My fight to recover £2000 of Vodafone business roaming charges

I am not normally one to share my thoughts on social media but I wanted to share a recent experience with Vodafone.

I have been a Vodafone customer for about 15 years and switched to a business tariff 4 years ago after starting my own business. I chose Vodafone for my business as it provided roaming packages for some of the more far flung business locations I needed to travel to (Tanzania and the UAE to be specific) and international calling minutes.

After a couple of years of a positive experience it all went wrong in March 2016. I had traveled to Tanzania via Dubai for business. I had used my phone on a roaming package a couple of times before in the Dubai and just switched on my phone as usual while waiting for my connection. When I landed back in the UK I had a £300 roaming bill. After speaking to Vodafone I found out that they had “removed” the UAE from the roaming list since the last time I had traveled. I asked the operator how I was supposed to know that, the answer was of course “It’s on our website”. I suggested that the sensible solution would be to reimburse the roaming charges for this trip and I would know better for next time. The lady in the Indian call centre was not having this, it was my fault. After about 3 further calls explaining that I was a valued and loyal customer (I am not really sure why I should be persuading a company of my value as a customer). I managed to speak to someone in the UK who actually cared about my business and I managed to negotiate a bill of £150. I didn't have the energy to argue anymore but requested a cap to my roaming charges in future. I just didn’t want to be in the same position again.

Time spent 4 Hours

Fast forward to July 2018. I received a call from Vodafone to renew my contract. Whenever I am on one of these calls I always have the impression that I am committing to the wrong package. Wouldn't it be great to get an email from your mobile provider with a summary of your usage and a recommendation of the appropriate tariff? Towards the end of the call I asked for some more information on roaming. I was travelling to Turkey in the next couple of weeks. “Sir you can roam free there”. Great! Then the fateful conversation that was going cost me over a day of my time “I often travel to Tanzania on business, is there a roaming package there?”. “I think that’s one of our roaming destinations…” replied the operator. While on the phone I googled “Vodafone roaming” and a site popped up telling me I could £6 a day to roam on my home package. “On your website it’s one of your roam further destinations” I informed the operator. “That sounds right, sir”. Great I thought, I don’t need to get a local sim next time I go. I am sure you can see where this is going by now…

Time spent 1 hour

I left for Tanzania via Dubai on Emirates. Before I switched on my phone in the Dubai I checked the Vodafone roaming website again. UAE and Tanzania for £6 a day, great! I must admit I did receive some messages while I was away telling me of usage charges. I checked the website one more time, yes Tanzania is on there, Great! Anyway, I thought, even if the the roaming option had been screwed up somehow (this had happened to me once to!) I had a cap on there so they would just cut off my data and I’ll give them a call.

Or not so great. I arrived back in the UK on 20th August and got an ominous text from Vodafone. “Please call us, you have exceeded you credit limit”. Here we go again I thought. I phoned them and spoke to a guy called Dan, he broke the bad news. The site I had referenced was only for consumer plans (I still don’t understand why consumers there should be a difference). I explained that the lady I spoke to had told me a could roam in Tanzania. “Ok, sir, let me listen to the call”. I told him I had very little faith that Vodafone would come to fair decision. I explained that I had problems in the past and I was really worried that Vodafone would not be fair. He assured me he would be impartial and call me back with the outcome. If I had been told I could roam then I would get a refund. He also told me that while the account was disputed no money would be collected.

Time spent 45 mins

I never heard from Dan again. I forgot about that issue until I noticed a £2,000 debit from my business account on 4th September. I called back, I spoke to a lady called Lauren. I must admit she was really helpful. I talked her through my conversation with Dan. She looked through her notes. Apparently Dan had tried to call me back but he couldn't get through to my phone (the irony was not lost on me). Could he have not left me a voicemail or sent a text that he had tried to call. Yes he had messed up. I also told her that if she googles Vodafone roaming this is the only site that comes up and it’s does not differentiate between consumer and business tariffs. However apparently there is a tab on the top of the site. However these tabs do not appear on mobile devices. I took a quick screen shot in case this was changed after my call. She promised to listen to the call, told me to cancel my direct debit and ask my bank to get it returned.

Time spent 1.5 hours

Lauren called me back 2 days later. “I can see why you thought you could roam, the advice given to you was not clear”. Great, I thought. “But the amount is above what I am able to refund, let me put you through to my manager”. It turns out it was above her manager’s level of authority. So I was put through to “customer services”. This is where I entered the twilight zone. His name was Peter, I asked for his surname but he refused to give it to me. How can you run a customer business where those that are speaking to customer are not wiling to take any ownership of the decisions they make?

Vodafone robot: “Sir I can only offer you £150”,

Me: “But Lauren said she had listened to the call and she believed I should be due a full refund”

Vodafone robot: “Sir, she can not have listened to the call, it has been deleted”

Me: “Seriously? But she just said she had listened to it. Why don’t you speak to her”,

Vodafone robot: “Sir there is no call so there is no point speaking to her”

Me “Are you calling me a liar?”

Vodafone robot “The previous agent (the hapless Dan) has listed to your call and there was no discussion of roaming in Tanzania”

Eventually I gave up. I was told that the complaint would be investigated further and if we could not agree on the compensation I would receive “deadlock letter”.

Time spent 2.5 hours

I came off the call exhausted. I knew I was in the right but I ran a massive risk. This was my business phone and I could not work without it. Even a couple of hours of being offline could be really costly. I considered paying the £2000 just to avoid being cut off but decided to do some research into my options.

