Hello there,
I have a contract that is being paid for with my father's direct debit, Vodafone had been taking out the £17 a month automatically with no problems at all, up until now. My contract was up May this year, and when I told my father this he obviously didn't realise that you have to continue paying your contract even when it's up. Not long after this, I recieved a text from Vodafone telling me that I had an outstanding balance on my account and it needed to be paid of otherwise my services would be retricted. I immediately realised that my father had canceled his card details that paid for the bill as he thought he no longer had to pay for it and I would need to re-enter them in order to pay the outstanding balance off. This is exactly what I did and I thought I had the issue resolved and now Vodafone would continue to automatically take out the money for the bill. But they have not. Today I got the same text saying that there was an outstanding balance to be paid off and, like last time, it said they would have to retrict my services until it was paid off. At first I was a little confused as I thought that they took the money out automatically, but then I thought that maybe I had messed up and failed to tick a box of some sort saying that I agree for it to be taken out automatically, or I just plain forgot to save the card details for future payments. When I got this text I was in a place without WiFi, and I didn't want to use up any more 4G as I had already been charged an extra £6 for going over the amount I was entitled to. However, when I got home I saw that I had been called 3(!) times by Vodafone so that they could discuss the restrictions that were going to be placed on my services, I then quickly reacted by loading up MyVodafone and getting my father's card ready to put in the details so that I could pay off the amount required (don't worry I told him that I obviously didn't save the card details and I needed to enter them in again, I did this all with his knowledge don't worry!). However, when I loaded up MyVodafone I saw that the card details for payments HAD been saved and for some reason they bill hadn't been paid for automatically. I then saw the bright orange text saying I had an outstanding amount of just over £21, so I pressed the 'Pay Now' button, entered my father's security number for his card, and I was told I no longer had an outstanding balance. Now I thought I had definately had this entire thing resolved and no restrictions would have to be dished out. But no. I then looked at my phone and I now had a Voicemail from Vodafone about my account and I was urged to call back 46120 ASAP. I was completely baffled at this as I has just paid off the outstanding balance, Then I thought that it would take a few minutes for the payment to go through and it would be over, but still I am uneasy. This has happened twice now and I was all because there was a misunderstanding between my father and I when I told him my contract was up, thus leading him to believe he no longer had to pay the bill for my contract and cancelling his card details for the bill payments. I DO NOT want this to happen EVERY MONTH. The next bill payment is in 9 days, and I'm quite sure my father wont want big chunks of money coming out of his account like this every month. Is there some place I can make sure that the money comes out automatically? I refuse to contact Vodafone as these late payments are due to THEIR failure to take the money out automatically and I know from experience that discussing this sort of thing over their customer service line is next to impossible as the staff have no idea what to do, and the staff in their shops are as equally badly trained and also have no idea what they're doing. Any advice?
