Vodaphone Cancellation Fees

grumbler

Guys_Dad wrote: »

The last point in crucial as, if it was theft, then Voda should have a reasonable time to replace the stolen wiring. The court would need to determine just how long is reasonable.

As far as I remember there are some time limits set by Ofcom.

horseist

Thanks very much to all for responding.
The £190 was an addition to the bill, not a deduction, if at any time Vodaphone had been willing to make some kind of reasonable compromise I would have considered it carefully to avoid further hassle.
I freely acknowledged and always have,that no provider could give 100% coverage, I understand the practicalities providers face in realistic terms.
My decision to end the contract was based on
1/ My inability to secure any sort of meaningful response from customer Support or Services at all including replies to recorded delivery letters giving fair notice of my intentions. I have kept all the documentation of course.Surely once given notice by recorded means, failure to respond on their part was accepotance of my intentions? If they couldn't , or more likely as a company tactic I suspect wouldn't Iwas entitled to move on without lett or hindrance? This is something other than 'poor customer service' as the toothless Ombudsman put it.
2/ My unwillingness to continue to pay for a service that was no longer reliable enough (within the 100% coverage practicalities) to be reasonable and without being given any hope by the provider that it would change . I think the legal term is 'Frustration of Contract' . Consumer Direct have been very supportive, their advice based on similar complaints they have received is that the 'contract' whatever Vodaphone say is subject to the 'sale of goods act'.
3/ When V offered me the Sure Signal option free of charge (£50) for which you need a broadband connection we don't have ( and I explained its difficult to have a broadband connection on horseback) they accepted there was a problem, but said they could not escalate my issue as there was 'no mast down' WHAT! should I then have to go and saw a mast down to get my case escalated?
4/ V only started claiming that there was never a problem in the first place once they wanted to wash their hands of me and pass it to debt collectors. These are the ethics and tactics of a disreputable used car deal, not a multinational market leader, I just wish their CEO would read this.In essence they were calling a customer of over 15 years a liar at this point, that really is something I cannot accept.

5/ To test alternatives at the site I did buy a cheap O2 PAYG to check it would work, it did seamlessly. I did not want to follow the divertion route,as I took the lack of response to MY termination of contract notices as acceptance of the status quo, which I think was a perfectly reasonable conclusion. Also we needed 3 phones , why on earth should I carry on paying Vodaphone? I paid all bills, without any compensation, offered to return the handsets as part of the settlement but simply refused to pay the cancellation fee. Remember, not once was I given any hope that the service could improve or return to the normal service we had become accustomed too, clearly if I had that could well have influenced the decision I made.
Also once they did go into action to recover their'fee' they offered not one penny off by way of compromise, the jacked the bill UP.

I shall take your advice, we are going to contact all the people locally we can to see if we can who we believe may have been similarly affected. To facillitate this I'm going to see if I can get help from the local newspaper.One of us is a local z list celeb, it was she who fell from a horse and could not get a signal when she needed help

Again thanks to all

horseist

gjchester wrote: »

Heidi has to follow the rules

Aside from the lack of responses, the rules Heidi has to follow are imoveable,that is why it was a waste of time. their 'rules' are set in stone. Even BT of all companies has a more flexible approach to situations like this, I thought they were about the worst but V makes them look really good






What rights are you trying to defend?.

To terminate a contract that has ceased to provide a service that I have been able and have become accustomed to when after fair warning the provider is unable to offer any hope whatsoever of a return to that service .At no point did they say if that I could wait x amount of time ,what has been normal service could be restored.Had that been the case I would have taken other steps whilst I waited...I am not nor have ever been a provider hopper I have only ever been with vodaphone , my first phone from them was in a huge shoulder bag:)

horseist

Guys_Dad wrote: »

It seems to me that your problem is independent proof of the deterioration of service.

You say that others in your vicinity suffered similar problems. Could you not get 3 or 4 independent customers to back you up with any written statements? Has Vodafone rectified the problem now, do you know? If so, what did they do?

You made a mistake in going to O2 with an unresolved situation. Perhaps getting an O2 sim on PAYG and a diversion message on your Voda ansewrphone might have helped a bit until the situation was resolved.

But, being where you are now, if you decide to take it further, then, as I said, you will need some witnesses that are independent to show failure of contract and Vodafone will need to be pressed on what, exactly, cause the outage, what they did to fix it and how long they took.

The last point in crucial as, if it was theft, then Voda should have a reasonable time to replace the stolen wiring. The court would need to determine just how long is reasonable.

