Another fine mess for Vodafone boss
Victory for MoS campaign as watchdog acts on phone giant’s woeful customer service. Finally – after a fiasco worthy of Laurel and Hardy – it is hit with a £4.6 MILLION penalty in...
VODAFONE was last week fined £4.6million by communications regulator Ofcom for catastrophically failing customers. The record fine is vindication of a one-year investigation by The Mail on Sunday into woeful customer service at the mobile phone giant.
But complaints CONTINUE to surface.
Over the past 12 months, hundreds of Vodafone customers have contacted us complaining about the company’s incompetence. Many of these cases were passed on to Ofcom as it investigated the company, culminating in the multi-million pound fine.
In issuing its fine, Ofcom said that between January 2014 and November 2015, Vodafone ‘provided its frontline customer service staff with insufficient and ambiguous information’ on when to treat a customer call as a complaint.
Here, we speak to some of the customers who were let down badly by a mobile provider which repeatedly refused to listen. We also explain how to put an end to the horror of a simple mobile contract wreaking havoc with your personal life and personal finances.
PERSONAL CONSEQUENCES
WHEN Philip Bailey’s granddaughter lost her mobile phone he asked Vodafone to disconnect it. But the company cut off his mobile instead.
The consequence of this error, besides the considerable time it took to return his phone to working order, was that he faced the worry of being uncontactable by hospital nurses as his wife, Melanie, underwent surgery. She has terminal cancer.
The couple could not afford for him to take time off work, but he wanted to ensure he was only a phone call away should anything go wrong and he needed to rush to her bedside. It was literally a lifeline.
All he wanted from his mobile network was acknowledgement of its error and an apology. ‘They weren’t bothered,’ says Philip.
This is one of the more heartbreaking stories The Mail on Sunday has heard from Vodafone customers and one of the reasons why we forwarded complaints to Ofcom.
Others have told us about the horror of being chased for debts they did not owe.
Their credit records were tarnished, resulting in them missing out on mortgages, loans and the chance to buy their first or next home. They wasted countless hours speaking to people in contact centres around the world who repeatedly failed to help them.
We heard from a new mum who was harassed by an overly friendly overseas call centre worker. After her husband complained to Vodafone, the employee accused the young mum of behaving like ‘Queen Elizabeth’.
Customers have shed tears, some have raged while others have suffered stress and anxiety. All who contacted us had one thing in common – their voices went unheard by Vodafone. They were stuck on a complaints merry-go-round, forced to repeat grievances because employees were unable to resolve errors.
Customers were told that complaints would be ‘escalated’ and rectified. But often they found themselves back at square one.
The company also failed to direct unhappy customers to an independent mediator, such as the Communications Ombudsman, which could have intervened on their behalf.
At least one of our readers was told there was no way for him to raise a complaint at all. David Short begged to make an official com-
plaint while chatting to customer agents via Vodafone’s instant web chat. He was told there was no email address and to complain further he would need to call Vodafone or visit a nearby store. There was no mention of an Ombudsman. This breaches rules laid down by Ofcom.
A LONG LIST OF PROBLEMS
NEW mobile numbers were randomly added to accounts, while others were wrongly deleted and cut off. Pay-asyou-go credit top-ups were not added, causing more than 10,000 customers to lose £150,000 over the course of 17 months.
Bills were sent out for contracts that customers say they had cancelled within the agreed cooling-off period.
Demands for unpaid bills were made even when a customer was up to date with payments. Vodafone recorded them as late payers on credit records, referred to by lenders when customers apply for deals. These false marks on records meant customers were rejected for loans and mortgages.
Lee Jenkinson, 25, is a waiter living in Newcastle. He has been working all hours so he can build a deposit for a first home.
When he started saving he had no credit rating so built it up by using a credit card and repaying the balance on time. But this year Vodafone told him he owed money – despite leaving the network two years ago and cancelling his account. The company has taken around £500 from Lee’s account over 17 months since he thought he had ceased to be a customer and damaged his credit score in the process.
