Dear visitor,
Since its inception Vodafail.com has made a significant
contribution towards raising awareness of the problems and issues faced
by Vodafone customers.
Vodafone Australia customers have had the opportunity to voice their concerns, their fears and their troubles from every corner of Australia and beyond our borders.
You have gathered the courage to stand up for your rights as consumers and to make your voice heard.
Each and every person who shared their story should have a sense of pride in this achievement and the changes that have occurred since the start of Vodafail.com.
More recently, traffic to Vodafail.com has declined significantly.
Having achieved the goal of raising awareness and promoting concrete action in early 2011, we have now reached the point of closing Vodafail to new complaints.
The site will remain online for as long as possible as a
reminder and an example of what is possible when we share our experiences.
It has been a privilege to run this initiative
and I'm am forever grateful for the help and support I've received. In
particular I would like to thank Melissa, David and Travis for their
continued efforts over the past 15 months. I'm also thankful and humbled by the support of ACCAN, Choice magazine and a wide range of media outlets, blogs and websites.
You can still browse existing stories and find out how to file a complaint if you are experiencing problems.
Until next time,
Adam Brimo
Share Your Pain
| ACT (1140) | Everywhere (19206) | NSW (7557) | NT (170) | QLD (3578) | SA (987) | Somewhere else (224) | TAS (242) | VIC (3573) | WA (1735) |
16125 Someone from QLD thinks vodafone is Terrible at 3 Mar 2011 07:33:35 PM
I had been using my iPhone as a wireless modem while on holiday in Sydney, and it worked a little better than in Brisbane (that is, it worked some of the time instead of hardly working at all). Over the month, I had downloaded about 100 MB on average per day for about a week and a half (coming close to my 1.5GB limit). Around the end of the billing cycle, I came back home and had a few days when I wasn't tethering, and hardly used my data at all (since I knew I was close to my limit).
So I was pretty shocked when they sent my bill, and said that I had downloaded 980 MB on the second last day of my billing period, and other data that I could not have possibly downloaded - my service is so terrible that 3G in Brisbane tends to just time out and you have to refresh up to 10 times before you can get anything to load, and VHA alleges that I downloaded so much in Brisbane where 3G doesn't work! The amount was more than three times bigger than the most I had been able to download in a day in Sydney, where I was in an area where the 3G sort of worked...
The total charge was $550, which was a massive shock when my bill is $54 usually ($49 + iPhone payment).
I emailed them, and even though it said that they would get back in five working days, it was more like eight working days (and a weekend in-between) so it was almost two weeks before I got the response. Even though it was impossible that I had used the data in question, and they were clearly in error, the best I could get them to do was to reduce the bill by 50%, which is ridiculous.
I want to file a complaint with the TIO, but the problem is that really only Vodafone are the ones who can prove that they made the error, and I doubt they would be happy to help - they are probably pretty happy to be able to charge ridiculous amounts for data that they aren't providing, and there being absolutely nothing the user can do...
What's more, the people at the store seem to have set up my account to automatically charge my credit card when the bill is due, against my will (I pay my bills by B-pay, usually as soon as I get them) and I told the people in the store that was how I was going to pay. So it tried to take $550 out of the card account and when that was declined they decided to charge me an extra $15 dishonor fee on the next bill. Again, totally their fault and totally nothing I can do about it.
Vodafone are nothing but criminals if you ask me. Not only did they happily sign me up when their network has been over-capacity for at least a year, but they gouge me for services they're not providing and that I didn't use.
So I was pretty shocked when they sent my bill, and said that I had downloaded 980 MB on the second last day of my billing period, and other data that I could not have possibly downloaded - my service is so terrible that 3G in Brisbane tends to just time out and you have to refresh up to 10 times before you can get anything to load, and VHA alleges that I downloaded so much in Brisbane where 3G doesn't work! The amount was more than three times bigger than the most I had been able to download in a day in Sydney, where I was in an area where the 3G sort of worked...
The total charge was $550, which was a massive shock when my bill is $54 usually ($49 + iPhone payment).
I emailed them, and even though it said that they would get back in five working days, it was more like eight working days (and a weekend in-between) so it was almost two weeks before I got the response. Even though it was impossible that I had used the data in question, and they were clearly in error, the best I could get them to do was to reduce the bill by 50%, which is ridiculous.
I want to file a complaint with the TIO, but the problem is that really only Vodafone are the ones who can prove that they made the error, and I doubt they would be happy to help - they are probably pretty happy to be able to charge ridiculous amounts for data that they aren't providing, and there being absolutely nothing the user can do...
What's more, the people at the store seem to have set up my account to automatically charge my credit card when the bill is due, against my will (I pay my bills by B-pay, usually as soon as I get them) and I told the people in the store that was how I was going to pay. So it tried to take $550 out of the card account and when that was declined they decided to charge me an extra $15 dishonor fee on the next bill. Again, totally their fault and totally nothing I can do about it.
Vodafone are nothing but criminals if you ask me. Not only did they happily sign me up when their network has been over-capacity for at least a year, but they gouge me for services they're not providing and that I didn't use.