Vodafone presents punter with £500k phone bill
'Yes, of course I have the keypad locked'
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Updated A Vodafone customer from Norwich has pitched his claim for the largest ever single-person phone bill after getting a demand from Vodafone for £588,198, and fifteen pence.
James Abdale, who posted the details on the Vodafone forum, was initially quite jovial about what was so obviously a clerical error, though after two hours trying to get Vodafone to fix the problem his patience started to wear thin.
By eight o'clock last night the poor chap was really starting to get annoyed. Having spent hours on the phone he was told that all the Vodafone management had gone home and he really should call back in the morning - though by that point shifting to another network was starting to look like a sensible option.
Running up a data bill of that size would take downloading 300GB of content, which is a lot of video, even at high definition. Alternatively one could spend the better part of a year talking to horny housewives, so even the most depraved would find it difficult to ring up charges like that.
Vodafone got in touch with James this morning with a call, a crawling apology and assurances that it would never happen again, and an offer to wipe his whole month's expenses.
He's still trying to get details of his tariff sorted, and remains unhappy about being bounced between support agents for the whole evening while the managers who might have been able to sort out the problem were packing up and heading home. Clerical errors happen, but companies can be judged on how quickly they resolve them.
Vodafone hasn't yet responded to our request for an explanation as to how the bill came about, or why it took so long to sort out. ®
Update: Vodafone have asked as to pass on their groveling apology so everyone can see how sorry they are, both for the initial mistake: "administration error on our part" and the subsequent treatment "We will be investigating what happened to ensure this doesn't happen again", which is nice.
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COMMENTS
@Spanky McG
I just let the money come out of my account.
Well Lord/Lady McG all I can say is I can see the word mug stamped on your head from here.
Companies will try and take as much money as they can from you if they think they can get away with it so goodness knows how much you have lost over the years.
I go over bills with a fine tooth comb even if it paid by DD (I keep DD payments to a minimum because its a licence to rob you blind)
Might I suggest you ask your butler (Jeeves/Hobson/Smyth) to check your bill every so often as Voda could be robbing you without you knowing it and surely you'd prefer your income from your directorships/trust funds/stocks and shares to be earning interest in your Coutts account wouldn't you?
Mine's the one with the Kugerrands in the pockets.
Per minute charging.......
Based on a £35 tariff, a £500k bill would work out (on a 30 day month) at £11.19 per minute. If the bill was before VAT then the charges would be £13.16.
Data charges would be different.......
Mobile broadband 3Gb tariff (which is £15 according to their website) would equal approx 33335 Gb of data (which is a hell of a lot of iPlayer usage) working out on a 30 day month at approx 750Mb per minute (or about 12Mb per second). To get to the 300GB of data to run this bill up, this would only be possible outside of the UK, as 300GB in the UK would result in a bill of about £4500 (considerably less, and easier to swallow) unless data was being charged at £1666 per Gb (again assuming in these calculations that they are allready including VAT)
If you know any provider in the UK you can get that kind of speed with, please let me know.
Mines the one with Live Fast, Die Broke on the back
Vodafone Overcharging on Passport
I went working overseas [from UK] and took my Vodafone 'Passport' with me, when I got back my bill was MASSIVE they charged me the Euro Roaming Rate for all the calls even though Passport was activated....
I rang them up and they didn't have a clue what I was on about !!! I had to tell them their own web address for Passport and tell them the country I was in and explained what the 75p/call was for... totally thick! honest!
I did however get put through to a nice Ayrshire lass who didnt really know what I was on about but refunded me anyway...
I suspect billing problems are absolutely rife in VF. Im wondering whether to stay now. I don't trust them. Certainly won't be renewing.
Whats all this with obscene data charges? What makes them think 45Gb is worth the same as purchasing a Private Jet outright.... hmm bollocks.
There should be a £100/month cap on ANY DATA downloading on ANY NETWORK ANY SIM/PLAN etc so these ridiculous bills CANNOT happen....
I think one network, maybe orange has a bit where you cap your data with an automatic £1.50 max daily charge, alright except you must remember to activate it !!!!!!! On the right tracks but customers should be automatically opted in...
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