So sorry...

. . . TO JULIE

IN a statement Vodafone said: ‘We’re sorry for the issues we have caused Mrs Engineer and for our lack of speed in resolving them.

‘We’ve now carried out a comprehensive investigation of Mrs Engineer’s problems with her account and we can see that there have been a number of human errors on our part.

‘We have been in touch with her to apologise and to reassure her that we have put these issues right. We have also put measures in place to prevent this happening again.’

The two phantom payments she had been making turned out to be for an old phone number Vodafone had failed to cancel on request and for a new connection created in error when Julie upgraded her phone.

The company will also reset her account and help Julie register again online.

. . . TO ALL

IN a message to other frustrated customers, Vodafone told The Mail on Sunday: ‘We continue to offer our profound apologies to customers affected by the aftermath of the IT system changes we made in 2015.

‘Last year we made a huge investment in identifying and fixing IT system issues which were impacting customers, hiring hundreds of new UKbased call centre personnel and giving more than 190,000 hours of training to improve how we identify and resolve individual customer problems.

‘This focus has meant we are getting better at handling and resolving customers’ issues fairly, consistently and in a timely manner, leading to a 50 per cent reduction in customer complaints over the year.

‘Our priority this year is to build on this positive momentum and make our customer services best in class.’