Friend horribly overcharged by Vodafone on 3G datacard

impy78

Hi there chaps,

I was wondering if anyone out there could help me. My friend bought a vodafone 3g datacard 15 days ago for her laptop, but on Sunday her service was cut off.

She went into the store, who advised her that this was due to her having run up a bill of £778.

She then called customer services who advised her that she had been logging on every 9 minutes (24 hours a day), and all her emails received were over 3mb in size.

Neither of these points are correct, she is at college all day, and this can be proved.

Vodafone do not seem to be able to understand, that she is not sitting up 24/7 randomly connecting to the internet. I would have thought they may ask to check the card to see if it is faulty, but they haven't.

Can anyone help out at all?

Thanks

DonnyDave

Does she switch off her laptop when she's out? Can anyone else get access to her laptop?

sockospice

Had she got it set up to automatically check for emails? If it's every nine minutes it sounds like some sort of automatic connection.

newlywed

Is her laptop on when she is not with it? Could she have some sort of trojan/virus? Is her virus software up to date?

impy78

Thanks for your replies chaps,

Much appreciated. Well, I have spoken to her about it... no, her laptop is locked in a cupboard when not in use, and she lives alone, so it couldn't be anyone else using it.

She also physically removes the datacard when it is not in use.

It is all a touch confusing to be honest. I don't see why no-one at Vodafone has questioned that this could be an error, either with the card or the network, but I suppose they have to protect the company interest. Still very frustrating though.

Now, I have heard that other people in the same situation have had a reduction in their bill, when it has been this high due to either an error, or a misunderstanding on the customer's behalf...does anyone know how we would set about arranging this.

She is willing to pay some of it, but is simply unable to pay that sort of money....

impy78

RESULT!!!!!!

Well, after finally managing after a month to speak to someone in Vodafone CS with a brain, we thought that we were making progress, as they realised something was amiss with this (especially as the bill had gone up another £1200 after the contract had been cancelled!!!).

Sadly, we then spoke to a manager, who could only be described as a patronising moron, who seemed devoid of any common sense, and was only interested in retaining our business. I was so annoyed, I sent the following email:

Me_being_really_hacked_off_at_this_point wrote:

Dear Mr Sarin (COA of Vodafone uk)

I am writing on behalf of my friend and colleague, *****, who has had ongoing problems with your service and your staff, since she bought a Vodafone wifi datacard on 8th January 2007.

On the 21st of January, her connection was cut off, when she went to enquire why, at your Ealing branch, she was told that she had run up a bill of some £790. This was on Wednesday 24th of January. The shop said that they could do nothing to help her, (and displayed very little interest in doing so), and were unable to diagnose whether or not there was a fault with the card, and told us to speak with customer services.

Both Miss **** and I spoke with customer services, who advised that she had been logging onto the internet every 10 minutes, 24 hours a day.

As Miss **** doesn't have her laptop switched on, or her data card plugged into the laptop 24 hours a day, the above would be impossible, as there would be nothing to power to data card, and no protocol to receive the data.

After explaining this to the customer services department, we were told that we were mistaken and that Miss **** had indeed been using the internet at this length, and that it was "probably her emails". Not attempt was made to try and listen to Miss ****, no-one questioned that the fault could lie with anyone other than your customer, and the attitude was that it was very her problem for her to deal with.

We then contacted customer services again the following day, who advised that they would run some tests, and would call back within 72 hours. Three weeks later, after trying to chase it up, Miss **** had still not received a call, but had received a bill totalling £1,969.68.

It was at this point that we spoke to a member of staff called ****, from your Stoke-on-Trent office, (on 14th February at approximately 3.45pm), who was extremely helpful, and saw straight away that there was some kind of problem with the datacard, as the bill had continued to increase, after Miss **** had been disconnected. She said that she needed to pass this issue to a manager, and gave us her manager's name (****), and advised us that she would call Miss **** today, between the 1pm and 2pm.

Unfortunately, at 1.50pm, we had not heard anything, and as we are on a strict schedule at our school, we needed to speak with someone before 2pm, so we called Vodafone CS again, and asked to be put through to Ms ****. We were advised this was not possible, but they could send her an email, or we could speak to their manager.

We took the advisor up on this offer, and ended up speaking to a Ms ____, who seemed more interested in retaining Miss **** business, than dealing with the matter in hand. On repeated occasions, Miss **** advised Ms ____ that she wished to buy out her contract, as she was no longer happy to continue with vodafone as her service provider. Ms ____ repeatedly expressed her "concern" that Miss **** was paying for nothing, whilst giving out stock answers about the outstanding balance. She then explained how a data card worked. I advised her that I am fully aware of how a data card works, and am therefore surprised that this one is accessing the internet without being plugged into anything. As for the reason the outstanding balance had increased almost three times since the initial phone call, Ms ____ advised there was a 72 hour delay in calls being shown on your system. Which doesn't make any sense, as if it has taken Miss **** almost 2 weeks to run up a bill of £790 by allegedly doing the same thing over and over again, how has she then managed to run up an additional £1200 in 72 hours, apparently doing exactly the same thing as she was beforehand.

Eventually, we managed to reach some sort of compromise, (though more in your favour than ours), whereby, Miss **** will pay the outstanding line rental for January and February on 23rd of February, and then remainder of the line rental the following month, and the other £1916.85, is being held in dispute, whilst the issue is being investigated. As, according to Ms ____, this issue has already been investigated 4 times already, I don't hold out any hope of the outcome being any different from the previous investigations. This is still not acceptable; the only reason Miss **** has decided to terminate her contract with your company, is the appalling level of service she has received, and the huge amount of completely unnecessary stress that she has been put through by your staff's failure to resolve this issue. We request that any outstanding balance is written off, as Miss **** has received two weeks service on her datacard, and four weeks of worry ,which we are holding Vodafone UK, entirely responsible for. Miss **** was also made to hand over a deposit of £100 when she took out the contract at your store, we request that this is returned to her as soon as possible.

Any further calls we make to Vodafone will be recorded.


We need to resolve this issue as a matter of urgency, and unless a favourable outcome has been reached within a week, we will have no other option but to contact OFcom and BBC Watchdog.

Thank you for taking the time to read this email, it is much appreciated.

Yours sincerely

ME!!!!

Well, tonight, very much to our suprise, my friend received a call, advising that all of the outstanding balance has been deleted, and she owes Vodafone £0.00!!!!

I am so happy that someone actually listened. It gives me faith in the human race again.