I went to Mallorca over Christmas and did two things with my mobile phone which resulted in being billed, I think unfairly, by Vodafone. The first occurred on landing, I received an SMS from Vodafone ES telling me that I had a voicemail which I should pick up. I tried calling my voicemail number which had a recorded message saying that I could not listen to voicemail abroad. Result: me being charged for a roaming call.
The second is even more perverse. I have a Motorola phone which Vodafone have messed about with so that one of the key buttons always activates Vodafone Live with one press and without warning. The button can’t be re-programmed and you can’t access the GPRS settings. I regularly hit this button by mistake and have to cancel the connection. This is annoying in the UK but doesn’t cost anything. While in Mallorca I accidentally hit this button and activated a 3 second GPRS connection for which I was billed £1.50 because of roaming charges.
I strongly object to things like this which allow companies like Vodafone to make money. I am in the early stages of running a service company so I am also fascinated by how customer service deals with this kind of issue. I have had problems with Vodafone before where I have discovered billing errors. The last incident they had been billing me incorrectly for six months. When I called up they acknowledged the error on the current bill, I then asked them about the previous bill which they checked and found the same error. I then had to prompt them to look at the bill before that and suggest that maybe it was their duty to find out how long it had been going on for and refund me. I don’ t know if this is policy or their staff just not being on the ball but either way I felt annoyed that I had to help them give me my money back. Continue reading ‘Vodafone’s hand in my pocket – Part 1′
