Vodafone Verbal Contract

swallace78

My wife was cold called after cancelling her Vodafone contract. They talked her into a new one. There is no paperwork, no email confirmation and no text confirmation of the new contract. According to Vodafone the only 'contract' is the verbal one made in the cold call.

They will not send me a copy of the call without a Data Protection request costing £10. Can this be legal? A contract can be set up verbally only and the contracted person is not allowed to have a copy of it?

To add insult to injury the contract cost is higher than was agreed on the phone.

To add further insult, the data protection request form states that phone calls are not held permanently, 'they are generally kept between 3 and 60 days, it may not be possible to locate the call requested. As the request might take 40 days to be dealt with I fully expect the call to have been deleted by the time the request is dealt with, leaving my wife stuck in a contract for 28 months for which there is actual contract.

Anyone know anything about contract law?

Can they really do this?

Surely it isn't legal?

Thank you

grumbler

When was it? What about the DSR 7 working days cooling off period?

Cycrow

first of all, was it actually vodafone that contacted her, or was it a third party on behalf of vodafone ?

the current contract you had, did you get it directly from vodafone or via a 3rd party like phones4u?

As far as the price goes, its possible that she was given a discount to the tarrif.
vodafone dont change the price of tarrifs, instead they apply discounts to you bill.
If thats the case, it'll show you actual cost of the tarrif, not what you will be paying.

however, usually you will get sent an email confirming the new contract and it will display the cost and any discounts applied to it.
I assume the contract included a new phone, and if so, has it arrived?

swallace78

It was the Vodafone cancellation team who called her.
The offered price on the phone was lower than the one that she ended up with, however I can't prove that as they won't release the call.
The phone arrived and has been used, they will take it back and in doing so will revive the old contract 'the closest one to it'. It could be worse as we can still escape but how are they allowed to operate like this?!

Vodafone

Hi swallace78,

Thanks for making us aware of this.

If your wife would like us to get this looked into further could you ask her to email me with her details via the link in our profile here?

All she'll need to do is copy and paste the link into her web browser and it'll take her to the Contact us form on our website. To ensure that it reaches us she'll also need quote the code WRT135 - MSE in the subject line.

Once sent she'll receive automated reply with a reference number. Could you update the thread with this and we'll get back to her as soon as possible?

Kind regards,

Lee

Web Relations

Vodafone UK

macman

A verbal contract has exactly the same validity as any other from of contract. The reason they are better written down is, as you've discovered, because in the absence of a written version it's your word against theirs.

swallace78

Thank you Lee, I have submitted the email.

Cycrow

swallace78 wrote: »

It was the Vodafone cancellation team who called her.
The offered price on the phone was lower than the one that she ended up with, however I can't prove that as they won't release the call.

as i said, this could be down to a discount that has been added to the account. The discount will not show up in your tarrif and will only show when you get your bill.
But Vodafone should be able to confirm if this is the case or not.

But you have 7 working days from when you got the phone to return it if you're not happy

swallace78

Ref: Re: WRT135 - MSE [#11516145]
I'm more than happy to talk the situation over.

VodafoneInsider

Your online account \ Confirmation Letter shows the Tariff before discount. Discount only show up on the actual bill.

Customer Service can check your account to see if a discount has been applied

If in dispute ask the call to be listened. If the agent truely processed the order without adding a discount, Vodafone will honour the deal and he'll be disciplined.

Vodafone

Hi swallace78,

Thanks for your time on the phone last week.

If there's anything else you need help with please let me know.

Kind regards,

Lee

Web Relations

Vodafone UK