Hi Lee, thanks for getting back so quickly. My concern at the time was that there was no mention of any pro-rata billing either in my terms and conditions or by any of the many Advisors I spoke with. In fact, I am pretty sure I was told that I would have the full inclusive allowances until the end of the first month. This is why I contacted Vodafone so quickly after I noticed the charges being applied. In the call I made when the bill was received I was told that I had been mistakenly registered as an existing customer who had moved plans instead of a new customer. I also feel that if I hadn’t been told by Vodafone on my initial calls that the mistake was on their end and I should continue as normal then the episode wouldn’t have escalated into the mess it became. Regarding the pro-rata thing I still don’t understand why I wasn’t given the full entitlement for the first month. The bill cycle was from the 18thAug to 19thSept so I don’t understand why I didn’t get the allowance for the dates 18thAug - 19thSept. As time went on in my communications with Vodafone it became clear to me that they had applied some sort of pro-rata billing system and incurred these charges but I was never informed of this until well later – after I had written a letter in Jan’09. Up until then all I was being told was that I was only entitled 240 minutes allowance which conflicted with what I had been told previously, what I had been led to believe when I took out the contract and what I believed to be in the terms and conditions. Anyway as things dragged-on and became more stressful, I agreed to the compromise figure which the ‘reasonable lady’ suggested just so it would all go away. I figured as this was approximately half way between what I figured I owed and what Vodafone had been initially asking, it would be a fair settlement. Never did I think it would come back to bite me like this. If I thought I was going to have a default registered against my report my actions would have been very different. Thanks Pat

Thanks locutus, the number is: [#5416009]

Thanks Ida, have done so and received an automated reply from their system.

Hi all, after recently being refused two loan applications despite having what I thought should be an impeccable credit history, I ordered my Experian and Equifax reports. On getting these I could see that Vodafone have placed a red default notice against me with an [8] - apparently the worst you can get. This refers to a dispute I had with Vodafone in August of 2008 when I purchased a new customer pay monthly SIM. What happened was that on 18/08/08 I ordered a Pay Monthly SIM card with 150 Anytime minutes with 1000 texts from the Vodafone Online Shop at £15 per month. A few minutes later after realising I had made the wrong purchase, I emailed and then phoned the store in order to correct the order. When I got eventually got through I was told to wait until the SIM card arrived and then contact them again to switch the contract. I did this as soon as the SIM card arrived a few days later and was moved to the £20 per month contract of 600 Anytime minutes and unlimited texts. Some days later on 28/08/08 whilst looking at the online billing I noticed that I was being charged for calls which came under the agreed 600 minutes of the contract and for which I thought I shouldn't be paying. I immediately contacted Vodafone again and an Advisor told me she couldn't understand why I was being billed but assured me that the calls fell within my contract and I would not be billed for them. She told me that as the bill was not due to be published for another two weeks that it would be corrected before then and I should wait until I received the bill. On the 19/09/08 I received the first months bill and it came to £99.45 and included calls which should have been free under the contract. I again contacted Vodafone and the Advisor admitted that they had made a mistake and that I should not have been billed for the calls. She told me the bill would be sent to be ‘recalculated’ and I would receive a new one in a few days. On the 30/09/08 I still had not received the new bill so I again had to spend the best part of an hour trying to get through to someone at Vodafone. When I eventually got through to the Advisor, he said that the bill had been calculated correctly and that I was only entitled to 240 free minutes and not the 600 in my contract as I joined half way through the month. I asserted to him that I had read my terms and conditions and no mention of this was made and that I believed this was incorrect. I asked him that the money not be taken from my account until the matter was resolved. He would not do this and left me on hold for over ten minutes when I eventually had to hang up. The next day I instructed my bank to withhold the Direct Debit payment from Vodafone until further notice. Shortly after I did so, the account was deleted from the Vodafone website and I could no longer log in to check the account billing. I took this to mean that Vodafone had cancelled the account and ended the contract, so I then stopped using the SIM card. However, this did not stop Vodafone from billing me for further months and I received another bill for October and November despite my request that the contract be ended, which was included within my terms and conditions. On receiving each of these bills I contacted Vodafone again, probably hanging around for hours in queues only to have to explain the same thing over and over again to someone different. By this time the bill had risen to over £140. Eventually in February or March 2009 (I need to look up my records again), I got passed to a reasonable lady who said that I could settle for around £60 and there would be no impact on my credit rating. By this stage I was fed up with the whole thing, gave them the money and thought no more of it, until I applied for credit to fund some emergency home improvements. My issues with Vodafone are that: even though I technically defaulted on the first payment, they were trying to bill me for an incorrect amount and I did communicate to them at all times that I was more than willing to pay the correct amount. even at the incorrect amount, no more than one payment was missed before Vodafone locked me out of the on-line account, which I took at the time to indicate they had cancelled or frozen the account. My credit report indicates that I have missed 8 or more payments which isn't true. at no time did Vodafone send me a notice of default or indicate to me that they intended to issue something like this. I was reading on other forums that Vodafone aren't regulated by the CCA and so don't need to issue me with a 'notice of default' or intention to do so but surely they should have warned me about something. The stress that this is causing my family and I is becoming unbearable as we are becoming desperate at this stage to access credit to fund these home repairs. Could anyone suggest any possible avenues to have this removed from my credit report or at least downgraded in some way? I did write an to Experian this morning but have no clue if anything will become of that.