Incompetence reigns supreme

[tighty]

Im writing here as I can’t stand talking to any of the foreign CS agents anymore as they don’t understand what I am saying and their statements don’t make sense (see later)

I gave notice on my 2 accounts on the 27 Dec 16 and received my PAC codes.

On Jan 17 I received a bill via txt message for £97.51. I was shocked and checked online and found my bill stated a billing period of 21 Jan to 20 Feb 17. Fine that made sense as my discount had ended so I was paying full price – BUT I was leaving on the 27 Jan anyway so I would pay a reduced bill

On the 24 Jan I moved both numbers to another network. On the 25th I called to settle my account. The CS agent tried to charge me the full £97.51 until I explained that I had left and he put me on hold then came back and said it was £12.71 to settle my account.

I received a txt today telling me I hadn’t payed my bill. I called, spoke to 4 different agents who all gave me different answers from one telling me….and I quote

“you have £75 on your account which will be added back to your account within 7 days” (what???)

To

“your account is closed and you will receive no further communications from us”

To

“ you still owe £97.51 as this bill is for Jan”. I asked her to confirm what date the billing period was and she said “31 Dec to 31 Jan”

I have no idea what is going on, no one has a clue, everyone gives a different answer. I need someone not incompetent to sort out this nonsense. This is one of the reasons I left, complete incompetence from the whole company – an embarrassment.

[Colleen]

@Fedupeveryday I'm very sorry to hear about the experience you've had. 

So we can offer further help, I've sent you a private message with details on how to get in touch.

.

[tighty]

The way they do business is weird. They dont generate you a final bill (as every other company ive used does) when you leave. They expect you to pay as normal and wait for a refund. I was on a 60% discount for 2 years and my monthly bill for 2 accounts was £38. However as the 2 year contract ended on the 15th and 24th (slightly different dates) i then jumped onto the full rate that amounted to a monthly bill of £97.51. So when they generated this bill they expected me to pay it as normal even though im leaving.

When i called to settle my account the CS agent worked out my final bill and it was £12.71 ( 9 days charge for one number and zero days for the other contract) - what i paid.

It seems that vodafone are still chasing me for the balance of that amount (£97.51-£12.71 = £84.80)  just so they can refund it to me at a later date.

It took 3 phone calls over 3 days, speaking to 7 different agents and managers (6 of which struggled to formulate coherent sentences), totalling roughly 3hrs of my time. Not sure its fixed now but we will see.

The problem with filling in a form on here via private message is that imagine how long it would take me to type the issue out!!!!

[forumfairy]

There is reasoning behind the way they produce the final bill:

"After you've been disconnected, your final bill could contain the following details:

Line rental (or a credit, if you’ve paid for rental you won’t now use)
Usage charges
Extra services
Early exit fees (if you're leaving before the end of your minimum commitment period, or without giving us 30 days' notice)

If you've recently been abroad, it's possible that any charges you’ve incurred there will take a couple of months to appear on our billing system – so you could receive bills from us for up to two months after disconnecting."

Bearing in mind that a number of customers will have usage charges (either from the UK or abroad) its probably more effective to wait for the last bill to be generated to ensure all the costs have been reported, rather than an agent estimating each time and possibly not having sight of any costs which may not have hit the system yet and would have to be recovered at a later point.

I do understand your experience hasn't been the best and can fully appreciate your frustration with it, of course. I guess they have to try to produce a system which covers the majority of scenarios though, albeit this wont work 100% of the time. Sorry to hear you've had such issues. 🙂

[forumfairy]

"I gave notice on my 2 accounts on the 27 Dec 16 and received my PAC codes.
On Jan 17 I received a bill via txt message for £97.51. I was shocked and checked online and found my bill stated a billing period of 21 Jan to 20 Feb 17. Fine that made sense as my discount had ended so I was paying full price – BUT I was leaving on the 27 Jan anyway so I would pay a reduced bill
On the 24 Jan I moved both numbers to another network. On the 25th I called to settle my account. The CS agent tried to charge me the full £97.51 until I explained that I had left and he put me on hold then came back and said it was £12.71 to settle my account."

Going by the above, the reason they are still contacting you for this is that the January bill has not been adjusted by the advisor you spoke to. If a bill has been produced for £97.51 but a payment of £12.71 was made then the billing system will still be seeing an underpayment of the balance. As your bills are produced on the 17th of the month (by the above information) then the billing system wouldn't have produced your final bill until 17th February and any line rental credit would normally have been applied on that bill (being your final). If you cancelled on 27 December you would be giving 30 days notice so as far as the billing system is concerned when your bill was produced on 17th January you were still an active customer. The system would only reflect your cancellation on the 17th February bill. As it stands, the only way that the system would be showing this account as settled is if the advisor had credited the remainder of your bill - given the way the system works it's unlikely they would have been able to do so. By the sounds of things, this hasn't happened and it isn't updating until your 17th February bill. (Hope this makes sense.)

[tighty]

I've noticed you jumped on the only aspect that you can answer..... but you've missed the point though.

why didnt the original agent tell me this on the 25th when I called to settle?

why didn't the next 6 agents explain this to me?

why did I receive 3 different answers in one call?

I shall not be replying again.... unless they still haven't sorted my account. thanks for reading and offering help but it shouldn't have come to this.

[forumfairy]

Sorry, I do agree with you that the agents should have given you the correct information - I'm not disputing that at all.  Didn't mean for that impression to come across, was just giving some information based on experience. Apologies if this was not required. 🙂