Going through hell with £2000 vodafone bill

dcems

Afternoon

Ive been a vodafone customer for many years and never had a problem until now.
I have 3 lines. 1 is not used and contract runs out in October. The other is my phone and the 3rd line is my daughters.

I got my usual email this week saying my bill was due. Over £2000. I thought it was a misprint. When logging online i could see internet usage charge at £1700 plus £345 Vat. Could not understand so called 191 and spoke to very helpful guy who said someone would call me back in 48 hours.

Of course no one called me back.

So i rang vodafone again and was told that the charges were valid, that 6 text messages were sent to the phone advising of charges.

Ive checked my daughters mobile and cant see any messages. I also checked her data usage.

No neotigations, no customer care, no interest whatsoever other than expecting £2000.

Why dont vodafone cap bills? My bills are no more tham £150 pcm at most.

I refuse to believe these charges are accurate. I cant sleep with the stress of this hanging over me as i dont have this kind of money.

Ive taken the phone off my dsughter and she wont be getting a new one. But i need my mobile.

I lost it on the phone with vodafone and dont want to talk to them again.But what can i do?? :sad:

JJ_Egan

You can prove that this data was not used .

macman

Vodafone don't offer capped contracts-the only providers who do are Tesco Mobile and Three-but presumably you were already aware that your daughter was using your phone on an uncapped contract. when you gave it to her. Have you checked the phone logs to see if the data usage billed is valid? If it is, you have no get out other than an appeal to Voda. Shouting at them is unlikely to produce a reduction in the billing.
Is it not likely that your daughter deleted the texts when received? Even if they weren't received, that does not invalidate the billing, as it's the contract holder's responsibility to monitor their usage, not Voda's.
Unfortunately, giving an uncapped contract phone to a teenager is like handing them your credit card and PIN, as numerous threads on here demonstrate.
Are these 3 phones all under one contract?

d123

dcems wrote: »

I refuse to believe these charges are accurate. I cant sleep with the stress of this hanging over me as i dont have this kind of money.

Ive taken the phone off my dsughter and she wont be getting a new one. But i need my mobile.

I lost it on the phone with vodafone and dont want to talk to them again.But what can i do?? :sad:

You refuse to believe the charges are accurate but you've already blamed your daughter by taking her phone away and saying she won't get another one?

It sounds like you suspect otherwise...

Make contact with the Vodafone forum rep, plenty of links in the Vodafone complaints thread, you can probably negotiate the amount owed down if you are civil, friendly and accept some responsibility.

mobilejunkie

Anyone normally paying £150 a month must already be excceding their allowances?

It's a familiar tale on here - even the wording is the same. So are the responses. Mine is also the same; give someone (usually a child) a blank cheque-book and complain about the bank when the person blindly uses it. The only difference is that cheques can bounce; out of bundle use just produces a large bill on credit.

NFH

Why isn't your daughter on prepaid, for example giffgaff? £150/month is absurd, even for 3 lines. I pay no more than £12/month.

How much data does the data counter in your daughter's phone say was used? How does she track her consumption?

dcems

Well its £40pcm for 3 lines each and then you have vat and insurance on top.
However i havent posted to have to justify what i normally pay. This was the deal offered by vodafone at the time for unlimited calls etc.

We all make mistakes in life and ive certainly learnt from this. But shes had the phone for 12 months with no issues ever.
Its not like we went abroad and made loads of call or didnt turn off data roaming. This is simply 4 weeks of internet usage in which she did not receive any notifications.

Its all very well blaming me or her but ultimately these companies should be warning customers when they can clearly see something isnt right. Credit card companies do so why not mobile providers?

How many of you have £2000 in your bank ready to pay a mobile bill?

tomtontom

You seem to be admitting that she probably did run up this bill?

d123

dcems wrote: »

Its all very well blaming me or her but ultimately these companies should be warning customers when they can clearly see something isnt right. Credit card companies do so why not mobile providers?

Because they expect their clients to understand the open ended contract they have signed up to, and expect that the account is used by adults who will be responsible in how they use it.

As a matter of interest, what was the data allowance on the sims?

How many of you have £2000 in your bank ready to pay a mobile bill?

That's why I said to make contact with the forum Vodafone rep, he might be able to arrange some form of discount or payment plan. if anyone at Vodafone can help, it's their Forums team.

woody2234

Could it be a free game with " in app purchase " thing also if you went pay as you go you can get Unlimited UK texts and Unlimited UK minutes and 6 GB UK data on 4G and Choose 30 days of Now TV or Spotify or Sky Sports when you buy a " £40 Big Value Bundle"

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/shop/bundles-and-sims/pay-as-you-go-plans/index.htm

Also the sim you dont use , did you cut the sim up so other people cannot use it.

NFH

d123 wrote: »

That's why I said to make contact with the forum Vodafone rep, he might be able to arrange some form of discount or payment plan. if anyone at Vodafone can help, it's their Forums team.

Good advice. The OP should ask Vodafone to recalculate the bill as if their most favourable bundle or allowance had been bought. I think networks should be forced to calculate every bill automatically in this way. It would put an end to the nonsense of having to predict in advance exactly how much you will use.