Discuss the Vodafone Warning guide

Interestingly enough, after reading this, I tried to log in to the Vodafone site to check my bill, but it is now "Sorry, we're making a few tweaks. We'll be back soon.". Let's see what happens next.....

I made the mistake of upgrading one of my family's four Vodafones at the beginning of February, since when my account has been in chaos.

The April 6th 2016 edition of the Daily Mail carried an article by Alisha Rouse entitled "Meltdown at Vodafone" which tells similar stories to my own. I can't provide a link here but you can search "Meltdown at Vodafone" then select the thisismoney.co.uk link.

At one stage my account showed that I had sent more than 70 trillion (yes, trillion) text messages in a three week period. Fortunately, like most people, I have "unlimited free texts" so this didn't affect my bill for the month which was incorrect anyway.

I am no further forward after four months.

My wife has been with Vodafone for many years and, until last year all was fine. As her contract expired she took out a new contract via CPW back with Vodafone which then required her to port her number back to Vodafone. In short the porting failed several times over a month leading us to cancel the porting altogether and use the new number provided. Some days later, while out, I had a call from a family member to say they could not contact my wife - only to find the porting had now taken place - but sadly she could now only make calls and could not receive them / no texts in or out / no data whatsoever. Her profile had been corrupted. Although we understand this can happen and is not entirely down to Vodafone, over the coming weeks we battled with Vodafone to fix the problem over the phone / online / in store and came across many helpful people who actually all promised much, but did nothing. After researching the problem ourselves we decided to sacrifice a Saturday morning camping out in a Vodafone store until the problem was fixed. After 3 hours of hard slog I got them to agree to cancel the SIM and replace with a new number with which we would continue the contract. This was done immediately and we left happy.....or so we thought. Over the coming months we received bills showing 2 live numbers and charging us for both. Again we spent many months calling / online chat / visiting the store (who advised billing issues must be handled over the phone/online - convenient). Every time we called we were told it was fixed and the bill was actually corrected, but the following month they would get it wrong again - charging for both numbers. At that point we threatened to cancel and contact the ombudsman and eventually we found one person who knew what they were doing and they corrected the problem - there were several markers on the account for the old number on their system, most were changed except for one - and this was the reason it kept popping up. They agreed to remove the old line from our bill six months ago and this happened immediately !!! Must be happy now I hear you say? Sadly not, since this point every bill we have received has now been for zero - it appears although the live account is showing correctly they are not charging us at all. We have called / contacted them many times but have now given up. We sent a final letter by recorded delivery (delivered 10th March and receipt retained) advising that if they did not respond we would continue to enjoy free mobile usage at their expense. Still nothing - and although we put the bill value to one side every month should they suddenly try to take us to court (IF THEY DARE) so we can settle it immediately - we intend to move elsewhere as soon as this contract ends. The stress has been unbearable for what should be such a simple purchase. Really poor performance from such a big company - should be ashamed of themselves.

Hi everyone - my opinion as a loyal Vodafone customer of approx 10 years is if I could I would change provider immediately, such is how my trust in their ability to provide even acceptable customer service and accurate billing has diminished.

A quick summary...

Upgraded online in January. There were a catalogue of issues even with the administration of this (phone being available to correct, incorrect salutation on my account, turning out to be fine etc etc etc) but I got the phone.

My billing was incorrect immediately:
- Incorrect tariff
- Insurance added although I had asked it wasn't (and live chat evidence to prove this)
- Data packages I had removed previously were there
- Being charged for Spotify although it was supposedly free for first 6 months
etc etc etc.

I contacted through Live Chat to resolve, and it became clear that there were no follow ups to this customer service. I wrote a letter, found a thread on MSE forums with a good accessible email address, and sent i in post and online. This was a five page letter of complaint detailing 7 issues.

I was happy with the complaint customer service and the compensation/correction I was awarded.

However, immediately after this my bill was incorrect again! I tried contacting the same person with no success.

Three months on, no one has responded or qualified my second complaint. New letter going in the post tomorrow.