Vodafone - Default after no billing and no communication

[tornado alley]

Hi everyone

 

I'm hoping for some advice to resolve an ongoing issue with Vodafone.

My next planned action is to write to Ofcom

but I would appreciate any guidance as to the best approach.

 

In short,

I'm a former Vodafone customer,

I recently discovered that they have trashed my credit rating without communicating with me.

My attempts to resolve this have so far proved futile, despite contacting the Ombudsman.

 

The background (and I'll try to keep this as brief as I can) is as follows.

 

I had been a satisfied Vodafone personal customer under the same mobile number for approximately 20 years up until 2014.

In June 2014 I made one VERY SIMPLE REQUEST

- to be billed a business customer rather than a personal customer

- to help with my company accounting.

I was assured this would be an instant and seamless process.

 

Immediately after this date countless things descended into chaos for months after,

including:

My number getting "lost" between different Vodafone platforms more than once (resulting in no service on multiple days)

Call bars being placed on my account despite staff assurances that all account settings would be left the same

(resulting in no service while abroad on work)

 

Services being removed from my account without authorisation or communication

(resulting in beneficial call packages being removed from my account even though the packages were available)

 

Services being added to my account and charged to me without me requesting them or approving them

 

Account details being mishandled multiple times,

resulting in a range of inconveniences,

from not having permission rights to speak to customer services about my own account(!),

to receiving correspondence in a variety of erroneous name / company name / address formats…

 

I even got the distinct impression I didn't actually exist either partially or completely in the Vodafone systems when I called to correct on multiple occasions

Billing

- perhaps most seriously,

there were months when I received no bills and the online billing section showed no statements,

yet money was being drawn from my account by Direct Debit each month

 

Aside from the massive inconvenience of wasting hours of my life and work time over many months on the above and being given the run around and being let down by countless members of Vodafone staff

(I have logged dates and names of many calls),

 

the final straw came when I discovered I was being charged for unauthorised services when I was finally emailed three of the missing bills I'd been chasing for months.

 

I'd given Vodafone numerous ultimatums to resolve outstanding issues and was given broken promises of resolutions each time.

in January 2016 I ported my number out to another network and left Vodafone.

 

Vodafone wrote to me in March giving me a Notice Of Default letter

(I had stopped the Direct Debit they had been helping themselves to without billing me),

claiming an outstanding balance of nearly £300 including charges for "cancellation prior to contract date".

 

I replied with a detailed letter on all the above issues

advising I was forced to leave due to the catalogue of disasters and erroneous billing,

and that the unacceptable level of service and repeated failures to resolve amounted to breach of contract

and that no cancellation charges were due.

 

I requested a copy of all missing bills to I could calculate the erroneous charges taken from my account.

My letter was acknowledged by Vodafone and a Case Reference given.

 

That was the last I heard from Vodafone.

I (rather naively) assumed they'd taken a look at the lengthy and detailed crime sheet against them

and walked away from any attempt to claim early cancellation charges.

 

And to be honest I was more than happy to get on with my life rather having wasted countless hours chasing them over recent months.

 

The credit rating issue first came to my attention when applying to open new bank accounts for my business in August 2017.

Needless to say I was furious to find out Vodafone had done this without any communication or justification.

 

I was advised by the Ombudsman to send a final complaint email through the Vodafone website in an attempt to resolve which I duly did.

Once again, no reply from Vodafone.

 

My take on this is that Vodafone are acting in a completely unaccountable manner and have been vindictive in their placement of a bad credit mark against myself.

 

Surely it's a basic legal requirement of a telecoms company to give statements to customers when taking Direct Debit amounts and to actually reply to customer complaints?

 

I would love to throw the largest proverbial book in the direction of Vodafone for their conduct in the hope they clean up their act for other customers, and of course to clear my credit report ASAP.

 

Any advice on the above would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

[BankFodder]

I think I had better say from the outset that I expect that the only way that you will get this matter fully resolved is to threaten and then to bring a legal action in the County Court.

 

I don't think that continuing the kind of dialogue that you have been involved in will produce any results. I don't think complaining to the telecoms ombudsman will have any results. I don't think that writing directly to the CEO's office will have any results. As far as I can make out you haven't written to the CEO. You can try if you want to look for an easy route but I think that you will just find it will become more time-consuming more frustrating and eventually you will end up in the same position.

 

You're quite right about saying that the company has certain legal duties but what you don't seem to realise is that they aren't bothered and the reason they aren't bothered is because their customers scarcely ever challenge them in the County Court.

 

I hope you have read through the other Vodafone threads here. You've been here since 2008 after all so you've had lots of time to do it. I think you will find that you are reading pretty well a mirror image of what you are complaining about. Vodafone is a particularly shocking mess. They are in disarray. They are worse than the other suppliers – especially in the customer service – but don't expect the other suppliers to be much better when things go wrong.

 

You are right to have been keeping a log of telephone calls – although I get the impression that you didn't keep a log of all of them. You are wrong not to have been recording your calls. You should read our customer services guide and implement the advice there but as you have been a member here since 2008 you should have known this anyway.

 

I would suggest that you decide whether you are prepared to bring a legal action – and if you are then we will be pleased to help you. In any event, I suggest you send them an SAR and get all the information that they hold about you in any form. Don't expect that to be easy and don't expect the disclosure to be complete but you may as well get started.

 

Do I get the impression that this is a business account?

 

One final word of warning here is that if you are contemplating legal action, if you are trying to change the status of this account of business account as a strategy simply for reducing some tax exposure but in fact this is a personal account then this could be an issue which could crop up in any court hearing. You may need to have an explanation for why you have been prepared to go for 20 years with this is a personal account and then suddenly decide to turn it into a business account.

 

Your post is extremely long and it would be very helpful if you could rework it and post again giving a simply a bullet pointed chronology and also maybe you could lay out a list of your losses – your actual financial losses and also time and inconvenience spent. Do this also in a sharp bullet pointed form. Try to avoid the narrative because I think we get the picture.

 

I have just noticed that in 2012 you had a dispute with Vodafone which was apparently resolved. Is this the same dispute or is this something new?

[tornado alley]

Thanks for your reply and time BankFodder!

 

To answer your questions:

 

Switch to business account from personal account was purely to simplify accounting, not any kind of tax avoidance.

 

I run my own small business, so rather than being billed personally and recharging to the company, the payment could come straight from my company account.

 

A Vodafone customer service / salesperson advised I needed to switch to a Business Account and couldn't just change my billing / Direct Debit details..

. maybe I was misguided by a hungry salesperson in that instance.

 

Actual losses

- impossible to quantify as bills never produced for several months while I was lost repeatedly in the Vodafine system.

 

A subscription for Spotify has arrived on my bills at some point,

but I have only three bills with this charge on at the end of my stay.

 

Likewise the missing bills / statements would also reveal the number of hours I spent on the phone to customer services trying to rectify problems of their making.

 

2012 dispute

- I'd almost forgotten about that!

That was a separate case and a billing dispute after misinformation about data limits while roaming.

Vodafone corrected & resolved this after my post on here (thank you CAG!)

 

Thanks for the advice on SAR. I shall request this week to get things rolling.

 

I'll also re-write my original post to shorten. Apologies for being too wordy!