Vodafone & Zinc problems

Louikins

Hello, I was wondering if anyone could help me out here as I am in bit of a pickle.

Before all this, I was in debt with Vodafone at one occasion (forgot to pay off the rest of my bills before cancellation) they did send me a letter themselves about this and this was sorted with Fredrickson and was paid off pretty quickly. I went into my local store to pay this off and the manager there said I had NOTHING ELSE TO PAY AFTER THAT PAYMENT!

For MONTHS I have been chased by Zinc who claim to be a debt recovery company. They're asking me for about £80 for a bill that I haven't paid to Vodafone.

1,- I wasn't even aware that I had a remaining amount with Vodafone as they haven't sent me a bill themselves showing this.

2.- I struggled to contact vodafone in the first few instances as my account with them has been closed (assuming that I have paid the remaining amount within the contract before closing) I had to go into the store and even they struggled to understand the concept of this. I spent at least an hour trying to get through to Vodafone's customer service lines in the store.

3.- I have been inside the store the first time when I received an email from Zinc. A colleague said that they have never heard of Zinc ad they only seem to deal with Fredrickson for outstanding debts. I also went to CAB with the same email and they told me to ignore this.

4.- The emails, letters and calls to my house phone kept raining in. I decided to walk into a different Vodafone store (Birmingham) to see if they can figure it out. I spoke to the Manager there and he went through my account. He said to me that I do actually have an outstanding bill of about £71 or something in the account but it's not being held by a debt collection agency, so he sent this off as a complaint and I was supposed to hear from Vodafone in 5 working days as he escalated this as an urgent problem,

5.- I gave them at least 2 weeks to get back to me and they haven't. Not a single thing from them. I sent them a lengthy email of complaint explaining the situation and I was supposed to hear from them within 8 weeks. I gave them over 8 weeks to get back to me but I got nothing.

6.- Finally I went to my local vodafone store again and spoke to the assistant manager about whats going on. He then got hold of the vodafone customer services line for me so I could speak to them (this proved to be difficult for them to do unless you were a vodafone customer with an active number). I was constantly on hold with the person I was speaking to. They are aware that I have a outstanding bill and I even explained that I never had a single bill from them about this. The lady on the line then told me that "I was aware of this bill before the contract ended". I was not at all aware of this and I thought that was astonishingly rude otherwise I would've paid this if I was given an itemized bill by Vodafone themselves!!!!



So yeah I'm a bit baffled with this and I have no idea what to do. I feel like I really shouldn't be paying these people as I haven't been given a itemized bill first. I was told by the CAB that going straight to a debt collection company instead of sending a bill first was illegal.


Please help!

sourcrates

Hi,
I appreciate that you want to get this sorted out, and I think you have gone above and beyond the call of duty.

What I would do is just send the DCA a copy of the provit letter, available from the stickies at the top of this forum.

It's up to them to prove you owe this, not up to you to prove you don't, let them do all the legwork instead of you.

Vodafone

Hi Louikins,

So we can get this looked into for you, please email us via the Contact us form here.

To access the form you'll need to enter the code WRT135.

As well as stating your query in the question box, please also quote "MSE Forum".

Once sent, you'll receive an automated reply with a reference number. Post it on here and we'll check we've received it.

Thanks,

Sarah

Social Media Operations

Vodafone UK

Louikins

Vodafone wrote: »

Hi Louikins,

So we can get this looked into for you, please email us via the Contact us form

To access the form you'll need to enter the code WRT135.

As well as stating your query in the question box, please also quote "MSE Forum".

Once sent, you'll receive an automated reply with a reference number. Post it on here and we'll check we've received it.

Thanks,

Sarah

Social Media Operations

Vodafone UK

Thanks Sarah, I have submitted the form and the reference number is WRT135 [#13993779]‏

Louikins

sourcrates wrote: »

Hi,
I appreciate that you want to get this sorted out, and I think you have gone above and beyond the call of duty.

What I would do is just send the DCA a copy of the provit letter, available from the stickies at the top of this forum.

It's up to them to prove you owe this, not up to you to prove you don't, let them do all the legwork instead of you.

Thank you for your advice, sourcrates. I really appreciate this. I'm pretty confident that I'm in the right and I haven't lost my patience just yet (even though this has been going on for almost a year now).

I shall email them a copy of the prove-it letter but I feel that they could ignore this and continue to irritate me.

Louikins

Just an update! The debt has been cleared with Vodafone with an email to prove this. I still get a call from Zonc the next day asking for me (my mother answered the phone as I wasn't in at the time) and my mother said that they need to speak to Vodafone as its been wiped.

Why are they continuing to harass me for money I don't even owe anymore?