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Vodafone complaints rocket despite Ofcom investigation (Tesco has least complaints)


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Old 04-04-2016, 14:50
GreenLantern
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So the concensus of opinion on here and just about everywhere else I lurk discussing mobile telecommunications is that VF are terrible both for data coverage and CS. They are the network for old people who know no better, like my sister. So why is anyone on here signing up with them? Fair enough if they are the only network that gives you a signal where you live, but that must be rare, but for the rest of you I have no sympathy.
As others have said, customer services are nigh on useless for consumers and not that great for businesses either.

Corp CS is OK - which is not saying much.

Where the network has been upgraded it is 50-60-70% of what EE might be in that area - again not saying much.

Overall, my patience is running very thin with Vodafone. They rely on people knowing no better and just sticking with them. What a wonderful marketing ploy.
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Old 04-04-2016, 16:27
LegendaryAced
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As others have said, customer services are nigh on useless for consumers and not that great for businesses either.

Corp CS is OK - which is not saying much.

Where the network has been upgraded it is 50-60-70% of what EE might be in that area - again not saying much.

Overall, my patience is running very thin with Vodafone. They rely on people knowing no better and just sticking with them. What a wonderful marketing ploy.
When I made a written complaint around November 2015 about WiFi Calling not working on my line, they just ignored it. Never heard back from them about that letter. They sorted it out two weeks later and after calling them many times. It was also random, I think it might have fixed itself.

Your last two sentences. This is how I feel myself too. I know that it will be a daytime nightmare again down here in Brighton as the weather gets better. It already is during weekends.

I have been looking into EE lately, but contract is not due until November. O2 is no better than Vodafone and Three is good but congested and not very reliable indoors.
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Old 04-04-2016, 16:53
misawa97
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I haven't been able to connect to London Underground wifi so called Vodafone. They said they were looking into and come back to me. 2 days later nothing so went on Live chat and within 5 mins the issue was sorted.

Whenever I use live chat things seem to get done but calling has been a nightmare.
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Old 04-04-2016, 19:41
swb1964
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So Vodafone are both rubbish and expensive. Not a great combination.
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Old 20-04-2016, 16:09
Everything Goes
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Ofcom believe Vodafone have breached billing rules

Ofcom has reasonable grounds to believe Vodafone has breached its terms and conditions over on going billing issues. While Ofcom could fine them its unlikely to be very much.


The UK telecoms regulator has today confirmed that they have “reasonable grounds” to believe that Vodafone’s sales and billing tactics for Pay-As-You-Go (payg) Mobile customers may have breached their consumer protection rules between 26th May 2011 and 28th September 2015.


According to Ofcom, Vodafone appears to have “engaged in conduct contrary to the relevant conditions when selling pre-paid mobile telephony (PAYG) services to its PAYG customers and rendering bills to such customers that did not represent the true extent of the service actually provided to them“.

The relevant rules are General Condition 11 (GC 11.1) and General Condition 23 (GC 23.2(a)).

Ofcom’s Explanation

General Condition 11 (GC11) – places requirements on communication providers (CPs) in relation to metering and billing. GC11.1 requires that a CP shall not render any Bill to an End-User in respect of the provision of any Public Electronic Communications Services unless every amount stated in that Bill represents and does not exceed the true extent of any such service actually provided to the End-User in question.

General Condition 23 (GC23) – places obligations on mobile CPs regarding the ways in which they engage in sales and marketing activity of mobile telephony services. GC23.2(a) prohibits mobile CPs from engaging in dishonest, misleading or deceptive conduct when selling or marketing such services.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...s-billing.html

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/enf...paign=cw_01160
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Old 08-06-2016, 00:27
Everything Goes
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Vodafone in breach

Ofcom have found Vodafone in breach and are awaiting to hear their response. It is possible that Ofcom will fine Vodafone.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...ing-rules.html
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Old 08-06-2016, 06:44
prking
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Vodafone in breach

Ofcom have found Vodafone in breach and are awaiting to hear their response. It is possible that Ofcom will fine Vodafone.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...ing-rules.html
With Vodafone regularly breaching regulations, surely it's a matter of time before Ofcom fine them. In my opinion Vodafone's compliance and governance should be scrutinised by an inquiry or to a House of Commons committee.
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Old 08-06-2016, 07:12
Randomguy1
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Vodafone in breach

