Anyone who has had dealings with an Irish telecoms company will probably empathise with Joe who contacted us after what must have seemed like an endless stream of over and backs with Vodafone over what he was told was a missed payment.
The whole palaver ended with him “raising the white flag” and fearing he would be cut off from the outside world or at least have his phone disconnected, something which would significantly reduce his capacity to earn a crust.
Joe’s mail starts with him saying that “over the years I have marvelled at your interventions for people who are badly treated by big business” but he adds that he never once imagined that he would ever need the assistance of Pricewatch.
Sadly, he does.
On the Money: the personal finance newsletter from The Irish Times
A helping hand with the cost of caring: what supports are available?
The key decisions now facing Donald Trump which will have a big impact on the Irish economy
‘I feel Irish Rail are just running down the time and hoping I will go away’
“The situation all started when Vodafone messaged me to say I had not made payment in May,” he writes. “I checked my bank and the payment went through. It is a bank transfer and not a direct debit.”
So Joe rang the Vodafone customer service line and had so began what he describes as a “long and difficult journey including having the phone put down twice, about which I made a formal unanswered complaint”.
He says that having found himself so “exasperated by the 1907 staff” that he figured he needed to deal with people face to face so he “engaged with the Vodafone shop who were most helpful,” he continues.
That sounds promising?
And it was, sort of. But while the staff in the shop could help Joe out to a point, the well meaning folk in the shop were unable to fix the whole problem.
“They took all the information about the account and my bank confirmations of payment and rectified the May payment albeit they only took my word for it that it had been paid but they said they could do nothing about my June payment which Vodafone also now consider not paid,” he writes.
“I am in a vicious circle and would welcome your intervention. I have payment proofs [but] Vodafone say their records do not show I have made payments and that somehow they are unable to verify the IBAN I paid to is theirs, although it has been for many years. My bank are legally unable to verify the Vodafone IBAN,” he writes.
“They now say I have to pay through an app rather than bank transfer but still leaves me out of pocket for the June payment. While in my bank they said lots of people had been in with similar problems.”
Joe says that he recognises that “the money involved is minimal [but] they have threatened to cut me off if I don’t make payment. My income depends on having a live phone.”
While the amount of money he might have to pay to cover a June payment that he has already paid might be minimal his stress levels sound anything but.
We contacted the company to find out what has been happening with poor Joe’s account and what might be done to ease his pain.
“We’re very sorry that our customer has experienced an issue with his bill payment,” a spokesman said. “Our customer care team has been in touch with him to resolve the issue. This case is related to the EFT [Electronic Fund Transfer] payment option which accounts for only 0.06 per cent of total payments to Vodafone.”
The spokesman added that the company was “proactively working with the bank to understand what happened and to ensure that our customers are not affected by a similar issue in future”.
When we went back to clarify that Joe’s issue had been resolved the spokesman assured us that it had so he will sleep easy tonight with his phone still connected to the outside world.
