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!!!!

I wish you best of luck but personally I would never buy another mobile phone or any other product from a retailer like The Link Or DialAPhone who claim you will get further cash back in months 4 7 10 etc if only you send in your bills in a very short time period.  Actually come to think of it I never did buy one with these Cashback terms having inquired about how they worked and knowing that I personally would not be able to fulfil them (and also suspecting a scam because of all the obvious pitfalls that let you fall foul of getting the cashback).

In my case, actually qualifying for the cashback wasn't the issue.

They do rely on people forgetting to send in the claims, but I had done all of this, and even got an acknowledgement saying they would be crediting my airtime account.  When I wrote to Dialaphone, they did not they sent the money, so they are not avoiding the issue of whether I qualify for the payment, they're just saying it's been paid as far as they're concerned.

It does look like Vodafone have taken notice, because they no longer allow dialaphone to sell phones on their network, down purely to the number of complaints.  They should go one step further, and not allow payment through airtime accounts for current customers.  Orange still allow this, and I'll be bringing the matter to their attention, even though my Orange phone is on E2save, which incidently have paid all my cashback claims so far (hopefully so far so good!!)  O2 stopped allowing this practice, and T-Mobile, and 3 have either never allowed it, or stopped allowing it years ago with dialaphone.

E2save pay claims for all networks via cheque, and so far I have always been paid shortly after sending in the claim.  The only way they can wriggle out of it, is claiming my cashback claim was lost in the post, but they do insist on sending it in recorded delivery.

I shall certainly be involving trading standards with this issue, and I might even involve trading standards in Vodafone's area, and sending a joint e-mail to both.  I don't think Vodafone will be too happy being involved in all this mess, but seeing as the money has been lost between Dialaphone sending it, to me receiving it via vodafone, then both companies should be involved.  If it turns out that Dialaphone never did send it in the first place, then this will only strengthen Vodafone's decision not to sell new phones on their network via dialaphone.

Good to see you back NGM.  I knew you couldn't stay away for long!

I'm still doing battle with faxing etc.  Parking tickets is my speciality at the moment and have to contend with St Albans council.  They only provide a 0845 number with no geographic alternative and no obvious fax number for the Parking dept.  They insist that all appeals are put in writing.  However if I write I will have to have use Recorded delivery as I need proof that my appeal was served on them which will cost me getting on for a £1.  However if I can fax my appeal to a 01727 number then it's free and my fax provides me the proof that the fax was 'served' on them.  You see how useful the fax is?  I wish that more peope still used them.  Better still, remember the old TELEX?  I'm not sure if anyone uses that at all now, but you certainly had proof that your mesage got through which you don't always get with e-mail even if you ask your mail client (outlook, Mozilla, thunderbird etc) for a receipt.  

The fax is still king as far as I am concerned!


Alternative (from Mole Valley originally & now Three Rivers)

I stood in a queue.....oops! line  this morning in a store here and both ladies in front of me paid with a cheque (or should that be check......?). That is not at all unusual - it happens frequently. It seems that it is far more common here to pay by cheque. I have heard that Americans do not like debit cards. I also now understand why I received about 20 cheque books when I opened a bank account!

I'm sure the US banks would like to get rid of them, but they seem to be ingrained in American society.

(bit like 0870 numbers in the UK....... )

NGMsGhost wrote on Oct 28^th, 2006 at 11:37pm:

Except that it is the retailer and ultimately you and me that has to finance the cashback.
With a debit card there would, presumably, be less money milked out of retailers by the banks.

Credit cards attract a (much) higher transaction charge than debit cards; witness the differential charging on many websites.
Just like when Access and Barclaycard were launched in the UK and the industry stepped in to prevent retailers passing on the surcharge to customers.
The many and various offers are made by those card companies hoping for more business, but the retailers, and so ultimately you and me, pay for those higher charges.
Your investment is canny, but you and I still pay for the privilege of not using the debit card.
And, yes, isn't the Nationwide service excellent.

Sorry, guys, have gone off topic.

Shiggaddi wrote on Oct 29^th, 2006 at 12:12pm:


BBC Watchdog, Trading Standards and/or a claim against DialAPhone in the small cliams court remain your obvious ways ahead in resolving this.

DialAPhone are a very old mobile phone store vending brand.  Either they are about to go bust or someone less ethical has recently taken them over?