Vodafone - Stealing Money

Neil_Jones

Unity said:

My husband is disabled and only has a Vodafone PAYG mobile for emergencies and yesterday was just such a day. I am also disabled with a Vodafone (pay monthly) mobile and when I tried to phone him his number came up as unknown on the network!. This caused us untold problems which I won't bore you with here.

Back home he tried to call my phone only to find he had no connection so we used my phone to get through to what is laughingly known as 'Customer Services'. It transpired that because he hadn't used his phone for a while his connection had been deleted, without any notice by way of text or email and regardless of the fact that it had a thirty quid credit on the line. This is £30 that he was told he will not get back! Is this even Legal? 

Then of course I got the simpering text from Vodafone - "How did we do?" So I told them that not only would I be posting on the moneysavingexpert.com forum and letting all my friends on Facebook know but also, although I'd been a customer for many years, when my contract is up in December they can forget it if they think I am renewing with them! Any recommendations for reputable companies (not vagabonds or thieves ) who offer unlimited minutes and texts with at least 3gb data, thanks in advance.

PAYG does not have a "contract" with you as such, the only real agreement as such is you agree to make a chargeable action (call, text, data) at least once every 180 days and if you don't, your service may (almost certainly will) be disconnected.  If you don't use the credit you lose it.  The number will be recycled at some point in the future.  The whole "wasn't in force when I bought it thing" probably wouldn't wash, as the T&Cs would have said something like "we can revise these at any time with no notice to you and its your responsibility to check they've changed".  They should have contacted if they were doing a material change that wasn't in your favour, but realistically PAYG is a loss leader for most mobile phone companies.

PAYG you don't have to provide any details to get going with it, you could just buy a phone from Amazon and a Sim from anywhere, fire it up, load it with credit and off you go.  No credit checks, don't even need to tell the network who you are, and you could just buy top-up vouchers from Tesco.  These days you can use the app and a registered card so they'll have more idea of who you are from the card you're using.

Unfortunately one of the side effects of PAYG is if you don't use it, you lose it.  Applies to credit as well.  Moral of the story is don't keep a fortune on a PAYG tariff.  My now late grandmother lost about £20 on a PAYG tariff that she hadn't used for a long while for reasons I won't go into, so the phone number was disconnected and all the credit lost.  It was eventually recycled and allocated to somebody else, but as I never removed the number from my contact list, it now looks as if my late relative has access to Whatsapp from beyond the grave...

Abbafan1972

This has been the rules for years.  You have to send a text or make a call every so often to keep your account active. 

AlfieWilko1950

Over the early years of mobiles I was , at one time or another , with every network , including Vodafone , and this has always been the case.
Many people may say its not fair but its in the terms and conditions so there's no point making an issue about it because you havent bothered to check the terms and conditions...Nothing has changed .