Lee says: ‘The company has destroyed my credit rating, which I had been working to improve so that I could apply for a mortgage and make something of my life. This multinational company seems to think it can just take my money as it pleases.’
Michael Owen, 74, moved away from Vodafone but continued to receive outstanding invoices even though he had paid a ‘final bill’. He was left in ‘stalemate’ with the company.
Jennifer Lovell, who is expecting her first child, has spent the past year complaining to Vodafone about a mobile contract added to her existing account which she made clear she did not want when the deal was offered.
Since then her own mobile phone connection has been cut off and demands for unpaid bills have been referred to a debt collection agency.
Jennifer, 27, from Teignmouth, Devon, says: ‘I have endured huge amounts of stress, worry and sleepless nights. I have had panic attacks when seeing the adverse impact on my credit record. I feel bullied by Vodafone – my complaint has never been taken seriously.’
VODAFONE’S RESPONSE
ON Friday, Vodafone said recent investment in customer service had resulted
in a 50 per cent reduction in the level of complaints it now receives. It added: ‘We accept we were not as effective as we should have been in handling and resolving customers’ issues fairly, consistently and in a timely manner. This has been an unhappy episode for all of us at Vodafone: we know we let our customers down. We are determined to put everything right.’
Pay-as-you-go customers who lost money have been refunded an average £14. Also the company has donated £100,000 to UK charities.
BOSSES WHO SHOULD HANG THEIR HEADS IN SHAME
IN May 2015, Jeroen Hoencamp, former chief executive of Vodafone UK, said: ‘The next 12 months are all about improving customer experience and strengthening our network.’
He promised to focus on customer experience ‘more than ever before’ on behalf of its 20million UK customers. After hiring more customer service agents, improving their training and investing in the company’s infrastructure, Hoencamp added: ‘This £2 billion investment in our network and customer services over 2014 and 2015 is starting to deliver a step change in customer experience, which we hope our customers are starting to feel.’
The Mail on Sunday has asked many customers how they feel about their experience of Vodafone’s complaints handling in the past year.
Richard Holzel sums it up when he says: ‘I would like never to hear the word Vodafone again as my whole experience has been so stressful.’
The 29-year-old MOT inspector and technician says he was ‘continually fobbed off’ when he tried to complain about mistaken charges and a damaged credit rating.
He adds: ‘Its customer service is non-existent. You just get passed from one unhelpful person to another.’
Widowed David Woollcott, 73, is a retired human resources director. He had cause to complain when his phone was blocked from making overseas calls, despite having bought a special roaming package before going abroad.
Despite complaining on his return, the same thing happened on his next trip. Letters to Vodafone went unanswered. He says: ‘In my business career, I have worked for US and Canadian telecoms companies and a range of UK companies, all of which provided excellent customer service.
‘In my experience any manager responsible for the level of service provided by Vodafone would have been subject to disciplinary action.’
Since Hoencamp quit Britain to lead the company in the Netherlands, he has been replaced by Nick Jeffery, who became UK boss in September. Jeffery has much work to do.
Not that Vodafone’s executives have felt any fallout from the customer service debacle. Vittorio Colao, chief executive, enjoys remuneration of £5.3million. Colao’s statement after revealing the company’s annual results earlier this year said nothing of the service and complaints handling disaster at its UK division. He said: ‘Looking forward, we will continue to invest in our customer excellence programmes in both mobile and converged services. I am confident we will sustain our positive momentum in the coming year.’
The customers we have heard from don’t share the same confidence.
Michael Owen adds: ‘I have been with Vodafone for 20-plus years and the bigger it has become the worse the service. The fine is big. If it had invested that sum in sorting out things in the first place Vodafone would not have ended up with so many disgruntled customers. It’s not rocket science. Until The Mail on Sunday intervened Vodafone was the bane of my life.’