I was on an $80 monthly plan, and when Vodaphone didn't invoice me in the last months of 2009 I rang up to try and pay, but they kept saying that I must be in credit so there was no bill. However in January I was billed all at once for the previous 4 months. I had just been made redundant, so I was unable to address the accumulated bill until May when I got a new job. At this time the bill had accumulated to $1,000 so I call up to enter into a payment plan. No problem there until the debt recovery guy told me I would have to repay $1,800. I was told the additional $800 was my monthly plan invoices up until Sept 2010 (when the repayment schedule was to finish) and the paying out of the remainder of my contract.

So I paid off the $1,800 and transferred my number away from Vodafone.

Then the week before Christmas I was invoices $474. I called and asked what it was for and they said that this was paying out the contract. I said thats what the earlier $800 charge was and they said the $800 was mostly a 'penalty' and a 'fine' for not paying my original accumulated bill from the months they didn't invoice me.

They are a big company so you can't really argue with these indian debt collectors named darryl and steve so I just paid the $474 in Jan 2011. The end result is because they couldn't get their billing system functioning in 2009 I spent $2,300 and received no phone service in 2010.

I now pro-actively hate vodafone.