Vodafone makes costly bill blunder
A reader named Tony contacted us saying he was at the end of his tether with his mobile-phone provider, Vodafone. In June he upgraded to an iPhone 4. He was told he would be put on a Perfect Choice 300 package which came with 1 gigabyte of data. “The sales lady informed me that I would have to be watching movies all day in order to go over this amount,” he writes.
Days later he got a bill for €414 and when he phoned customer care he was told he had not been switched to the proper package and was being charged every time he went online. “Exasperated, I cancelled my direct debit and went back to the shop. They told me that the package was not processed and it was totally their fault, the bill would be recalculated and the sales person told me to pay €60 at the post office for June and July and the recalculation would take effect for August bill, which would be the proper bill.”
He did as he was told, and then in July a bill for €1,123 arrived. “I continued to presume correct a bill would arrive.” In August a bill for €1,197 arrived. “At this point I was shocked and annoyed and stressed, as I firmly believed that this was totally Vodafone’s fault for not putting me on to the correct package. I went into Vodafone in Dundrum again and spoke to a lovely girl. She called Vodafone on my behalf and she told me that I should be on a 2gb package but that it was Vodafone’s fault and they needed to recalulate my bill and send out the correct one and that the €60 a month should be sufficient to cover my calls, texts and data, give or take a few euro. I waited in the store for one hour and she told me that Vodafone would recalulate the bill and call me back that evening. I heard nothing.”
At the end of August he got a text saying that if he did not pay the bill in full there would be a discontinuation of service. “I phoned them immediately, explained the situation yet again. They said it was an automatic service and it would not be turned off. It was turned off in three days. I went back into Vodafone in Dundrum where the mess began. The assistant manager said that it was their fault, that a recalculation takes an awful long time, that they will turn back on the service and flag it so it won’t be turned off again.”
At the beginning of October his phone was turned off. “I rang Vodafone. A lady told me that there was no recalculation ordered – I owed the entire amount. But when I explained the story she said it would not be turned off again.”
Days later it was disconnected again.
We contacted the company and received the following statement from Vodafone: We have contacted this customer, resolved the issue to the customers satisfaction and apologised for any inconvenience caused. This customer experience was not the norm and was caused by a combination of factors. Unfortunately, due to human error, the customer was set up on the incorrect tariff and a small systems error indicated that the customer’s credit was being processed when it wasnt. We have ensured that this process has been reviewed and that this does not happen again.
Don’t judge a mag by the price on its cover
Last week we carried an item from a reader whose eight-year-old son is a fan of Moshi Monstersmagazine. It has a cover price of £2.99 but sells for €4.26. "Even if we allow Eason a 20 per cent differential on sterling and give them an additional 10 per cent for VAT differences, we still get to approximately €3.95," our reader said, and he asked how Eason could justify such a mark-up on a children's magazine?
Well, Eason did not have to offer a justification as another reader did so on the shop’s behalf. Peter McAuley, who says he has no connection with Eason, sent us a mail in which he said our other reader was “getting excellent value, but they don’t understand the calculation from cover sterling price to euro price”.
He said magazines have 0 per cent VAT in the UK and 9 per cent in Ireland. The rate of exchange over the past month has averaged €1.17 for each pound based on purchases of £100,000 or more.
He said Eason takes a 12 per cent distribution premium, “which is fair enough as they must sort, collate and distribute them around the country, and many stores only take half a dozen or less of each title. Eason then collects the unsold copies.”
So for a £2.99 magazine, the price in the Republic is worked out as follows: the cover price of €3.50; a 12 per cent distribution charge takes it to €3.92; and the 9 per cent VAT takes the price to €4.27.
“The other option is the European model, where magazines are similarly distributed, but no returns are taken back and a £3 magazine is normally in excess of €6.”
