vodafone put price of handset up by £200!

kai666

I wanted to upgrade to a w950 on a 12 month contract with vodafone. After searching long and hard to find a shop that was prepared to give it to me as a free upgrade on 12 months, was told it was out of stock, and to come back after christmas.

Well I finally made it back today, to be told the phone will now cost me £200!!!!

fuming at the moment!

Like i'm going to pay £200 for something that was free a couple of weeks ago had they been in stock

anyway rant over. Feel better now!

emmajg

are you a consumer or business customer?
if it's in the notes that they offered you it for free then they should stick to that offer.

kai666

Consumer, on a really old tariff..600 offpeak mins for £13. Which is probably part of the problem, they want me on a new more expensive tariff. My tarriff suites me fine though, don't use it daytime due to work, and only call vodafone and landlines evening. Also vodafone family not helping i think, bills gone down even more!

but it's in the notes, he agreed that it was free before christmas. The bloke said to ring customer services and threaten to leave, saying that it wasn't my fault the phone was out of stock, and now it's gone up. They then might reduce the price. Customer services were charging £160 even before christmas for the phone.

emmajg

hm odd I work in the business side and we use a special program that calculates the last 3 months spend and that tells us how much money we can give you towards a mobile but it doesn't make any sense as it shouldn't have changed in a month. Though if you're a consumer customer they may do it different to us but in the past if it's says free in the notes then we've done it as it was agreed.
Call customer services again and see what they say.

kai666

Maybe i will try a different shop tomorrow as well. Must have tried about 10 different vodafone shops, all seem to quote different prices, and have different policies on 12 and 18 month contracts. I have previously been told 12 month contracts aren't possible, they are but the phone will be an extra £100, to the cost of the phone will be free on both 12 and 18 month contracts.

As the computer seems to make a record of each search, it must be getting a very long list by now!

Anyway I'm not paying £200! and as there is no other phone i want at the moment, if they won't budge I will just have to wait and see what other phones come out soon, or what offers i can find on the other networks

thanks for your reply anyway

kai666

I sent an email to CS about the price increase. A woman rang back and said that there was no record of me ever being quoted the w950 for free. It wouldn't be economical for them to do that she said. Mysteriously there is a record of all the shops i went and got quotes from, but not the actual quotes themselves. The quotes were there as when the price went up to £200 the sales guy agreed it had been free before christmas

She didn't really believe me, she said the sales assistant made a mistake, until i pointed at the same mistake was then made in 5 or 6 different shops. so she reverted back to covering costs blah blah blah.

Anyway as all the quotes have mysteriously vanished it's as she herself stated... my word against theirs. Seems like someone went into the computer to delete the information to cover themselves

while I appreciate that the orginal quote was well below the cost for new subscriptions, I feel that they have gone about things in a very underhand way, by apparantly removing all the relevant information

how come all the records of my store vists are there, but no quotes. Despite the fact that they were there as the sales people referred to previous quotes.

I would be less annoyed had they said if was a computer error, and apologised

Even more annoyed by the fact that had I got my act together I could have got myself a bargain about 4 weeks ago!

If it wasn't for the fact that everyone i know uses vodafone i would tell them where to place their whole network

sadiedoll

Hiya

I used to work for Voda - just ring them up and don't mention any of previous issues with getting handset you wanted - just tell them you wish to terminate your agreement as you've been offered a better deal elsewhere.

They will then put you through to 'Customer Loyalty' aka 'Saves'. Its their job to persuade you not to go by offering a good deal - I was quoted £150 for the handset I wanted last year, said I would terminate and within 10 mins had got the deal I wanted.

Worth a try!

emmajg

I work at business section of Vodafone and you can't erased the information on the system. The stores proably didn't copy and paste the information in.
If the callcentre isn't giving you a good deal try going back to the store that offered you the good deal before Christmas.
The upgrade system that I use, uses the last 3 months bills to do an upgrade, have you bills changed recently?

kai666

yeah, it was the shop I got the free quote from that then quoted £200. The woman who phoned yesterday just phoned again and offered to reduce the cost down to £100 if i take an 18 month contract, or i can have the sony ericsson m600 for £75.

Nice of her to ring back, but still wish I had taken it 5 weeks ago when it was free!