I switched to Vodafone – can they refuse to honour my £10 voucher?
QI’ve got an old Nokia phone with a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) subscription from Talkmobile. The company is stopping this service and advised me to switch to Vodafone, who, it claimed, would give me a free £10 voucher. I changed and was told the free SIM card would be preloaded with £10, but there’s no balance on it, plus I’ve lost £8.60, which was still on my Talkmobile account. Vodafone says it can’t help with either the £10 or the unused balance. Talkmobile says it’s too late for me to claim back money on my old account. Can you help? Geoffrey Squires
AYes, we should be able to help. We think the problem is a result of Vodafone taking on Talkmobile’s customer accounts, following its purchase of the company in 2015. Over the next couple of months Talkmobile will be closing its services. The PAYG service Geoffrey was on ends on 31 August.
Geoffrey wasn’t tied to a contract, so the £10 Vodafone has offered was a sweetener to entice him to move. As a sales promotion, this is binding under various laws, including the Consumer Rights Act and advertising regulations.
As for the credit held on his Talkmobile PAYG account, Geoffrey can choose whether to receive it as a refund, or tell Vodafone to add it to his new SIM card. Mobile providers ending a service can’t hold on to customers’ credit. If this happens you should contact Ofcom (0300 123 3333 or 020 7981 3040) so it knows what the companies are up to. To get money back you may need to take your case to the Ombudsman that the company belongs to – either CISAS ( www.cedr.com/cisas) or The Ombudsman Services ( www. ombudsman-services.org).
We’ve passed Geoffrey’s details on to Vodafone, explaining that it needs to find a solution quickly. It told us it is trying to contact Geoffrey, so we will update you if it resolves his complaint.
In Issue 495, page 24, you gave a ‘Buy It!’ recommendation on to Chillblast’s Fusion Hubble PC (pictured). I bought ught it and it’s a beast of a machine (so your ur review was a goodd callll – patat yourselves on the back).
But I had a few teething problems, all of my own making. Having mostly built my own computers in the past, I just couldn’t wait to have a look under the Fusion Hubble’s bonnet, and that’s when the pr problems started. I wowondered what ma make of SSD was fitt fitted. And I looked arou around the BIOS becaus because I’d never seen one like it be before.
I should have left it alone, but the guys at Chillblast were just so helpful, and responded very quickly to my emails. They even answered questions not related to the purchase of the Fusion Hubble computer.
So now, should I just keep my nose out of the PC? Probably.