Ofcom have found Vodafone in breach and are awaiting to hear their response. It is possible that Ofcom will fine Vodafone.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...ing-rules.html
As much as I hate to say it I'm not surprised considering the level of non service they provide. The network itself is excellent but need help or anything complicated you've had it.
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Old 08-06-2016, 09:40
jaffboy151
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As much as I hate to say it I'm not surprised considering the level of non service they provide. The network itself is excellent but need help or anything complicated you've had it.
Have to agree with this, I'm overall happy with the Vodafone network, but need to sort anything out and the website sends you round in circles, customer services is still very hit & miss and random billing issues are not uncommon.
I'm not surprised by this breech as earlier this year I had the chance to visit there customer service centre in Stoke on Trent, despite being a nice evening place I found a deep ingrained corporate vibe amongst many of the management there which could best be described as a form of arrogant superiority in the brand and there positions, quite an authoritarian structure where it seemed like a master and servent relationship between staff and management with little flow or ideas or view up the chain, also despite being a customer service centre, actual customer service seemed low on the priority apart from repeating there need to show 'empathy' with customers. The place seemed more geared towards sales, mainly regarding the move into the fixed broadband and TV.
It's something they need to get sorted because as all networks improve data services customer service, data plans and bolt ons will be the fighting ground for many.
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Old 08-06-2016, 09:50
corf
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At one point the only way to get support was message Lee via the moneysavingexpert forums. They have been a shambles for several years.
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Old 08-06-2016, 20:26
Silver Tractor
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I have been a Vodafone customer for around 20 years but will be leaving them in 2 months time.

The main advantage for me has been the discount that Vodafone gives NHS staff. The service up until about 4 years ago was ok but it is absolutely atrocious now.

My first major issue was in 2012 when a rogue Vodafone employee in India phoned me out of the blue and offered me an "early upgrade". I specifically said that if I took out a new contract for a smartphone then I expected my old contact to be cancelled. Despite a being assured that I would only have the one contract, Vodafone started to charge me for 2 phones.

This situation dragged on for months and when I took up the complaint with the Regulator Vodafone then came up with the news that they had deleted all of the recorded conversations that I had had with the dodgy agent! Eventually they agreed to cancel the original contract but two months later they billed me for an extra £180!

Two years ago they started to upgrade their IT systems and the net result of that was absolute chaos with their My Vodafone app and their online billing. Thousands of customers could not access their accounts online or use the app. This dragged on for months and the situation was made worse by huge overcharges on monthly bills.

Last Autumn they also attempted to upgrade their billing system. Their new system stopped taking direct debit payments from customer accounts ( including mine). This was made worse by the fact that we couldn't use the app or view our accounts online.

The first that customers knew of the situation was when Vodafone started to apply late payment fees to our accounts. In my case they also put up my monthly bill by £190!!!

I have made dozens of phone calls to Vodafone over the past year and they have constantly lied to me ( and sometimes verbally insulted me too).

The billing issues were widely discussed on Twitter and it was evident that 1000s of customers were affected by the Direct Debit and penalty charging issue.

Some of us also found that when we phoned Vodafone their security system no longer recognised our PIN numbers.

It has been chaos!!

3 months ago Vodafone agreed to give me 4 months free usage whilst they sort out their issues.

I have been putting the money that I have been saving on my contract aside and once the 4th month is up I will use that money to pay my contract off.

Vodafone is without a doubt the most chaotic, dishonest and insulting company that I have ever dealt with ( and I am over 70 years old). They seem to have no scruples about ripping off and bullying their customers.

My next problem will be deciding which network to sign up with. The strongest signal here is O2 and the next strongest is 3 Mobile.

Nobody could surely be worse than Vodafone........ ( could they?? )
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Old 08-06-2016, 21:26
Randomguy1
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I have been a Vodafone customer for around 20 years but will be leaving them in 2 months time.

The main advantage for me has been the discount that Vodafone gives NHS staff. The service up until about 4 years ago was ok but it is absolutely atrocious now.

My first major issue was in 2012 when a rogue Vodafone employee in India phoned me out of the blue and offered me an "early upgrade". I specifically said that if I took out a new contract for a smartphone then I expected my old contact to be cancelled. Despite a being assured that I would only have the one contract, Vodafone started to charge me for 2 phones.

