Arrears shown on PAYG account. All enquiries hit dead end

[vodkaphonejill]

I have a PAYG a/c, with a Big Value Bundle. Prior to that I had an ordinary PAYG.

My dashboard tells me I am in arrears of £452.91, and it went up by £50 on the day I started making enquiries about it. I've tried Customer Service several times, Complaints 3 times, and visited my local Vodafone shop twice. Everyone says I don't owe anything, but the dashboard clearly states that my "account is in arrears" and when I click through to "make payment" the debt is given as £452.91. No one can explain it. They've checked back to the beginning of my account in 2014, checked both my postal addresses - they are adamant I do NOT owe money - I agree - but the website says I do. I cannot ignore this but Vodafone don't seem interested and won't give me any explanation. I tried online chat but it never loads on my browser (tried Firefox and Chrome). The phone lines have been uniformly appalling - mostly ending with cut offs, and no one has followed up despite promising to do so. No one can answer the question "Why does my dashboard say I am £452.91 in arrears on a PAYG account?"

[vodkaphonejill]

I've now checked that payment page - after jiggling around with the various options, pay full amount, pay lesser amount, pay with existing card, pay with a new card etc. the Make Payment button goes live again from grey to red. If I get really fed up, I set it up to pay 00.01p, on the existing card, and it opened up the "confirm payment details" card payment page. I stopped it there - but it looks to me vey much as it payment is "possible". It gave me a purchase reference ID and asked for my name and card CVC number. I stopped at that point and didn't put the transaction through so I don't know if it would have worked, but it was looking okay up to that point.

So - an important question for Vodafone - HAS anyone paid any money via this portal? Now that WOULD be interesting. Because that would be money that Vodafone weren't entitled to. Where would it go? How would the customer get it back? Would they ever know? Vodafone have up to now told me it doesn't matter because "the payment button was greyed out". But that clearly isn't true. Because it doesn't STAY greyed out when you actually try to pay. And why shouldn't you pay - it says "you are in arrears". So many people WILL pay. BIG PROBLEM!

[LDT44]

Payment IS possible, although I have not gotten that far. All option selections are active, nothing 'greyed out'. My chat agent also asked did I pay, to which I responded "No way. I am well acquainted with potential scams !!"

Weblink to the payment system appears to be clean, but who knows these days. Vodafone is notoriously slow in back end fixes to systemic problems, possibly due to the vast amount of outsourcing they use to get jobs done. It should be relatively easy to block all PAYG accounts from showing 'arrears' notifications IMHO as a (former) technologist with an overseas operator.

[vodkaphonejill]

As the OP on this thread, can confirm that now both my wife's and my a/cs no longer show any arrears so I didn't have the chance to pay 1p of the arrears as a test - but it was ready to take credit card details when I experimentally started a dummy run. It looks to me as if they are expending hours of customer time, and customer service staff time, and complaints staff time, and shop staff time, to deal with each customer on an individual basis - as you rightly say - it would be a lot quicker to deal with the systems problem but either they don't want to or can't do that - which reflects VERY badly on their competence and priorities. But this IS a systems problem - and what worries me is whether behind it all there is a data breach/security issue that they simply want to cover up. But I doubt any mainstream tech journalists will cover THAT angle.

But I wish they would. Vodafone are telling customers they are in arrears, and it would appear that they are ready to let us pay money to deal with those arrears. That reminds me of the crime known as fraud - and it certainly makes me think about it. Surely that should worry Vodafone?

[bubblefish]

i had same problem just got mine fixed - it was a bit stressful but its now gone - if you want to do what i did

Pay as you go account in arrears: Problem solved

I had same problem as alot of others my payg account showed I had £130 in arrears - never had debt on payg before - its now been fixed so beware its a bit of hassle this is what I had to do  caused me a bit of stress:

• Raised a complaint using Martin Lewis 'Resolver' complaints from that website
• Then I got 2/3 phone calls from the general call centre - they didnt understand  much
• Then I raised it with  the 'thisismoney.co.uk' site  (Daily Mail)
• Then i got a phone call from Vfone Directors office - so now I was getting somewhere
• I now dont have any arrears - BUT it was a bit stressful as they didnt warn me but they had to reset my online account - and delete the old one - I wasnt warned about this and so I was made aware when loads of texts started coming in saying account web packs cancelled etc etc. So I sent another email and got a call later - explaining what they had to do - They said it was a problem with my account - I said doubt it as many other people have the problem anyway - they told me to go to the vfone account on a certain day and instead of logging in I had to register my phone again  and create a new password - well it worked - still on same phone number and I still have my web pack and vfamily group and there is no arrears alert at the top of my account page.

So I just wanted to let anyone know if its doing your nut in trying to speak to the call centre - maybe try what I did above but just beware of what they had to do.

[vodkaphonejill]

Mine eventually got fixed without that hassle and they did admit it was a system issue not an individual a/c problem. Now to see how they get on with my husband's a/c.

[bubblefish]

Oh right you got yours sorted without all the hassle I had to go through - well done

[LDT44]

Have an identical indication, for a lower value. No way it can be a genuine billing as PAYG is an advance payment for all services. An online 'chat' with an agent confirmed this situation, and was told "Its a technical glitch and please do not worry you do not need to make any payment as you are on pay as you go services. The team is working on it and soon the alert will disappear."

That is not particularly reassuring, based on a long history of other events, too boring to discuss here.