Vodafone - I'm fuming!

kingshir

I know no one can help with this but I need to let off steam.
My son is a serving soldier in Northern Ireland and uses his mobile to keep in touch with friends and family. He has just had a £500 bill!! :eek: Apparently, because his camp (which he is not allowed to leave btw) is very close to the border and he has unwittingly been using the Southern Ireland Vodefone network and is being charged international rates for calls/text made and received. He can prove he hasn't been in Southern Ireland but Vodafone seem to hold all the aces! If he was rolling in money or had used the phone excessively it wouldn't be so bad, but he isn't and hasn't!
Thanks for listening. :wall:

s30jok

tell him to contact vodafone and mention being in the armed forces, vodafone do an on off discount and sometimes give discounts to the Armed forces they did for me a couple of years ago if not threaten that you are paying under duress and would like to speak to their cancellation department, they will soon lop £££'s of the bill, they dont want to lose customers especially us well travelled people in the armed forces!!

hope this helps you out

carly

I cant help in any way , but i am sorry to of your son's predicament.
i saw an item on Watchdog BBc1 on the same topic last year, and I was appalled then.
Perhaps a letter to the MD of vodafone might help, asking them to make a one off exception to knock something off the bill. After all your son isnt in NI just for fun.

andy88_2

For the future, it is possible to set the Network Selection to Automatic or Manual. Select Manual, do a Network Search and register with Vodafone UK, then check again that it is on Manual; the coverage may be a bit weaker (which is why it switched), but as long as it doesn't go to Auto, should be ok in future. I'm sorry that this doesn't help your annoyance at the moment though.

andy88_2

I've just been looking at the Vodafone site. On this page http://www.vodafone.co.uk/cgi-bin/COUK/portal/ep/browse.do?channelPath=%2FVodafone+Portal%2FGet+more+from+your+mobile%2FGoing+abroad%2FVodafone+World
it has links to call rates when roaming in different countries (below the countries list, near the bottom). There is an option called International Call Saver, which would have reduced the cost of calls in Ireland from 60p per minute to 40p per minute - still much higher than the UK rate (I'm guessing he has an off-peak tariff and uses a lot of minutes).

In your/his position, I'd be attempting to suggest that if the problem had been anticipated, at the very least he would have enrolled for this option, which costs £2.50 per month. So I'd be asking them to retrospectively allow the bill to be recalculated as if this were the case - should be worth a third off if it works, but even then I'd hope there was scope to get a further reduction.

I noticed that Vodafone Ireland introduced a new Eurocall roaming tariff which would cost 36 cents (~25p) for calls in NI, so it's paradoxical that if he had a Vodafone Ireland phone (probably not possible for a UK national) the calls would have been cheaper still.

Has he only recently been posted there, or has he used the phone quite a bit and it only just roamed on to the Irish network? If the UK network is much weaker, it might be worth getting an Irish payg SIM, and you phoning him - still 15p a minute though with a cheap calls provider - a lot worse than hundreds of cheap off-peak minutes.

kingshir

He was posted there in the middle of March this year - first time he's been posted out of the UK.

Thanks to everyone who's given me advice. I much appreciate it.

Turning_into_scrooge

Its actually very difficult if at all to get a pay as you go for Ireland, from what i can remember they only have 2 networks poss 3 now. But i would kick up one hell of a fuss over this, these lads out ther get the worst of it especially if they are in what is know as bandit country.

IvanOpinion

I live in Northern Ireland and am aware of this problem (and have fallen foul to it - can certainly eat up your credit on a PAYG). Try posting a request for help on the Northern Ireland board on this site - someone might be able to offer you advice.

Ivan