My Vodafone Experience

Steven

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22/03/2015
Joined Vodafone during one of their Red Plan sales

Rest of March 2015
Spend a lot of time chasing Vodafone morning and evening to port my number from 3. Advised I would be invoking the 14-days right to cancel before it expires! Unexpectedly on day-13 my number is ported after many false dawns. The Vodafone e-forum reports many, many less fortunate customers. Something to do with Vodafone moving to a new system and not listening to engineers who know what they are talking about.

01/04/2015
The first [early] payment was taken by direct debit from my bank account on time

22 May 2015
No payment taken. For some reason my online account reads -£25.16

23 June 2015
No payment taken

28/06/2015
Telephone 191. Apologies given and promised will be sorted out.

23/07/2015
No payment taken

21/08/2015
No payment taken

23/08/2015
Live chat about no payment being taken again (screenshot saved). Live chat person could not help and asked if they could telephone me.

Bounced around departments. Spoke with [redacted] in the billing and charges team. Told the credit was still incorrectly being applied. They said no back payment would be taken. Replied I have no issue with honouring my contractual agreement and the money is unspent in my account anyway. I was reassured this was their fault and they would not do so. Sceptical, I was transferred to a supervisor named [redacted]. Repeats they will not take back payment. They tell me the system does not let them generate a bill even if they wanted to! Requested this in writing for my reassurance.

06/09/2015
Telephone Vodafone again, being deeply suspicious my online account still reads -£25.16 two-weeks later. They thank me for my honesty (again) and decline backdating (again). Confusingly [redacted] said I could make a one-off £25.16 card payment.

With hindsight, I should have queried why this contradicted the information given by [redacted] on 23/08 but my eagerness got the better of me. Requested written confirmation they will sort it out as received nothing from [redacted]

06/09/2015
Receive a text message thanking me for my understanding. Not quite what was requested but it is a start

07/09/2015
£25.16 taken from my card

30/09/2015
No payment taken

30/10/2015
No payment taken

31/10/2015
The media reports that Talk Talk (not a customer myself) are offering customers a free credit monitoring service with Noodle.co.uk following the well-publicised cyber attack. Intrigued, i see that Noddle offers free credit reports. 10-minutes later i get that "mini-fist pump feeling" after seeing my credit score.

Coincidental to this whole saga, it is indeed being reported against my credit record that I am maintaining my monthly mobile phone contract payments (admittedly not hard in the circumstances).

03/11/2015
Today. Unbelievably my account is now showing as minus -£50.32!!

Every telephone call with Vodafone is taking 30-minutes to one-hour of my personal time. i now intend to ask Vodafone to communicate with me by email as I cannot be using more of my personal time on this.
 

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A helpful forum member provided me with an email address for the upper echelons of Vodafone. This is also what Vodafone's UK boss has to say about the importance of customer service: ‘Everything should just work’: Vodafone UK CEO, Jeroen Hoencamp, talks customer service and getting the little things right... I agree values are important but so is putting words into practice!

10/11/2015
Sent email directing to this self-explanatory thread

14/11/2015
Receive a text message from a customer service agent [redacted]

14/11/2015
Receive a phone call from said agent. He apologised and that my complaint is now being dealt with as a priority. [With hindsight I suppose this is a complaint]. Told that the technical team need to liaise with the billing team as to why a credit has been incorrectly applied to my account and how to remove it! Essentially no change.

I clarify the customer service staff are always polite and well-drilled but they cannot action their promises. I do not know why I have to do the chasing for Vodafone to take my money! I again repeat I will honour my contractual obligations, although they have said will not take back payment. Been told to expect an update next week.
 
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19/11/2015
Text received still working on it

21/11/2015
Text received still working on it

30/11/2015
Text received still working on it

07/12/2015
I return a missed call to be informed it is "fixed once and for all" but the first payment will not be until 23 January 2016!
 
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I was just about to move to Vodafone. So you're basically getting your contract free of charge at the moment. Sounds ok to me. lol.
 
absolutely useless, i,m desperate for a phone and waiting for the SU6 to be in stock in Amazon, id rather wait weeks and handover cash and deal with vodafone.
 
I also have a free 12-months subscription to Sky Sports mobile as part of the Red Plan sale offer. Hopefully this will be sorted before Christmas :D

Placeholder post #2 updated
 
Worst company I've ever had the misfortune to use !!
 
To be fair you also hear the same sort of experiences from O2, Orange, EE, Three etc.
 
Doesn't help as it is in Oz and the company has the same name but otherwise not really related - Vodafone here have spent years with network issues and even after buying the Oz version of Three and using their infrastructure they were always being reported as being hopeless. Recently after a serious amount of investment before and after the Three takeover, they have started a campaign where you have a 30 day period after signing where you can cancel - totally additional to legislated periods.

Network Happiness Guarantee | Vodafone Australia

Terms and conditions apply and this seems to cover when you buy a phone and plan post paid - it's a start though :)

They have also made some changes on plans etc which are a big change here compared to the norm so are really trying to attract new customers - including ones that they lost over the last few years.

Does Vodafone UK have anything like this at the moment to help address customer service or new contracts when the customer finds the provided phone and service is rubbish for them where they live and work and use the phone?
 
I'm *this* close to cancelling with Vodafone. I'd had a work contract with them for years, but was made redundant so needed to get my own contract. Set one up about six weeks ago - just a sim only 2GB for £15 a month. Not had any data since setting it up, it simply doesn't work. Tried going to different stores, multiple calls to CS. Apparantly it's now with their top team who are investigating, and they'll call me when they know more (code for - please stop calling us)

I went with voda for wifi calling as I have bad reception with all networks in my house. But I could switch to EE as they do it too
 
I'd also never touch Vodafone again, had a bad experience buying a payg handset earlier this year, store staff were useless, and I was lied to by customer services on more than one occasion. Ill never use them again.
 
