Horrendous Pre-Order Experience & Credit Rating Damaged

[judgejohn82]

I am posting on here in the vain hope that I may get a reply from someone at Vodafone, given that the formal complaint I made via online form has been ignored to date.

On 12th September, I logged onto the Vodafone site to pre-order an iPhone 6 Plus phone. I selected a £53.50 per month tarriff and entered all of my details, and got an email back at 9.08am (8 minutes after pre-orders opened) confirming my order. I arranged to pick the phone up on release day at my local Vodafone store in London and thought that the process would have been seamless from here on.

I received further communications confirming my order had been confirmed, so expected to receive it on the Friday as initially told. Then, at 6.46pm on Thursday 18th September, I received an email telling me my pre-order was delayed (barely 12 hours before I was due to collect it). I was understandably annoyed given that I must have been one of the first people to order the phone. On Monday 22nd, I got a text message to say my order was still delayed and had not been received from the manufacturer, which angered me further. I looked on the Vodafone website and found that although the 6 Plus was out of stock, the iPhone 6 was in fact in stock in my chosen size of 128GB. I called Customer Service and, after a wait of over half an hour, I finally spoke to a lady called Elaf (surname removed for security). I told her that I would like to cancel my pre-order and that I intended to order the iPhone 6 instead. She informed me I could not change my order, but she did cancel it for me.

Immediately after the call, I went onto the Vodafone site and ordered an in stock iPhone 6. I again received an email confirming my order. The next day, I was shocked and dismayed to receive an email informing me that my order had been declined, stating:-

"We're afraid you've not met our credit criteria this time - so we're unable to process your order. We've not taken any payment for your order.

For more information on your credit status we recommend you contact Experian - here are some details below. In the meantime, you can still join us as a Pay as you go customer"

I found this ridiculous as I have an impeccable credit rating and was accepted for the initial contract less than a fortnight before. I sent off a formal complaint, which was not dealt with in the 48 hour timescale promised so I am hoping to get a reply here.

Worryingly, I tried to take out a contract with a 3rd party today and was declined, leading me to the conclusion that Vodafone have somehow negatively impacted on my credit score which is ridiculous. I have never in my life been declined a mobile phone contract with any company.

All I wanted was to take out a contract with Vodafone worth well over £1000 over 2 years, and now it appears I am unable to take out a contract with anyone, and all down to Vodafone's incompetence.

Being a long time former personal customer and working for a company which has 12,000 handsets on contract with Vodafone, I find this completely unacceptable. If I do not receive a suitable response to this, I will be taking it to the relevant supervisory bodies.

[Ridgeback_UK]

I'd suggest checking out your credit report on Experian with their free 1 month trial, just remember to cancel before the month is up or else you'll be charged a subscription. This will let you see your report and should shine light on why you are being declined due to your credit score.

[Phil]

Hi judgejohn82, 

We aren't able to cancel pre-orders outside of the initial first hour when it was placed.  I believe your future orders will have been declined because of the recent order that was placed.  

We'll take a look into it fot you though - Please contact us here.

Thanks, 

Phil

[sjfafc170492]

Well that's a lie

[judgejohn82]

Hi Phil,

I will contact you privately as requested, but the pre order was cancelled and I was given a reference number confirming the cancellation and also an email.

[davidjearly]

Shocking experience, but I'm hardly surprised by Vodafone anymore. For what it's worth, the Vodafone employee above is blatantly lying. I was able to cancel my iPhone 6 Plus pre-order 8 days after the order was placed. 

I'd check with Experian, and raise a formal complaint with the CEOs office and then Ofcom.

[judgejohn82]

Hi David,

Yes unfortunately it seems to be the norm these days. I know it's a blatant lie about not being able to cancel pre-orders as the whole point was that I DID cancel it, and received both a text and email confirming this cancellation.

I have sent a formal complaint to the CEO's office but will not hold my breath, given that all of my other complaints have just been ignored and swept under the carpet. I was advised to contact the team via a contact form on here but, unsurprisingly, have not received a response (again).

[Retired-Sarah]

Hi everyone,

Once an order’s been placed, there’s a one hour window in which we’re able to cancel orders.

Depending on the status of your order, would depend on if we can cancel it out of this one hour window.

For future reference, if anyone wants to cancel an order out of this, please call for further assistance.

Thanks,

Sarah 

[judgejohn82]

Just in case anyone is following this thread, I finally got a response today saying:

"Your contract was rejected due to negative credit score.

In this case you can contact our team on: (Removed not publically available)

I then checked with Equifax, who said my rating was 484 and classed as "Excellent". I contacted the email address provided only to get an automatic reply stating: 

"Please be aware that we no longer use this email address so we will not get your message. For details on how to contact Vodafone please refer to the Vodafone website www.vodafone.co.uk"

You honestly couldn't make it up!

[davidjearly]

I feel for you, honestly. Vodafone, as demonstrated by the responses in this thread alone, are utterly hopeless and a complete shambles of an organisation. 

It's probably not your credit rating that's caused them to decline this, but rather just the fact that they've cancelled your order so recently. The repeated order attempts won't be helping. I know it's not particularly useful, but I'd take the opportunity to walk away into another store (or better yet, go sim-free with a cheap monthly data sim), and buy elsewhere.

I will never be signing up with Vodafone after this.