contract, at £30.99 per month. Unfortunately, being new to having internet at home, I didn't realise quite how extortionate this was, but from the little that I did know, I knew what sort of a service i expected of Broadband - and believe me, the one I had with Vodafone was NOT it!!
On the times when it would actually connect to the internet, the whole service was shocking: it would take in excess of 10 minutes for one page to load, and even if and when it eventually did load, it was never fully loaded with images etc and it absolutely always said "done but with errors on page" which obviously meant I could not access alot of utilites on certain sites, like chat on Facebook or viewing photos. And the worst of the lot had to be trying to log onto my online banking site, rarely it would load and if it did, took a good 20 - 30 minutes and alot of 'reloading/refreshing'! The final nail in the coffin came when i used my neighbours computer (wireless through BT Home Hub) and it loaded my online banking, hotmail and Facebook pages quicker than i could click my fingers! And so after asking around for advice, I decided to terminate the contract with Vodafone, as I was in no way at all recieving the service they were advertising or indeed charging for at £30.99 per month! I looked on the Vodafone Ombudsmans site and quickly saw that I was well within my right to cancel the appalling service, and when I made the phonecall on the 29th July this year the operator I spoke to accepted my argument and the cancelling of the contract without so much of a raised tone from myself, even going as far as to credit my dongle account to make up for what i'd not paid that month after deciding I was not throwing another £30 down the drain! She said that was it, done & dusted, thankyou very much and have a nice day - far too easy, and now I can see why.......
I checked my online bill yesterday, as i have a mobile phone contract with Vodafone also (which works perfectly I might add) and was given the fright of my life and almost passed out when I saw that my current balance was £381.99 instead of the usual round about £28!! When I looked further into my bill online, I found that £375.33 of this was for that bloody dongle!! Obviously I was straight on the blower to Vodafone, who THEN proceeded to tell me that because I had terminated the contract early before the 18 months was up, I was liable for and had to pay a £400 get out cancellation fee!!!!!!!
This is the first and only time I had been told of this.
And so because of this, I want to know if I really am going to have to pay this £375.33 for cancelling an absolute dire facility??! Is it not enough that I have thrown away 9 months of money paying for a service which did not match in anyway shape or form the one that I was offered and was suppose to be recieving?? Vodafone have told me that the next step is to wait until my account goes overdue (29th August) as they can do nothing about it til then!! But why should I let my account go overdue and risk having my mobile phone resticted and a marker put on my credit file??
Has anyone else had similar problems with a Vodafone dongle, or indeed any other dongle?? I really do not want to have to fork out this £400 - ive had nothing whatsoever in return for it so why should I?? And why such an extortionate amount as £400??!

ANY advice, help or feedback will be greatly recieved _pale_

kwikbreaks

What did you pay for the laptop? £30+ for a 3G dongle sounds a lot like the laptop came "free" or at least well discounted with it.

Vodafone

Hi miss-dorset,

I am sorry to hear that you have experienced some problems with the broadband contract.

So that I can look into this for you, can you send me an email to the address shown here with WRT135 FAO Heidi in the subject. Please also include a link to this thread.

If you have signed up for either an 18 or 24 month contract then there is an early termination fee if you cancel mid-contract. This should have been advised when the cancellation was processed for you. With any product we provide, we offer a seven day return period in case there are issues with signal or you change your mind.

I will be more than happy to look into this in more detail for you though.

Kind regards,

Heidi
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK

visidigi

this looks like a laptop and boradband deal for £30+ quid a month - so if you cancel the contract you have to pay off the remainder as the balance of the laptop is tied into the contract itself - hence the high charge.

ThomasLondon

I used to have Vodafone Broadband/Dongle as PAYG and it worked all over London with almost 100% signal strength...When I decided to buy a new laptop I also went for one of these laptop+dongle deals and it also worked perfectly fine...

However, I think in your case the termination fee is basically the price of the laptop as they cannot provide you the laptop for free if you cancel your account...