Vodafone denying all historical contact with us and attempting to extort money

[StillMardyPog]

I am absolutely fuming, and since no-one ever picks up a phone at vodafone, nor do they respond to emails or letters, I am forced to resort to registering on this forum again to complain. Admittedly from my little experience the quality of support is much better on here.

I already have an account on here, but I am currently denied access to it.  When I try to recover it, the "username does not exist", which it clearly does here, complaint about slow speeds from 2016 and here, complaint about WiFi. Good start...

Anyway, I shall try to be as concise as possible. It is quite a rant:

• Since opening the contract 4 years ago with Vodafone, we had NEVER received anything approaching the promised speeds.  This in itself is a breach of contract, but whatever...  Vodafone admitted to us several times that it was unacceptable and we are offered money back or condition-free cancellation.
• At the end of 2016, we started to complain about this (see links above) and were promised it would be resolved first quarter 2017. This is the start of the real journey.
• It wasn't resolved. In fact it got worse. We ended up calling support throughout 2017, and were lied to over and over again about it being fixed "later that month".  After 3 weeks with no internet, tv or phone we had enough.
• When we first rang to cancel / complain we were told that by the end of October 2017 everything would be better.  And we would get 6 months of money back for inconvenence. I think this was August 2017.
• We rang again later when we still had issues and the person we spoke to denied the above refund offer, but confirmed it would improve in the future.
• After another complaint, we were promised a month free and we could IMMEDIATELY AND UNCONDITIONALLY cancel our contract. There was also another offer, to extend the contract on favourable terms. We decided to shop around with other providers.  It was pointless.
• Another email and phone call. This time to cancel as still nothing was working,  we offered an ultimatum.  Fix everything by 15th Nov 2017 or we immediately cancel our contract and request the money back. This was sent by email and discussed over the phone.
• No response received.  From this point on, none of our emails or phone calls are responded to, unless I state otherwise.
• After several "chasing emails" with no response, On the 16th Nov we post our quit letter. We move to 1&1 who organise the switchover for us. Starting Dec.
• At the end of 2017, Vodafone are still taking money from us.  We cannot get any response to our emails so we call them.  After a week of trying, someone answers the phone. I guess its the cleaning staff since no one ever works on support there?  We explain we sent the quitting notice and the lady responds that she can see that everything is sorted at their end.  We ask for the money back from the month after quitting and also about the promised refund.  She denies that we were ever offered a refund (which we have in an email), but agrees with our plan to "call-back" the bank charge of around €25 for the month after quitting, which we do later that day.
• We get a warning email later about the money we claimed back.  We phone supoprt and are told "dont worry, its just automated in the system to send this email. We can see everything is fine and you have left us in 2017."

** Much more time passes during which we regularly post letters asking for confirmation of our quit receipt with no response, phonecalls are still not being answered.  We received "Mahnungs" emails once a month for bills, there is no reply address so we send 2 letters to give our position (Wiederspruch), we receive no response. **

• ~10th - 17th May we phone twice to chase progress on closing our account, since we still have nothing.
  
  • The woman says that they have no notice of quitting (despite telling us in november and January that they did). That the letter should go to a new address, which was set up in May.  We posted our notice in Nov 2017 using address given us by customer support. 
  • We re-post the original quitting letter, along with a short explanation of what has happened so far.  Sadly, this seems to make Vodafone sniff blood, as they then decide they can extort money from us...
• We have spent much of the last two months out of the country.  On our return are several letters from Vodafone saying they refuse to allow us to leave (!) and that we have to pay €360 and return the router (we have paid for many times over, despite it not working).  By the time we get these letters, a deadline already expired and its gone to some payment team.
• Attempt to call them. Eventually we get through.  The person on the phone refused to help and says:
  • that Vodafone are denying all knowledge of our disputes and original refund offers
  • That we never quit our contract. 
  • That they have received NO communication from us!  I am a little hurt at this, because at this point we are practically pen friends with the support team, but they hardly ever respond 😞   Its like when my first girlfriend completely blanked me at a friends party.... unrequited love yet again.
  • That we have to go to court (I think, I might have misunderstood this).
  • They REFUSE to help us, even to tell us what to do to dispute it. Apparently we have to call another number but in 4 days since no-one has answered the phone there.

So we are left facing huge charges for a service we quit, that never actually functioned as advertised, that we chased up monthly for progress and received nothing back, from a company that seemingly throws all correspondance in the bin so that they can deny all knowledge and extort money under threats at a future date DESPITE TELLING US ON THE PHONE THAT EVERYTHING WAS SORTED.

Still no word on that 6 months refund either...  yeah we gave up on that when the German football team was still good.

I am really hoping that someone can help us on the forum about this, because as I foreigner I have no idea where to turn to next.  I'll be looking for consumer watchdogs, perhaps some EU organisation?  I genuinely feel like this is deliberate on some level.  They cannot possibly have lost ALL our post until May? Or all the emails we sent?

I can see on many other forums complaints of a similar nature against vodafone, maybe its just from seeing the worry and stress this is causing my girlfriend but I really feel this is some sort of cynical money grab.

[Lars]

Hello StillMardyPog,

with pleasure. You should also find the letter in the customer portal. Let me know so we can lock up.

Best regards and a nice rest holiday

Lars

[StillMardyPog]

Hi,

I can confirm we recieved the letter and contacted the enforcement agency who confirmed the case was cancelled.

This is great news, thanks for clearing things up for us, its been a very frustrating few months.  I guess we should have started with the online/forum help staff first rather than the telephone support.  Perhaps you could stage a coup and take over the phone centre!

Thank again, you can close our account / case as you need.

[Stephan · Accepted solution]

Hi StillMardyPog,

since your request has now been resolved and all outstanding claims have been cancelled, I also close the thread.

If you have any questions about this or any other topic in the future, you are welcome to create a new thread here in the forum.

Regards

Stephan