No refund after almost three years

[SimonRoots]

This is quite a long story, so I apologise in advance. I ordered (and paid for) a PAYG phone and bundle online, total cost £145, at the end of July 2015. After weeks of waiting and hours of being told by customer support that it would arrive today/tomorrow/within 24hrs/by Friday/etc, I cancelled the order and simply bought the phone in-store. Months later, again after hours and hours wasting my time on chat, email and phone, I spoke to someone in the UK who quite casually admitted that no one had done a thing about my refund despite the order cancellation being logged in the system at the time. She gave me a South African email address. I wrote to it, received confirmation that the refund was in order, and was told I'd receive a phone call within 24hrs from the team responsible for actually processing the payment. This didn't happen, so I emailed again a number of times, none of which received any response. I kept trying right up to the week before I moved overseas to start a new job (having made it very clear that this was the deadline for getting it all sorted out). I'm still overseas and now without my UK number, so my question is, does anyone have any advice? I'm sorely tempted to lodge a small claim against them in the UK courts since I'd at least be awarded interest on the amount which would serve as some kind of compensation for the ridiculous amount of time I wasted being fobbed off. Has anyone gone down this route? Sorry this was such a long post, and thank you for taking the time to read it.

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @SimonRoots

I'm not surprised your unimpressed at this current situation. 

I must say you've been very patient waiting 3 years !

I would certainly look at using the complaints route. again. 

Also if you paid by card then speak with your banks customer services although there might be a time limit. 

We also have a Vodafone Social Media Team who read all posts.

Let them catch up with your thread and bring you in away from the open forum to pass security checks and they'll help you further with this situation im sure. 

[Adam]

HI @SimonRoots quite right, you've been very patient in this situation! We're more than happy to locate your details and get to the bottom of this. I've sent you a private message with details on how to get in touch.

[SimonRoots]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for the reply and PM. Unfortunately a UK mobile number is a required field in the form you sent me to and, as stated in my original post, I no longer have one. I hung onto it as long as was feasible purely in the hope of getting this resolved, but couldn't do so indefinitely. Please advise.

[Mark]

You could add the affected number to the form where a UK number is required. If you do this, please note in the email text this is the account in question and not a contact number.

[SimonRoots]

Thanks, Mark. 

I think I've submitted the form now, but it seems very buggy - it reloaded three times, and redirected to the site's index page after I finally managed to submit it, so I have no way of knowing. 

[Adam]

@SimonRoots You should have received an automated reply almost immediately after submitting the form, this will include a reference number that looks something like this #[12345678].

[SimonRoots]

Thanks for taking the time to read and reply . I'll see what happens with the team here then look at the complaints route again.