[quanneur]

I'm absolutely furious with the way Vodafone has treated me recently, a 5 year customer who spends £50 - £100 every month with them. I recently went on holiday to the USA and while there Vodafone disconnected my line without telling me. Upon getting in touch to find out what was up, they told me I owed £900 and they wouldn't reconnect my line until I paid up! That's right, it's a proper extortion racket-- pay up or never dial again.

Apparently I had several hundred pounds in data roaming charges which is bizarre, seeing as I barely check my emails while away. Clearly Vodafone are charging as much as possible so that they can fleece holidaymakers while abroad. Nice.

Since I've been back Vodafone have treated me terribly. I spent 2 hours on the phone today getting bounced from department to department with no one able to have a satisfactory conversation with me, in fact some of the people I spoke with were down right rude, threatening to trash my credit history and insisting that they can charge me like this with no advance notice or ever properly disclosing their data roaming charges. What rubbish.

I've been tweeting about this and it's suprising to learn how many others have had similar problems. Thanks a lot, Vodafone!

[Ben]

Hi quanneur, welcome to Talk3G.

I've had problems with roaming data charges with Vodafone also. First things first, check what the charges should have been - I think you'll be surprised at how expensive they are, but make sure what they're claiming is actually possible. In my own case Vodafone had charged me incorrectly for usage in Spain, applying the standard per-MB rate instead of the discounted day rate, meaning my bill was thousands of pounds instead of a hundred or so! They didn't disconnect me either, they let it ride. I did get it resolved in the end, persistence was key.

Pleading to an agents sense of decency is probably your best bet. Vodafone doesn't want to be perceived as unfair or heavy handed; if you've been genuinely caught out then you should play on the fact that the data you used cost Vodafone a fraction of what it cost you, so could they share the burden of the charges with you on this instance and you'll be more careful in future... (I know, I know). You could also plead that, when your average spend is a tenth of the roaming charges, they should never have allowed the account to go so far into the red. If you have a smartphone, be sure to mention that you didn't know some of the data activity was taking place, and, if you bought the handset from Vodafone, that Vodafone didn't tell you how to stop the background data activity from happening while you were out of the country (therefore you didn't know some of the charges were even taking place).

@vodafoneuk on Twitter should also be able to help you.

[Hands0n]

Hi quanneur, I would add just a little to the above advice.

Before you next contact Vodafone's customer services just take a few minutes out to prepare yourself mentally. By that, I mean write down a list of what it is you exactly want to achieve from the call itself. That will prevent you from being sidetracked. Also, put on your best smile when making the phone call - really, a smile can be heard down a phone line. My reason for saying this is that the call centre operator will pick up on it - and they have to deal with hundreds of angry people daily so are quite jaded by the experience. If you suddenly appear on the call, sounding completely calm, collected and reasonable (no matter how boiling mad you are inside) they'll more than likely be more sympathetic towards you than if you're ranting at them. Besides which, it is not that individual call agent's fault - Vodafone's systems can be frustrating in the extreme.

If you get no joy with the individual ask if they can give you the escalation process and contact details. Really, if you're getting nowhere with the individual just finish the call calmly and dial in again - you'll likely find someone who is a bit more experienced and savvy. In the past I've had to re-call three times before landing a call centre agent who knew his stuff precisely and got me sorted out on-line, there and then! Really...

The Web Relations folk on the Vodafone forum and Twitter (as Ben has suggested) are really good people, and have the inside contacts to find you targeted help. And you're going to get someone on-shore via that team rather than randomly landing in an off-shore overspill call centre. Seriously, if you end up on one of those just hang up and dial again. Off-shore call centres are a waste of time for the customer, rarely understanding the problem, and certainly with a massive cultural gap that has a different relationship between customer and corporation!

Hope some of this helps you.