Post #3 updated. Allegedly now fixed but have missed the boat for 2015 and the debit will not be until January 2016 now. Yep, just short of a full year :D

I did get a few emails about the direct debit being set up again. My online banking still only shows 1x Vodafone debit but will check in a branch to be sure.

I realise the thread has a negative tone so may I wish everyone a prosperous 2016
 
I had a contract a long time ago now with Vodafone and since then been on with o2 , ee ( orange/ T mobile) . I am not a fan of the way any of these networks operate in particularly the fact that they lock the phones to their network and hold back on upgrades for the phones. EE has so far been my worst for phone upgrades and causing the once decent phone I have to be completely frustrating to use . If anyone wishes to go onto EE I would strongly recommend getting an unlocked phone from the various resellers that offer this as if you go straight to them, you will find that you are waiting a lot longer that the other networks for the upgrades.

Just wanted to point that out , sorry if it seemed a little off topic :)
 
I had a contract a long time ago now with Vodafone and since then been on with o2 , ee ( orange/ T mobile) . I am not a fan of the way any of these networks operate in particularly the fact that they lock the phones to their network and hold back on upgrades for the phones. EE has so far been my worst for phone upgrades and causing the once decent phone I have to be completely frustrating to use . If anyone wishes to go onto EE I would strongly recommend getting an unlocked phone from the various resellers that offer this as if you go straight to them, you will find that you are waiting a lot longer that the other networks for the upgrades.

Just wanted to point that out , sorry if it seemed a little off topic :)

By upgrades I presume you are referring to OS updates? If so a good proportion of the delay is down the handset manufacturer and then the phone operator themselves. Apple and Google phones will always get the quickest updates so it probably wouldn't make much difference if you got another handset elsewhere.
 
By upgrades I presume you are referring to OS updates? If so a good proportion of the delay is down the handset manufacturer and then the phone operator themselves. Apple and Google phones will always get the quickest updates so it probably wouldn't make much difference if you got another handset elsewhere.

It will make a difference if the phone is unlocked as the time to wait for the update for one will be quicker because you get it when the manufacture releases and secondly it is not messed around with by the carrier because they have to make it work with their locked phones. This is a fact as I know people having the unlocked and locked phones and those with the unlocked phones do not have the same problems that the users with the locked phones have because of what the carriers do to them.
 
I upgraded my broadband deal with EE to Fibre about 2 months ago and they have not taken any payments yet, so its not just a Voda thing, and im not a new customer, i've been with them for 2 years and they have always taken payment on time in the past, but for some reason, i have now been lost in the system since upgrading.....
I'll give it a bit longer and then ring them.
 
I am sure it happens in a mature market like the UK. hope it does not take 10 months for EE to sort it :D
 
I upgraded my broadband deal with EE to Fibre about 2 months ago and they have not taken any payments yet, so its not just a Voda thing, and im not a new customer, i've been with them for 2 years and they have always taken payment on time in the past, but for some reason, i have now been lost in the system since upgrading.....
I'll give it a bit longer and then ring them.

Chris I would personally drop EE broadband like a stone I took broadband out with them , went to move to Virgin Media - called and asked if I need to do anything - No they answered, then they emailed me to say I had been billed for their broadband - called back to asked why this had happened - they said because as I moved to a non BT type of system they could not just disconnect and needed my confirmation - so when I first asked about moving off them, I had actually said I was moving to Virgin Media and so I was miss informed. Secondly after receiving a confirmation email to say my account had been closed and a second email (by my request) from the person I spoke to to have a second confirmation that this has happened, they still have billed me again and not refunded my 2 months that they had to bill!!!. Also , they could not just refund me straight away but was told that I would get the money back at the next bill date which has not happened but i cannot just cancelled the direct debit because they need to refund me first!!.

Hope this gives you some insight into what they are like .
 
Perhaps to no-one's great surprise, still no payment taken. What has changed is that my account status has finally been corrected to read £30 from 23/mm to 22/mm billing period.

Exposed: How Vodafone is messing up customers' bills

My landlady suggests I should just embrace the situation now. If and when Vodafone get their act together the money is unspent in my bank account anyway
 
Well over a year later i remain unsuccessful in my efforts to have Vodafone take my money.

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'recently' - one way of putting it. Being a smart bunch you guys already know that no money left my bank account today.
 
I was previously working there and they were very intense with sales results, i mean if don't achieve the targets you might loss your job if you don't hit target for 4 months. So, there workers were just selling and didn't even provide support to the existing customers. Sad for this.
 
So i read Ofcom have issued a £4.6 mil fine. ...

Much to my surprise the very random figure of £11.67 was taken from my account for Sept 2016 usage. For Oct 2016 usage the text notification says it will be usual £32 (£30 contract plus £2 rpi increase)

Ironically in the 18 months it has taken to finally resolve may now ask for my pac code as work has started offering 20% discount on EE. I see Vodafone have some deals ending this month but look to be new customers only. ..
 
I had a weird experience the other day with O2. I was trying to buy a SIM on a 12 month. To cut a long story short I failed to buy one: on-line, on phone with a sales dude whose job is to TAKE MY MONEY!! and finally on Live Chat... I thought if they do not have the systems and processes to get me on the books god knows what their network is like.. I am now a happy Vodafone customer on a red plan..
 
Phoned up today and asked for PAC and apart from asking why (no comment) was given the code straight away.
Am expecting the usual cuddle team to call tomorrow.
 

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