Customer Service Policy Error

[colinswood]

There is an absurd rule Vodafone staff feel required to implement that is making a mockery of customer service.

Customers are being denied their rights to exercise the cooling off period for online agreements if they attempt to do so too early….

I ordered a sim on black Friday. A couple of day later I became aware the deal did not include data roaming so I rang up and made a request to cancel. I was asked to call back and make another request to cancel at a later date.

Time went by and charges started appearing on my bank account. I rang up to dispute the charges and am now being told that because my request to cancel was made BEFORE the cancellation period then I am being held to the contract (Vodafone acknowledged that I asked to cancel before dispatch/delivery of the sims).

Surely this flies in the face of what is right / legal?

If Vodafone systems cannot action a timely request to cancel a contract then the duty is on Vodafone to wait and action the cancellation request when they are able to process it, but not rely on a customer to make the request a second time. 

Vodafone staff on the helpline are not empowered to cancel a contract if it is outside the cooling off period. There is some logic to this, but when escalated to customer service management the initial few days directly after the order has been made are included in this time and this stance remains unchanged. 

In view of its dubious legality and the potentially catastrophic effects on customer relationships I can’t imagine such a policy was handed down knowingly. 

If I’m in a position to air my views on this going forward it would be good to be able to say this was just a quirk and was amicably resolved once Vodafone became aware of the issue.

As it stands, I am being charged for a service I have never used and which was cancelled in good time.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on how this might be resolved.

[BandOfBrothers]

Hi @colinswood 

This is from my understanding as a fellow customer. 

A person has a short period of time to be able to cancel a recently raised online order.

A golden hour as it were.

The exception is if the item i.e a phone is on a delay.

After that the items have to be delivered and then returned within the 14 days cooling off period.

Then when a person cancels within the 14 day cooling  off period any relevant charges are refunded by Vodafone.

Vodafone Systems set up the direct debit etc and the account process starts which is why is why sometimes charges appear as billing is pro rata.

https://www.vodafone.co.uk/my-vodafone-account/orders/returns 

The Vodafone Social Media Teams via Facebook messenger or Twitter DM can clarify if you wish.

Please link back to your thread here including your forum username so that you are not having to repeat yourself.

Contact-us-for-account-specific-queries. 

[hrym]

Leaving aside the question of whether an order can be cancelled while it's still being processed (imho that facility should be available, and may even be), did you in fact make the second call, which I assume would have been after the SIM arrived and the account had been set up?

To resolve the specific issue, it would be worth contacting the Social Media team on Facebook or Twitter as there's no account access via the forum.   There should be a record of your calls (unless too much time has elapsed), so they should be able to investigate.

[colinswood]

Unfortunately not. It took me around forty minutes to get through to a human at customer servies the first time, which I was reluctant to repeat. I considered that my request to cancel, prior to the end of the cooling off period was sufficient in and of itself.  I can see now it would have been better to spend the time and make the call but I did not appreciate they would / could disregard my initial request to cancel.

[colinswood · Accepted solution]

To their credit, I've just received an email from Vodafone stating there'll be no further charges, I'll be getting a full refund for existing charges and that they'll be reviewing their processes for cancellations.