Vodafone account not closed with credit agencies

[chistery]

I have searched and a number of people have the same issue but don't seem to have a resolution.

I closed an account on 4th April and it's still showing as active with Clearscore and Noddle. Online chat say the account is inactive and closed. 

Clearscore shows the last update from Vodafone was 15th May, so it should be closed now. Any suggestions as to how to get Vodafone to do this? TIA!

[hrym]

As this is a public forum, there's no account access here.   However, if you drop a note to the Social Media team on Facebook or Twitter, they can investigate for you.   There is a Credit File Support team who will have access to the full account history and it's worth asking for this to be escalated to them.   They'll be able to resolve all the outstanding issues and may also be able to help with yoru credit history.

[chistery]

I do wonder why Vodafone social media staff haven't fixed this issue yet. My last three contracts have had this issue and had to complain to get the account closed properly each time.

Do the staff just not have the ability to raise long term issues within Vodafone, or is Vodafone just completely inept at fixing problems with their systems?

The customer service staff just continue spouting any old guff without having any ability to raise it with the right team. As it's such a common problem, why can't the front line staff actually know what they need to do to fix it instead of irritating customers with being completely useless?

[hrym]

Normally this is something that would be resolved by Credit File Support, and the Social Media team should be able to escalate it to them.  They're generally very good and I'm not sure why that hasn't happened.

[chistery]

Hi Hrym, if you're talking to me, I'm more wondering why it happens so frequently. It's clearly a process issue at Vodafone. The Social Media staff may get it fixed, but they should be raising the fact it happens with so many people all the time, it's not just a one off. Why have they not managed to raise it to someone to actually get the problem resolved for all?

[hrym]

Do we know if this is solely confined to Vodafone, or does it affect other credit providers as well?  It would be reasonable to assume that the process is automated - there are too many accounts for it to be manual.   I've seen something similar happen the other way round - an initial check for an oline application wasn't made (confirmed by obtaining the credit history) and Vodafone's system defaulted to "computer says no".

In that case, at a busy time, the link must have failed, so it's possible that account closure has similar issues - a credit agency could be temporarily offline, overwhelmed or has simply updated a system and the Vodafone system has yet to be adapted.   That would be the same as the issues that happened with Carphone Warehouse a few years ago.  (In that case, I think, it was the CPW system that required an update).

The obvious solution would be for a method of confirmation to be put in place, but I don't know if that's possible.   You say it happens to "many people", but do we know how many, particularly as a proportion of the total number of accounts being closed at any one time?  It could be that, as with all systems, there are occasional failures that have to be mopped up manually when they come to notice.  I suspect that most people's credit scores can accomodate the odd account showing as open without it ever being a problem and therefore coming to light.

[Rachaxtenhiggs]

Hi - thanks for your feedback. How do I contact them on Twitter or Facebook? 

thanks

[Mark]

You can reach us via either of the links in my message @Rachaxtenhiggs. I'm sure we'll get everything straightened out for you 😊

[Mark]

I'm sorry to see there's been a problem with the closure of your account @Rachaxtenhiggs. From your message it looks like your issue was dealt with by our Customer Relations team. Did they provide a resolution to this problem? If so, I'm assuming this was to confirm closure of your account on all the agencies we report to. When we do this, it can take up to 30 working days for these changes to be visible via an online profile. If it's been longer than 30 working days since we did this and it's not been updated, pop us a private message through Facebook at Vodafone UK, or on Twitter using the handle @VodafoneUK and we'll take a look 👀