I have been a Vodafone customer for around 4 years now, and for the most part of that I have had three phones with your company, which amounts to a tidy sum of income from me on a monthly basis. my first was was destroyed when i was nearly ran over by a car and when I contacted customers services and informed them of my situation at the time i was met with a cold " you did not take our insurance so there is nothing we can do" Which in fairness from a purely buisness point they were correct. and i think i was offered a £10 of my next bill goodwill gesture, which again was from a purely buisness sense a reasonably decent thing to do since there was no "legal" obligation to do so.
Since then however my experience has been nothing short of horrendous, I have had my phones all disconnected even though my bill was paid, i have had credits for other problems created by vodafone ( but on most occasions not applied correctly or not applied to the correct phone ). This causal effect of this being that my credit rating will be adversly affected given that a non payment of my bill has been registered against my name in error on Vodafones part, When I have contacted them about this I am told I have to contact head office and ask them to resolve this, when I did not create the problem in the first place. I have NEVER since since joining Vodafone ever been late in paying my bill.
To add further Insult to injury I contacted vodafone through the live chat today as the login part of the website was down "yet again" and i wanted to check on which day this month my contract ran out. i was then informed that " I can confirm that your contract for this number ends on 11/03/2012 " So I said "iI assume this will be the final bill for this number then ? I was then greeted with " I am sorry, have you scheduled for cancellation by serving us 30 days notice period? "
and " I would like to inform you that if you go through the terms and conditions of the contract its clearly written there that you have to serve us 30 days notice period" Now the problem i have with this is that on not one of the last four times I have contacted Vodafone in regards to my contract end time was I reminded of this, And i am willing to accept that as the user it may legaly my responsibility to be aware of and make sure I enforce my right and obligations under the terms of the contract.
Surely someone at some point might have realised from my persistent phone calls to check and re-check my contract expiry date that just maybe I was not fully aware of that clause/ part of the contract. Which is obviously to Vodafone advantage as it essentialy turns a 24 month contract into a handy 25 month one in my case.
The down side of this being I am now taking the decision to take my buisness elsewhere as of monday I will be looking to go to my local store and pay of my remaining cointracts in full and switch to another provider for all three of my telephones.
