Friend's Vodafone Mobile Broadband fiasco

moneysaving_convert

I have a very worried and scared friend: she took out a Vodafone mobile broadband contract via PC World. They told her it was a 24 month contract. She asked if it ended after 24 months and they said yes. She asked what would happen if they wanted to use it after the 24 months and they told her she could just top it up with a debit card (surely this has to be wrong?)

Move on 24 months. My friend believes the contract is over and cancels the payment f rom her bank and believes that the dongle no longer works. No more paper bills arrive in the post.

7 months later she discovers that her bank ignored her request to cancel the direct debit and has continued to pay the monthly charge. Recognising they are at fault the bank reclaimed the money from Vodafone and reimbursed her plus the cancellation charge and a small amount in compensation. Realising there was still a problem with Vodafone my friend contacts them and they say that the contract was never cancelled. When she asks why she never received any more bills they tell her that they moved her on to paperless billing. She could not have been informed of this because they do not have an email address on file for her. She never gave her consent to move to paperless billing. Anyway, at this point she officially ends the contract.

Last week she receives a letter and many texts from FPC - a debt collection company saying she owes them 7 months charges, plus cancellation charge and extra charge and not to contact Vodafone but them. She keeps getting texts too and is really getting frightened.

The three problems here are:
1. She was missold the 24 month contract in the first place, as it did NOT end after 24 months.
2. the bank's mistake made the problem worse because if they had cancelled the direct debit as instructed, the mistake in not cancelling the contract would have come to light within a matter of days and not 7 months later.
3. my friend had no way of tracking the account because they stopped sending her a bill but didn't inform her of the change and she presumed (again) that they had stopped because the 24 month contract was completed.

Does anyone have any advice to help here? She doesn't know where to turn. I want to help, but don't know how!

chanz4

It would of stated in the terms about termination, pc world are a hyper market. the network didn't missell

buscape

moneysaving_convert wrote: »

I have a very worried and scared friend: she took out a Vodafone mobile broadband contract via PC World. They told her it was a 24 month contract. She asked if it ended after 24 months and they said yes. She asked what would happen if they wanted to use it after the 24 months and they told her she could just top it up with a debit card (surely this has to be wrong?)

That is wrong, they should have told her it would continue as a 1 month rolling contract until cancelled. It is possible the person selling the dongle thought the contract would revert to pay as you go once the 24 months were over. Wrong, but very different to mis-selling.

7 months later she discovers that her bank ignored her request to cancel the direct debit and has continued to pay the monthly charge. Recognising they are at fault the bank reclaimed the money from Vodafone and reimbursed her plus the cancellation charge and a small amount in compensation.

Last week she receives a letter and many texts from FPC - a debt collection company saying she owes them 7 months charges, plus cancellation charge and extra charge and not to contact Vodafone but them. She keeps getting texts too and is really getting frightened.

Has she got any letters from Vodafone stating that the contract had ended?

Are you sure the bank actually claimed the money back from Vodafone and didn't refund the money under the Direct Debit Guarantee?

flashg67

Most 24 month contracts (going off my currrent ones) roll over to a monthly contract after the initial term, with a 30 day notice period, so they don't self cancel - to be fair, this will be in the terms & conditions buried somewhere. She could/should have rung Vodafone to be sure rather than just cancel the DD.

She could have tracked the payments if she had been more vigilant on her bank account - may sound harsh, but it's her account and her responsibility to check who is taking what from it.

Shes's had the money back from the bank so she should use this to pay the debt if possible?

I don't see an easy way out of this unless I'm wrong about the T&Cs. A slim chance may be the fact that she was put on paperless billing without being told (again unless this is in the T&Cs).

moneysaving_convert

Thanks for your opinions on this. I was thinking much along the same lines that everything was in the T&C's somewhere. I do feel sorry though for people who are not savvy in dealing with the twists and turns of the mobile phone companies. Nothing is black and white and they are extremely unhelpful.

Vodafone

Hi moneysaving convert,

Thanks for making me aware of your friends concerns.

To enable me to get this looked into could you ask them to email me with their details via the Contact us form on our website? To get to this there's a link in the Biography section of our profile page here which they'll need to copy and paste into their web browser and when sending the email please they'll need to state the code WRT135 - MSE Fao Lee in the subject line.

To ensure that their email reaches us could you update the thread with their email reference number once our automated reply has arrived?

Thanks,

Lee

Web Relations Team

Vodafone UK