Shiggaddi
Senior Member
Offline
Posts: 411
Saltash, Cornwall
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Thanks for this.
The reason I needed this info, is because I got a mobile from Dial-a-phone in May last year, and in order to get the cashback for the line rental, you have to send in a claim every few months, to get a portion of the line rental paid to your airtime account.
You have to send it to Dial-a-phone, and Vodafone's only involvement is receiving the money, and crediting it to my airtime account.
However, I sent in the claim as normal to dial-a-phone at the end of August, and my money has not been credited to my Vodafone airtime account. After calling Vodafone customer services, they confirmed that they had not received this money.
Dial-a-phone are one of the worse abusers of 0870, making a very complicated call menu, where you have to go through their voice recognition before even being allowed to join their 30 minute queue. I did however manage to speak to the supervisor on the sales line (answered immediately) who said that I need to write a letter to Dial-a-phone.
I got written confirmation from Vodafone that they haven't received the money, and sent a copy to Dial-a-phone. All I got back from Dial-a-phone was a letter saying that they sent it to Vodafone, and I should chase it up with them.
All in all, neither party wants to take leadership of the missing money. I had a call from someone from Vodafone earlier today, saying they're well aware of Dial-a-phone's cowboy tactics and have stopped them selling phones on their network, because of the ill will, from numerous customers (glad I'm not alone then!!)
I feel that Vodafone should follow the lead set by O2, and not allow airtime accounts to be credited. All other networks on Dial-a-phone, to claim the money back, you get issued with a cheque instead, and this stops dial-a-phone from being able to pass the buck to the network operators, as they can only write a cheque, and no responsibility lies with the network in the process.
But because Vodafone allow cashback to be paid in this way, dial-a-phone can avoid paying out cashback and force customers to go between 2 companies, neither of which will take ownership. It suits Dial-a-phone, because they can say it's been paid, and they fulfilled their part of the bargain, and vodafone can say they have no record of the payment, and there's nothing they can do.
However, by writing to the board of directors at vodafone, with this problem, they might stop Dial-a-phone from operating in this manner. Luckily, they have already taken some action and vodafone is no longer available from dial-a-phone.
Anyway, how can I recover this money? Surely if I owed someone some money, and sent it to their bank account, and the money didn't reach the other side, I'd want to chase things up and ask why. Dial-a-phone are not in the least bit concerned that money they sent for me didn't arrive, which might suggest that they didn't even send it, or someone in accounts made an error, and it was sent somewhere else. If that was the case, then surely they still owe me the money, and it's up to them to investigate where the money has gone and why it's not appeared on my account.
Vodafone also advised that I should start legal proceedings against dial-a-phone, to recover this money. Anyway, the advice to everyone reading this, is NEVER EVER BUY A PHONE FROM DIAL-A-PHONE!!!!
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