Roaming Incoming Calls with zero spend limit on Unlimited Max Plan

[r_mcphee]

Has anyone else noticed that you cannot receive incoming calls from UK while roaming in an included country when your spend limit is set to £0?

I have spent 5 hours on the tech chat with Vodafone and they all but refuse to accept this is the case.

I was not receiving calls while roaming in USA, so I increased my spend limit from £0 to £10 and suddenly calls started to come through, until eventually an incoming call was cut off and I received a text saying I had reached my £10 spend limit - yet there were (and customer services confirmed ) no out of plan charges.  All further incoming calls fro  UK were blocked until I increased the spend limit to £20.

Please, if you experience this register a complaint with Vodafone, I suspect I am not alone, yet Vodafone tell me I am!

Good luck getting it resolved.

[AnnS]

The only way this is going to get raised as a case and investigated @r_mcphee is to drop the Social Team a message through social channels with a link to the thread here: Contact Us 

If you are having this problem it will also be affecting many other customers who are roaming with the spending cap activated and wondering why they are not receiving the calls they were expecting.

This is something that has been a problem for quite some time as you have also mentioned this on this previous thread https://forum.vodafone.co.uk/t5/Pay-monthly/Spending-limit-reached-no-previous/m-p/2711172#M68000 where the customer was having the same problem.

[Getafix]

I travel regularly to USA/Canada/Kenya.

I have Global Plus Roaming and spendlimit on all 3 lines is set to £0, but never faced that issue.

Have you checked you Future Bill? Are there any charges on there?

[r_mcphee]

That is interesting to hear that on the Global Plus Roaming they can make it work.

I have just checked it again today and any call from UK while in Los Angeles with the spend cap set to £0 is blocked.

It appears that the only difference is that this happens on the Unlimited Max Plan.

Everything else appears to work, data, messaging and outgoing calls are OK, it is only the incoming calls which are blocked with the spend cap set to £0.

[r_mcphee]

To answer your question about charges on a future bill, Vodafone have made a mess of my account by resetting my account, so there is a raft of incorrect charges on that (which exceed £10) and yet the incoming calls start to work when the spend cap is raised from £0 to £10.

[Amanda]

I can see we've been in touch over social media about this @r_mcphee - please do keep the thread updated and let us know how you get on. 

[r_mcphee]

This issue has been raised with Customer Relations and is being investigated.  A possible solution was attempted on Monday 5th July, and I have returned to USA to check if it has worked.  It has not, again I find that with the Unlimited Max Plan if the spend cap is £0 incoming calls from UK are blocked while in USA. If I raise the spend cap to £10 incoming calls are unblocked, but I suspect they will be blocked again (as before) if I receive enough calls to reach the £10 (free) limit in the background. I can confirm that I am not being charged for them, but they are being blocked by the spend cap. I will be speaking to Customer Relations again on Saturday 9th July to advise them that the latest step has not been successful.

[r_mcphee]

Having chased this again, Customer Relations finally admitted that having a £0 spend limit causes issues.

There was no offer or suggestion that the cause of the problem would be investigated or resolved. Not a positive outcome.

I was advised that I should set my spend manager limit above £0.  This however does not resolve the issue I encountered where an incoming call was cut off, further incoming calls blocked again and I received a text saying that I had reached the £10 limit, even though there were no charges on the account.

I was told that issue of being cut off was "Considered Resolved" by Vodafone due to all the troubleshooting which had been carried out, yet nothing had been done since the last time calls were blocked.  

Vodafone will not resolve this problem as so few people are encountering it, or so few are reporting it.

Next update will be available on Saturday 16th July 2022 when I test the £10 spend limit with a roaming incoming call from UK to USA to see if that is cut off again and a text sent to me saying I have reached my spend limit for zero cost incoming calls.

[Gemma]

@r_mcphee - thanks for updating the thread. I hope it's now resolved for you.

With you mentioning this is with our Customer Relations team, we’re unable to intervene, although if it bars you again, then please get back in touch with Customer Relations so that this can raised and looked into. 

[anycake]

Hello r_mcphee

Did you ever get this problem sorted with ‘Vodafone’ and the ‘Spend Manager’. I am experiencing a very similar problem as you with 3x numbers but with using the ‘Vodafone Ireland Plus’ addon. I have been using Vodafone and the ‘Vodafone Ireland Plus’ addon for 11x years and the problems only occurred straight after my recent contract renewal. (I can no longer make calls to Ireland when the spend manager is set to zero).

I have been in contact with Vodafone 191 nearly every day for 22 days and no one can resolve the problem. When I escalated the issue to the complaints department, they stated that after their investigation they could not fix the problem. I was offered 2x options via email….. they would release me from my contract or I could go to Ofcom.