This situation dragged on for months and when I took up the complaint with the Regulator Vodafone then came up with the news that they had deleted all of the recorded conversations that I had had with the dodgy agent! Eventually they agreed to cancel the original contract but two months later they billed me for an extra £180!

Two years ago they started to upgrade their IT systems and the net result of that was absolute chaos with their My Vodafone app and their online billing. Thousands of customers could not access their accounts online or use the app. This dragged on for months and the situation was made worse by huge overcharges on monthly bills.

Last Autumn they also attempted to upgrade their billing system. Their new system stopped taking direct debit payments from customer accounts ( including mine). This was made worse by the fact that we couldn't use the app or view our accounts online.

The first that customers knew of the situation was when Vodafone started to apply late payment fees to our accounts. In my case they also put up my monthly bill by £190!!!

I have made dozens of phone calls to Vodafone over the past year and they have constantly lied to me ( and sometimes verbally insulted me too).

The billing issues were widely discussed on Twitter and it was evident that 1000s of customers were affected by the Direct Debit and penalty charging issue.

Some of us also found that when we phoned Vodafone their security system no longer recognised our PIN numbers.

It has been chaos!!

3 months ago Vodafone agreed to give me 4 months free usage whilst they sort out their issues.

I have been putting the money that I have been saving on my contract aside and once the 4th month is up I will use that money to pay my contract off.

Vodafone is without a doubt the most chaotic, dishonest and insulting company that I have ever dealt with ( and I am over 70 years old). They seem to have no scruples about ripping off and bullying their customers.

My next problem will be deciding which network to sign up with. The strongest signal here is O2 and the next strongest is 3 Mobile.

Nobody could surely be worse than Vodafone........ ( could they?? )
I've had problems too with my pin suddenly not working. I've never been insulted over the phone in fact everyone on the phone has been nice but nothing happens despite phoning so many times! I think I've phones about 40 times since the end of last year. It's is usually at least 10 calls or more for each issue then there's the live chat etc as well.

I liked them up until I had problems but they don't seem to want to help their customers who are patiently waiting to get things resolved and following all the correct procedures.
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Old 09-06-2016, 18:25
Treelopper
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Good article detailing Vodafone's apalling service on MSE this week
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/pho...&utm_content=7
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Old 09-06-2016, 22:44
Darreninessex
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Vodafone should be made to stop selling phones and all shop staff should be dealing with problems.
Hit them in the pockets and see how quickly they change
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Old 10-06-2016, 00:33
Bentoni
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I spent weeks trying to get Wi-Fi calling to work on my iPhone SE, and now I just give up.

Also my contract account is in credit, but unable to make outgoing calls, all they can say is that my account should be up and running within 15 mins .. Then 24 hours .. Another 24 hours .. Another 5 days ... finally they said my account looks fine at their end, it must be the handset .. However, when I use another sim on my phone, it works fine. I fed up and asked for pac code. The company is useless ...

I'll cancel my other line as soon as the contract is up ..
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Old 09-07-2016, 19:15
Everything Goes
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Vodafone tops complaints list again

January and March of 2016. Vodafone received 29 complaints per every 100,000 customers, down from 32 in the previous quarter. Looks like Vodafone will stay top of the list for some time to come.

http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/news/c...mpaign=Q1-2016

http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/news/in...portagain.aspx
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Old 12-07-2016, 08:40
japitts
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When I made a written complaint around November 2015 about WiFi Calling not working on my line, they just ignored it. Never heard back from them about that letter. They sorted it out two weeks later and after calling them many times. It was also random, I think it might have fixed itself.
Sorry for bumping an old thread, but in the interests of balance I've recently had some problems with a faulty local legacy-OUK site which their CS were useless in escalating. During my attempts to report it, I'd emailed their Exec Office and wrote to the complaints address - I've heard nothing back thus far and am not expecting one.

Admittedly I asked some potentially awkward questions in both complaints, but even so it would have been nice to at least be acknowledged. The problem is now resolved, but I know for a fact their CS process had nothing to do with that.

I'd agree with all the other comments about VF's corporate culture etc, and finbaar's post on 4th April seems entirely fair.
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