Vodafone joke

[sidspop]

Hello good people of consumer land.

Here follows a tale of stupidity, incompetance, and mis-information.

I do hope you enjoy it, I am quite revelling in it to be honest, and the longer it drags on, the dafter it becomes.

 

On the 23rd of June, my step-daughter had a letter off Vodafone, saying in effect, "we have tried to contact you, you ignored it, you owe us £265.20. Pay us now, or we will pass on to debt collectors" Now we were a little confused by this, as she does not have, and has never had a Vodafone. I rang the customer services people, and gleaned information about where the alleged contract was taken out.

 

From the dates, it appears as though the girl had a debit card taken from her purse, and that was used to get a contract. We suspect we know who did it, but cannot prove.

 

We headed to the shop, Phones 4 U in Merry Hill, and were met by the manager, and after we explained the details, he spent a good hour and a quarter trying to deal with Vodafone, and getting nowhere. He has no record of the daughters name, address, or the mobile number, or contract. Even though it was (allegedly) taken out in his shop.I have nothing but praise for him or his attitude to us.

Then we got a letter of their debt collectors, Arvato Bertelsmann, who have increased the amount to £331.50. I started to play email ping pong with them, and they seem very hesitant to disclose any information at all. Amongst their most interesting quotes, "if money has come out of her account, that is good enough to say she has the contract". In between having the card stolen, and her next statement, a payment had come out of her bank, 20 quid or so. She had not noticed on her statement. She stopped the card, so the next month was defaulted.

 

This is one of my emails to them. Hope you like it!

 

"" Emailing Arvato requesting proof which Vodafone do not have to supply will not get this matter sorted." What kind of a stupid response is that? How the hell can she prove that she did not open a contract? Only Vodaphone may have some kind of proof, and I have better things to do with my life than spend hours on phone to a customer advisor, who's command of the Queen's English leaves a lot to be desired, and that person will not have a clue how to deal with it anyway. Vodaphone advertise an 0845 number for debt recovery, it doesn't work. No doubt you have better communications with Vodaphone, you ask them to prove it.

I also disagree with your statement that as they took one payment, that is proof enough. Poppycock.A stolen debit card, where the assailant knows the PIN is good enough to open an account with Vodaphone, they really do need to improve their security.

 

Evidently my previous email failed to register. We cannot get a crime number, the police are not interested. Jade has lost 20 quid, Vodaphone have lost considerably more. I would suggest the Vodaphone should be opening a fraud case, not us.

 

So as it stands at present, you are trying to chase a debt, not actioned by my step daughter, that you have no intention of assisting with, it is down to us to prove (impossibly) that she was responsible, via a call centre in The Far East, on an 0845 number that doesn't work, talking to people that do not have a clue, aboout a contract that does not exist. Perhaps you can see my dilemma.

 

To re-itterate. Get your client Vodaphone to provide proof."

 

So Arvato don't want to talk to me, I try to deal with Vodafone. Vodafone won't deal with me, hiding behind the Data Protection Act,because I am not the account holder. Neither is my step-daughter.

 

So the bottom line is this. Person unknown used a stolen card to get a phone. Vodafone send a bill, then two days later pass it on to thier chosen team of thugs to recover. Thugs don't understand basic requests, and Vodafone don't want to talk. And nobody can provide any proof of anything, but the daughter risks being blacklisted due to it.

 

I did actually get to email Vf, and got a reply. "Hi Andy, This is a message from Vodafone with regards to your recent query for your daughter s account. We could not locate the account and tried to contact you to get more details however could not speak to you on the given contact number. We would request you to please get back to us with the more details of your daughter s account. You can provide us the Vodafone account or mobile number so we can investigate the matter further. Vodafone Customer Relation" . Notice the "we could not locate the account"?

 

They could not contact me because the number I gave was 01234567890. I have no desire to call their number, 0870 or not. I will do communication only via email, where I can retain proof of correspondance.

 

I would welcome comments

 

Andy

[DanscoCAB]

There is a Vodafone rep here on the forums so just wait for a more knowledgable member to pop on and give you the details. Hope they can help you

[sidspop]

Thanks, I had noticed him on here, and he certainly seems to be good at his job.

[locutus]

There is a Vodafone rep here on the forums so just wait for a more knowledgable member to pop on and give you the details. Hope they can help you

 

some say knowledgable, others say nerdy... Whichever, here's the datails

Hi CAG members,

We thought it would be nice to introduce ourselves and to assure you all that our presence on CAG is with the very best of intentions.

vodafone UK has recently introduced a dedicated Web Relations Team which is keen to seek out customers who’re having difficulties with their accounts and feel that they have no other place to turn to than CAG and other consumer forums and blogs.

Naturally, it’s not possible for us to help directly with account specific queries on CAG and as such we would encourage those members who feel we can help them to contact us privately at customer.care@help.vodafone.co.uk quoting ‘WRT135 – CAG Forum’ in the subject line to ensure that it reaches the Web Relations Team.

When emailing us we would also ask that you either provide us with a link to your post or thread – if you’ve posted in another member’s thread please also provide your CAG username so that we can check what your query is.

[2Grumpy]

Have you reported this to the police? That will make Vodaphone sit up & take notice a lot more than email ping-pong

[sidspop]

I attempted to report it to the police, they seemed reluctant to take any details. In effect a card was taken, by persons unknown, on a date unknown, at a location unknown, and no proof of anything.

Arvato wanted a crime number, but I cannot get it. Even if I could get it, I would then have to get the permisission of the daughter to communicate with them, as they love the Data Protection Act.

[sidspop]

And for todays exciting reply from the Vodafone Empire......

 

"

Hello Andy,

I understand your concern with regard to your account.

I can see that the account number xxxxxx is not registered under your name and hence we woudl not be able to share any account specific details with you.

As per your email I understand that someone has used your daughter’s Jade bank details and have opened an account with us.

I would request you to ask the account holder to write back to us with the below detail so that we can verify the account and help better:

 

• Account holder full name (mandatory)
  

Any one of the below detail:

 

• Payment method
  
• Date of birth
  

Once I’ve received this, I’ll be more than happy to help.

To know more about our privacy policy you may also click on the link below:

http://www.vodafone.co.uk/vodafone-uk/about-this-site/privacy-policy/index.htm

I’ll look forward to your reply"

 

Why the chuff can these muppets not get it in to their grey matter that the daughter does not have a contract? If she has no contract, she has no details of it. It's not too hard to grasp, surely?

[Lee Vodafone Company Rep]

Thanks, I had noticed him on here, and he certainly seems to be good at his job.

 

Hi Andy,

 

As you've probably seen from other threads I do try my best to be as helpful as possible.

 

Having checked our emails I can confirm that I've received yours and so will get back to you as soon as I can.

some say knowledgable, others say nerdy...

 

I'll take this as a compliment locutus .

 

Thanks,

 

Lee

 

Web Relations Team

 

Vodafone UK