Vodafone being ridiculously unhelpful

[Rachimella92]

I am currently having a pretty terrible experience with Vodafone.

 

I'm a horribly overdrawn student and my dad pays for my phone, making it impossible to try and sort out myself. Its a Nokia N8.

 

The N8 has been a constant source of annoyance for about a year out of the year and a half I’ve had it.

It froze all the time, shut down on its own and stopped recognising its sim card whenever it felt like it.

So I wouldn’t be able to receive calls or texts and would be none the wiser until I’d suddenly have a barrage of them once it found its ability to acknowledge its sim card again.

 

Last week my terrible little handset finally gave up the ghost on me completely and refused to turn on at all despite a full day of charging.

 

I went to my local Vodafone store to see If they could help me.

They said they’d do a software update in the store which would mean losing all of my contacts and data on the phone

and to come back in an hour even though I had insisted it wouldn’t turn on.

 

After an hour I returned to be told I was right, it wouldn’t turn on.

 

I was then assured the trusted Vodafone repair centre could put the handset right.

 

I signed over my phone and received a highly unfashionable but practical loan phone while they supposedly fixed my own.

 

I had a text come through a few days later telling me that if I wanted to have my phone repaired a charge of £100 would be issued.

I could buy a phone 10 times better than the one I was struggling by with for that money

 

I did not call the repair centre and instead went back to the shop.

 

The manager looked up what had been noted down on the system and to my absolute astonishment he explained that the HDMI cover on the top of the handset was split.

 

I knew about the tiny bit of plastic being broken and it had been for quite some time.

 

The manager explained to me that the repair technicians would not even have attempted to repair the internal system of the phone

because of this ridiculous tiny physical fault with its exterior and this was apparently what was going to cost me £100 to repair.

 

as the situation stands my dad is paying £30 a month for a sim card, a plastic (toy) loan phone which I’m guessing has to go back soon

and a faulty phone which Vodafone are refusing to repair due a bit of torn plastic.

 

I was told my options are to pay the £100 and receive my two year old handset wiped of all its contacts

and memories despite it being faulty in the first place

or

to pay £210 in order to buy myself out and upgrade.

 

Both of these options seem absolutely unfair especially when my dad would be paying the £30 a month for a sim card

and a dead handset until July 2013!

 

My family have been customers at Vodafone for over 8 years and between us we have 3 different contracts with you.

 

Surely any reasonable person can see that this situation is not right and there must be something further they can do for me to sort it out!?

[dx100uk]

hi

 

we have voda onboard here can i suggest you follow below to alert them:

 

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 webrelations@vodafone.com quoting ‘WRT135 – CAG Forum’ in the subject line.

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.

Many thanks

 

Web Relations Team

Vodafone UK.

 

 

......

 

dx

[Lee Vodafone Company Rep]

Hi Rachimella92,

 

Thanks for making me aware of this.

 

To enable me to take a closer look at things could you email me as suggested by dx via the Contact us form here and quote the code WRT135 - CAG Forum in the subject line?

Once sent you'll receive an automated reply with a reference number. To ensure that it reaches me could you update the thread with this and I'll get back to you as soon as possible?

 

Kind regards,

 

Lee

 

Web Relations Team

 

Vodafone UK

[Rachimella92]

Ok I have emailed you, thanks.

[dx100uk]

got the code back yet?

 

dx

[Rachimella92]

Oh sorry didn't even see that you'd asked for that!

This was in the subject of the email - [#10761289]

don't know if that's it??

[IdaInFife]

moved to mobile forums

[Lee Vodafone Company Rep]

Hi Rachimella92,

 

Thanks for coming back to me.

 

Having checked our emails I can confirm that I've got yours and will get back to you as quickly as I can.

 

Kind regards,

 

Lee

 

Web Relations Team

 

Vodafone UK