Vodafone HELP!

Rc1991

Tried searching and couldn't seem to find anything similar, rather than explaining it here is my email iv sent to vodafone CEO:



Hi,
I am writing to you as a last resort and would like to inform you I am taking legal advice from a solicitor.
I have been a Vodafone customer for a number of years and just over 2 years ago I added a line onto my contract for a friend, to cut a long story short the contract was up for renewal in march 2012 and to be honest I was quite looking forward to this as my friend had been defaulting on paying her bills previously and I was happy in the knowledge I would no longer have her as a line on my contract come march.
However, it came to my attention in late march that my friend (who I was barely in contact with at this stage) and had become more of an acquaintance with, had managed to upgrade her phone handset and in turn sign up to another 24month contract, under my name, without my knowledge.
It is my understanding that I accepted the terms and conditions of the original contract (24 months) however I am certain I was not consulted regarding extending the contract.

As the account holder it is my decision as to contracts on my account and ultimately I believe this is fraud,as my friend was able to obtain a contract in my name which I would not have agreed to.
I attempted to transfer ownership to my friend of the contract however was told this was not possible until the outstanding balance had been paid off, she is unwilling to pay off any of the remaining balance and I am also aware she no longer uses the handset or contract and does not intend to pay the remaining months line rental on it. Which obviously leaves me in a difficult situation with marks on my credit history.
After lengthy conversations with various Vodafone service personnel
!I feel I have hit a brick wall, I have endured months of poor service and lack of communication from Vodafone. I am writing to advise you that I do not intend to pay the balance nor the line rental of the phone as i never received any documentation or verbal discussion of taking out the contract.

After talking to Vodafone personnel many have noted that the account was in arrears at the time of upgrade and "they did not even know how the upgrade would have been accepted".
The matter was passed onto your internal fraud team and my next step is to report a fraud case to my local police along with complaining to the financial ombudsman.!
I hope this matter can be resolved before legal action is required as this is both lengthy and costly for all involved,
I hope to hear from you soon after you have looked into my situation.


if something similar has happened to anyone else or you have any advice please help! The outstanding balance is in excess of £300 as it stands, I'm at my wits end
Thanks

grumbler

Well, I think if your friend had the phone and all the paperwork it was very easy to impersonate you. If you didn't take any measures to protect the access to the account, I don't see how you can blame Vodafone. If so, the only way to go is to report your friend to police for the ID fraud and to sue her.

Rc1991

Thanks for your reply, considering my friend could not even speak to vodafone about the account without them ringing me first for my permission ( if she wanted to discuss direct debits etc) I always felt security on the account was ample and vodafone were hot on fraud prevention.
Think your right and next step is report it to police

grumbler

Rc1991 wrote: »

...my friend could not even speak to vodafone about the account without them ringing me first for my permission ...

How were Vodafone supposed to ring you if you gave your sim to the friend and the friend was likely to be saying that she were you?

Rc1991

They would put her on hold and ring me to check it was ok to discuss the account, whilst keeping her on the other line.
If you mean how were they meant to ring me whilst she was pretending to be me? Then obviously that question answers itself

grumbler

That's why I can't blame Vodafone. They are not supposed to know whom you give your sim cards to and which number is the exclusive one for contacting you. I am pretty sure that you had a possibility to set a password for the account and to keep it secret from your friend. If you failed to do this your friend could have done this instead.
If you did have the password unknown to your friend, then it's Vodafone's fault.

Guys_Dad

Nearly with you there, Grumbler, but if the Sales team applied as much checking as the CS Technical team, then they would have needed address, post code, date of birth and , certainly in my case, 2 of my 4-digit numbers.

But hang on - that's the same number I use for my Voice Mail, and many of my friends know my address, post code and even some know my date of birth!

Friend has clearly acted illegally, but Vodafone are not able to prove a contract was made with you for the upgrade, so, theoretically, they are in error. However, they are still in a position to damage you by recording any non-payments on that account.

If you are male, then clearly a female voice agreeing the contract upgrade is a bit fishy!

Regrettably, verbal upgrades are very prone to impersonation.

gjchester

Rc1991 wrote: »

I have been a Vodafone customer for a number of years and just over 2 years ago I added a line onto my contract for a friend,

Unfortunatly as you did the adding you are responsible. I would see possibly a civil case against your friend for the costs, if you can prove that you agreed they would pay the bill but can't see how you can blame Vodafone for that. The agreement is not of Vodafones concern.

If they impersonated you there may be a fraud case, but again they had you permission to start with, so how would Vodafone know if it had been withdrawn.

Before if gets any more you need to get the phone and sim card back, if you can't at the very least phone vodafone and get the SIM blocked and a new one issued, at least that way there can be no more phone bills run up out of the bundle. You may also want to chagne the password and get the account setup so only you can make changes to stop the calling back and getting a new sim.

Rc1991

Unfortunately the password on my account was my date of birth (not very hard to guess considering we used to live together!) perhaps I acted naively. I had convinced myself it was cut and dry that I didn't agree to the contract ,if only I could prove it?!I cancelled the sim sometime ago and I believe she's now sold the phone and has taken out a contract elsewhere so no hope of recouping money there.

timberflake

I would say the police is the way to go. You could argue that Voda didn't do all they could, but then again neither did you.

If you're the account holder and your "friend" rang up pretending to be you in order to obtain an upgrade that's fraud and she can be prosecuted for it.

You could tell her your intentions and give her the option to pay off the contract in full, otherwise proceed with the police.

Vodafone

Hi Rc1991,

I can certainly appreciate this is a difficult situation to be in.

If she didn't have access via her own password or PIN and agreed to the upgrade by answering all your DPA (Data Protection Act) questions correctly, we would have no reason to think it wasn't you.

I would like to take a look into this in more detail. If you could drop me an email via the address here with WRT135 FAO Heidi in the subject, I will get in touch.

Could you also include a link to your post and a contact number so I can call you?

Many thanks,

Heidi
Web Relations Team
Vodafone UK