My first step was to go on to the Vodafone website to see what my options were. Firstly I completed a SAR. This is a subject access request which allows you to request the information held on you by a company. It is a legal right so I requested the transcript of my calls, I just wanted to find out exactly what had been said back in July. I also completed a formal complaint online.

Time spent 1.5 hours

I didn’t receive any further correspondence from Vodafone. No deadlock letter or reply to my SAR and online complaint. Vodafone then cut off my service on 25th September without any warning. I had to call up customer service and explain the whole story. Thankfully the guy I spoke to on the phone accepted that I had not received anything back, he agreed to put me back online. Both myself and my wife were on the same business account. I had to delay a meeting to make the call. I then had to call back another 3 times (each tome having to explain the situation) and my connection needed a kick on the network side to get bank up and running. I actually tried to pay the balance at this point but was told that I could not do this without the deadlock letter.

Time spent 4 hours

After this I realised that I would have to explore escalating this to Ofcom. I googled their website and was comforted by what I read. There were a number of similar cases in past that had been found in favour of the customer. I also did some research on the laws regarding roaming caps. Vodafone should have put a 50 euro roaming cap on by law. I tried Vodafone one more time with this information. “I think that legislation is just for consumers sir but I’ll get back to you” (of course no call back).

Time spent 1 hour

Out of options I sent my compliant to Ofcom. I had dreaded this process as I thought it would be overly complicated and weighted against the consumer. They did need some detailed information but I managed to put it together. It took some time as I had to piece together the timeline. Vodafone had of course not bother to comply with my SAR so I was at an information disadvantage. Then I waited.

Time spent 4 hours

Fast forward to 3rd Jan 2019. An email from Ofcom appeared in my inbox. Heart in mouth time! Here are some excerpts from the findings

Vodafone has not provided a copy of the call recording however I can see from the account records that it did listen to the call in question when you contacted it in August 2018 to query the charges. The notes regarding this state;

“call listening done and customer said to agent that he checked online and that tanzania is on the roam further list
and agent just repeated what cust said, it is on the list? sort of as a passing comment to what he said as she was asking him the question it is on the list ?and cust replied thats great thanks so agent was not advising cust that tanzania is on the roam further list however customer has taken it as confirmation that Tanzania is on the list a genuine misunderstanding on both parties. “ [sic]

In the account records, Vodafone suggests that you were looking at the information relating to consumer contracts and not business contracts. You contract being a business one.

Regardless of this, I consider it would have been appropriate for the advisor to have checked and confirmed for you if Tanzania was covered in the package and their failure to do so has contributed to the charges of £2067.20 accrued.

and

In your correspondence you say that you have previously requested a data cap to be applied to your account and understood that this was still in place.

I have reviewed the account records provided by Vodafone and can see that there have been previous issues relating to roaming charges in 2016 and 2017. The account record dated 1 June 2017 states;
“Sucessfully applied the GPRS Roam Bar for Data Capping Service” [sic]

There is a further note dated 10 July 2018 following the renewal of your contract on 7 July 2018 which states;

“Successfully opted into Data Capping Service”

I have queried this with Vodafone and it states that this related to a domestic data cap applied to your account and not a roaming cap. It therefore states that there was no cap applied to your number at the point of upgrade. Vodafone also states that all business plans are automatically opted out of any data cap and customers must request it be applied.

The account record dated 10 July 2018 does not detail the nature of the conversation that took place on this date. I have however spoken to the Ombudsman regarding this issue and his opinion in the matter is that this does not remove Vodafone’s obligation to apply a €50 cap in line with Ofcom regulations which state;

“While ‘roam like at home’ does not apply when roaming outside of the EU, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, unless you have opted into a different limit, providers are required to apply a €50 (excluding VAT) cut-off limit on data, regardless of where you travel in the world.
Your provider must send you an alert to your mobile device when you reach 80% and then 100% of the agreed data roaming limit. Operators must stop charging for data at the 100% point, unless you agree to continue to use data.”

I have also queried this with Vodafone however its response appears to be confused with the billing limits regulation that came into force on 1 October 2018.

So I was successful and while I feel pretty good about it the £50 for my wasted time isn’t much use. The really scary thing is that Vodafone had made a number of mistakes on their side but had hoped that I would not have the knowledge or perseverance to fight them. Firstly after my experience in 2016 I had asked for a roaming cap to be applied to my account but this was not done (or later removed). Secondly “Dan’s” summary of the sales call was exactly as I had recounted on numerous occasions to various people within Vodafone. This was not the same summary given to me by Vodafone’s customer service guy. His “lie” was undoubtedly an attempt to influence my decision on whether to escalate the matter or take the £150 reduction (by the way as soon as I took the matter to Ofcom the £150 reduction was taken “off the table”, another subtle attempt at manipulation).

It also seems Vodafone has a policy of automatically of automatically “opting out” business customers from the roaming cap. Not only is this against the law for small businesses but also why would anybody want the cap removed without consent? This is just a not-to-subtle attempt to catch out customers.

On a more sinister note the calls that I needed to reference were magically deleted. We are always told on calls that they are being recorded for “training purposes”. Is it just a coincidence that my calls were deleted after being listened to only once? Or does Vodafone have a policy of deleted any contentious calls? Surely the policy should be to retain such calls?

I must say that the procedure put in place by Ofcom is transparent, easy to use and fair. However it should not have gone that far. I was also stuck with Vodafone for the period of this complaint and I had to hold off upgrading my phone (battery lasts about 3 hours and I can’t hear anything unless I put it on speaker!). If I had lost I don’t think I could have justified a phone upgrade!

Any similar experiences out there?