code for Vodafone rep #7874337

Hello, am stuck with a Vodafone problem and would be grateful for any advice that can be given here. Have been with Vodafone for business/personal for 18 years - mostly v high spend years. Impeccable payment record etc. Various problems in the past with overcharging and adding non requested services to the tune of £100s, which took an age to sort out and get reimbursed so stopped dd and paid monthly on automated card line. Sometimes I would see a non dd charge added, but when I spoke to Vodafone reps about this they accepted reasoning and waived. However this year my account management seems to have been passed to a 3rd party company (Evolve) despite my contract being w vodafone. I paid bills as usual, deducting the non dd fee. Now my service has been stopped, and when I tried to speak to Vodafone, they say that I have to speak to the account manager, Evolve. I speak to them (no Freephone) and they won't represent my position to vf nor attempt to resolve the situation. Nor will they put the service on while the dispute is resolved. Being as I haven't had service for a month despite many attempts at resolving this, I need to transfer the number elsewhere, and now I am being told I have to pay to pay £280 to do so as contract has 4 months left to run. I have said I am happy to see it through to end of contract as usual, but obviously not willing to with no service, but they don't accept that. So essentially we're deadlocked. I have no service, yet VF are insisting I keep paying. I had a look at the Ofcom regs and the non dd fee was certainly not obvious on the contract. Neither was any enforced relationship with Evolve. Paying on automated number by debit card does not cost Vodafone the fee they are charging. My valid (imo) reasons for not using dd (previous overcharging and non-requested pay services added without consent), immaculate payment record and high spend of 18 years do not seem to mitigate their position. Can I take this to an ombudsman or ofcom? And what do I do about the service/number in the meantime? I didn't intend to leave Vodafone, but pointless staying without service. Thanks for any help.

yep, always make sure vodafone itemise your bills and write to them with any problem - don't rely on customer service doing what they say they'll do or making notes on the account as in my experience some don't tell the truth - They added a service that was not requested on mine and charged me £10 a month for it even though it wasn't being used. I didn't notice it for two years as amount was dwarfed by my spend at the time, and it took ages to get the money refunded.

Have been trying to deal with Vodafone over the last few weeks on two issues and their customer service has hit new lows. I work in London and Brighton - first issue is for the last month there's been no vodafone coverage in the bn1 area of brighton due to a fault that has no time scale to be fixed. When you start looking into it, VF customer service send you round the departments, each one making you carry out pointless and time consuming diy tech support. Eventually you find everyone else on a network forum with the same problem, then on going back to VF they say they can't fix it, they won't offer a discount and you can't get out of your contract, despite the service not working. Issue 2: they have no coverage at one of the London sites, where I've been using a suresignal - good when it works, but it is intermittent, problematic and very user-unfriendly. To set it up you need to be able to open ports on router etc etc) - plug and play it isn't. Cut a long story etc mine died, hours on the phone having to convince vodafone tech support it wasn't working, they finally agree to send a new one, then nothing. Delivery date passes, no text, no call, can't track it down, nada. More calls to customer services - the usual rudeness, passing around and hanging up etc More than a week later I finally get a call back, but on the brighton network issue - Davey the vodafone rep proceeds to withdraw a previous £10 goodwill payment (which was laughable to start with, on a spend of £80k to date) and say the suresignal that had been ordered for me had also been withdrawn (without letting me know!) as their policy is now to charge £65 for any fault on one (above package and call costs). Remember, this is a device supplied by vodafone to allow the phone to work at all! Being as I now get no coverage in two out of my three workplaces with vodafone being so spectacularly unhelpful I have to make other arrangements with a telecom that works. Do I press vodafone for compensation to pay for this or do I just quit the contract and stop paying them? any advice welcome

Dear Lee It's great that you're here helping people make their suresignal work. While you're at it, you may like to have a look at the vodafone eforum where one post on the Sure Signal troubleshooting thread has over 36 000 (!!) views. There are pages and pages of other threads from people trying to make this product work. Meanwhile, Vodafone are giving incorrect tech advice, causing many people to undertake long winded and complex IT procedures that don't work, and the entire phone tech team (levels 1-3) have given up on it, and pointed all enquiries to the forum, where there are few staff (one at last count!!) and no solutions. Look forward to your attention to this and a definitive statement from Vodafone regarding Sure Signal and their IP whitelist conflict. Thanks