Vodafone and Capquest,the abusive bullies

[maryjosephine]

Vodafone contract and Capquest Bullies

I am a 68-year-old disabled pensioner, who has been looking after my 70-year-old husband for the last 30 years. He has a severe heart condition with a metal mitral valve and a brain tumour, the tumour is controlled by drugs, but this has resulted in epilepsy. He has to be watched all the time.

As one can imagine the termination of a mobile phone contract is farthest from my mind.

I took out an eighteen-month contract with Vodafone.

At the time I was unaware that my contract had expired more than 6 months earlier.

When I realised, I informed Vodafone and stopped using the phone.

They continued billing me the monthly payment, which I did not pay.

After the first missed payment they cut my phone off, so I could not use it anyway.

The monthly bills continued culminating in me writing to them in a very annoyed manner. The eventual reply was very condescending, saying it was totally up to me to know when my contract had expired and that they had contacted me with details of a new phone and contract. (Untrue), also talking a whole load of tosh. In fact the letter was that bad, with words missing and bad grammar that I returned a copy of the letter, marking all the mistakes and commenting that one must do better next time.

Eventually I had another letter from another gentleman, apologising for the way I had been treated and confirming that my contract by then had been expired approx twelve months.

I heard nothing else from Vodafone and assumed the matter was closed.

Some time later I started getting phone calls from someone I did not know or recognise asking for my personal details. I would not give my details and these people refused to say what it was about, but insisted they had sent me numerous letters and I had not answered them. I had no letters.

In the last few months the telephone calls escalated. And I was threatened, bullied and intimidated. I was in a mess but found out it was CAPQUEST a debt collecting company. They said it was very serious and I was in a lot of trouble. They would not tell me what it was about until I gave them all my details. By this time I was in such a mess that I went to the police and was advised under no circumstances to divulge all me details over the phone to anyone.

It did emerge that all these letters had been going to an address in England to someone with similar details to mine. When the caller was told we were in Scotland and had been here for over 20 years the woman showed surprise.

I got my credit report from Equifax thinking something might show there, but there was nothing.

After this conversation the calls from Capquest stopped and then C J Garland Debt Recovery another company started calling me. I immediately broke down in tears.

Here I did learn it was Vodafone causing me all these problems. The woman from this company was more understanding and I e-mailed her copies of the letters from Vodafone including the apology and I have nothing from them since.

The amount of upset and stress caused to myself and my husband has been unbelievable.

I have had no apology or explanation for the disgraceful and abusive behaviour from no one and I am still very upset about it and frightened to answer my phone. I have been a customer of Vodafone for a long time and still am. Unfortunately the only decent signal I can get is from Vodafone otherwise I would have nothing more to do with them

Maryjosephine

[PGH7447]

Hi Mary and welcome to the CAG, sorry to hear of your distress but that is Im afraid how these scummy companies work,

 

one way to deal with them is to contact both Vodaphone and Crapquest by letter and demand their complaints procedure, if after they send these to you and you make an official complaint, they fail to respond to in a satisfactory manner, you can the escalate the complaint to Trading Standards and the OFT (in Crapquests case), these firms then have the priveledge of paying to be investigated.

[maryjosephine]

thank you for the advice. have just prepared letter for them both so hopefully will get reply from them

once again

thanks

[PGH7447]

No problems, keep us informed on what happens

 

good luck

[mr.ton]

They have to be as abusive as they possibly can in order to fighten you into paying up.

They have absolutely no other way to obtain the debt off you without going to the county court 1st & because it would cost them money to do so, they avoid them places as best they can.

So that leaves them with their 1 only option left - abuse & harrassment.

Once they see they are getting nowhere with you on that, they soon leave you alone as there is nothing else they can do