They are not admitting the wire theft rumour, if they had I would have waited for them to replace it like any other reasonable person.They have gone from admitting a problem to saying to the Ombudsman that there has never been a problem..the signal in that area is excellent....but in conversation apparently they do understand my frustration ?:mad:

gjchester

horseist wrote: »

To terminate a contract that has ceased to provide a service that I have been able and have become accustomed to when after fair warning the provider is unable to offer any hope whatsoever of a return to that service

First please take care with your quotes, you've made Your answer look like mine.

The problem is your issue us permissble within the T&C. Yes it's frustrating, but you decided to terminate the contract.

I fully agree Vodafone should have handled it better, but that doesn't change the fact breaks in mobile service while they are are frustrating and annoying they are permissable within the T&C , specifically

3 Services and coverage
a We will try to give you the services when you want them. However, due to the nature of mobile technology, it’s impossible to provide a fault-free service.

You'd most likely need to show Vodafone were negligent in not repairing the service to stand much chance. And starting with a rumour of a wire theft probably is not the most solid start

Regardless of the reason of the fault you have to give Vodafone a reasonabe time to repair the mast but there are no guidelines what is reasonable. There could be other issues such as access rights, need to isolate power supplies to a larger area, lack of available people or hardware that complicate the matter. Most companies will not give a definate time to fix, there are too many variables, and it's possible there were knock on effect, If as you suggest it was down to a cable theft then it possible that after it was replaced the engineer found something else was damaged by the theft and that that wasn't known until the cable was back so more parts were needed.

grumbler

gjchester wrote: »

..there are no guidelines what is reasonable....

As I said above, I am pretty sure there are guidelines. I cannot be arsed to search, but I think it was something like 4-6 weeks max.

horseist

By way of an update, earlier advice on here was right... despite the fact that I am disputing the cancellation fees with vigour ,my otherwise good credit rating has been trashed by Vodaphone and its collectors despite the fact that I am yet to have my day in court.If I had not been responsive to their claim I could understand it, but I've been the opposite, unlike Vodaphone. A cautionary tale, I wouldn't deal with this company again if they offered to pay ME.

gjchester

horseist wrote: »

By way of an update, earlier advice on here was right... despite the fact that I am disputing the cancellation fees with vigour ,my otherwise good credit rating has been trashed by Vodaphone and its collectors despite the fact that I am yet to have my day in court.If I had not been responsive to their claim I could understand it, but I've been the opposite, unlike Vodaphone. A cautionary tale, I wouldn't deal with this company again if they offered to pay ME.

You unilaterally cancelled the contract without Vodafones agreement to drop any fee's, and in almost all cases of cancellation (regardless of the reason) you need to give 30 days notice or pay in leiu of notice. As you chose to cancel Vodafone have invoiced you a cancellation charge which you have not yet paid, as such they have passed the debt on.

This isn't meant to be specifically about you but many people will say they will take Vodafone to court but never do so, you can understand the coprprate line they will persue all debts (and remember yours is currently a valid debt) until a court rules otherwise. They would be foolish to not attempt to collect just on the threat of a court case.

When you go to court you assuming you win you can request the errors to be corrected but until you do win the debt is valid.

Sorry this is probably not what you would want to hear.

horseist

gjchester wrote: »

You unilaterally cancelled the contract without Vodafones agreement to drop any fee's, and in almost all cases of cancellation (regardless of the reason) you need to give 30 days notice or pay in leiu of notice. As you chose to cancel Vodafone have invoiced you a cancellation charge which you have not yet paid, as such they have passed the debt on.

This isn't meant to be specifically about you but many people will say they will take Vodafone to court but never do so, you can understand the coprprate line they will persue all debts (and remember yours is currently a valid debt) until a court rules otherwise. They would be foolish to not attempt to collect just on the threat of a court case.

When you go to court you assuming you win you can request the errors to be corrected but until you do win the debt is valid.

Sorry this is probably not what you would want to hear.

Thanks, but I did give them notice twice by recorded delivery, on the second occasion I warned them that if they failed to reply to the second letter, as they failed to the first, I would proceed with my plans without further notice...they failed to reply to the second letter...in that letter I emphasised that I was paying all the usual charges up to date, which I did.

gjchester

horseist wrote: »

Thanks, but I did give them notice twice by recorded delivery, on the second occasion I warned them that if they failed to reply to the second letter, as they failed to the first, I would proceed with my plans without further notice...they failed to reply to the second letter...in that letter I emphasised that I was paying all the usual charges up to date, which I did.

What did you give notice of? Details of the problems asking for a solution, or a definate notice to cancel. Remember your contract was in palce already, you can't unilaterally change the cancellation notice from 30 days to 7 without both parties approval, and the cancellaiotn charge would then apply.

Hopefully you have all the recorded post and copies of the letters details to help show your case.