[Resolved]  Vodafone — Misselling of Blackberry Internet Plan

Address:

Thane, Maharashtra

Dear Sir,

This is bring to your kind notice the kind of cheating, mis-selling and harassment that faithful vodafone customers like me have to face by selecting vodafone as the mobile network service provider.

I have a vodafone no. 98333xxx95 since more than 5 years now and have been using and compromising with the rare glitches in the services that I face. But this time, things have just gone beyond tolerance. I have received an excess bill amount of 1158.40 in my last bill dated 4th Feb 2011 (bill no.[protected] which have been mentioned as Vodafone Live! charges.

Sir, I have a blackberry device and have had the blackberry prosumer lite 299 plan activated for more than 6 months. Then I came to know of the BB2499 plan for unlimited internet usage in december and got interested in the same. I called up the vodafone customer care to de-activate my BB 299 plan since I was told that had to be done before activating the BB 2499 plan which would be done immediately after the BB299 plan was deactivated. When I enquired about the BB2499 plan I was confirmed (you can check on the recorded messages with the vodafone care executive) that in the Blackberry 2499 plan I just had to pay INR 2499 once every six months to enjoy unlimited internet. I was explicitly told that I will not be charged anything additional for internet usage. So I went ahead and asked for de-activation of my BB299 plan and then to active the BB2499 plan. However, I was shocked then when my service was disconnected for more than 3 entire days (for which I had also lodged another complaint with vodafone care). However after being disconnected from the blackberry service due to vodafone's fault for 3 entire days, the BB2499 plan was activated on the 4th day. At that time I thought this might be a one time problem that I have had to face, but I was wrong.

I have recently received bill after activation of the BB2499 service and was completely shocked and tensed to see an additional charge of INR 1158.40 against Vodafone live! usage. On receipt of the bill, I immediately called 111 in order to inform them about the incorrect bill. I was confirmed by the customer care executive that there has been an error and I will get a call from another vodafone executive in order to fix the same. I did not receive any call for 3-4 days then I decided to call back 111 again.This time I spoke to someone called Vijendra who apart from being not co-operative, also told me that what was told by his colleague was wrong and that I will need to check with 55666 in order to check whether there has been Vodafone live! usage or not. He also told me that I should get Vodafone live! service de-activated (which in the first place I did not get activated). I then called 55666 (all this time wasting my precious time in order to justify some amount that I should not be paying) and talked to Ms. Archana. She guided me to check my phone settings in order to check whether Vodafone live! usage has been done and confirmed that my phone settings are such that Vodafone live! charges should not have been present in my bill. She told me then to call up 111 again in order to tell them that I have checked with her that Vodafone live! charges should not have present and that if they do not agree, then I should take her in conference to confirm the same. She even mentioned that if she is unable to take the call then I should ask the person who answers the call to confirm with her the same and she will inform about the error.

Then I called up 111 again and this time also the person whom I spoke to agreed that the charges are incorrect but that he is not authorized to refund the charges since they cannot refund more than 100-200 rupees through the Vodafone Care service. He suggested that I should visit a nearby Vodafone Store and that there surely my issue will be resolved.

So wasting yet a lot of my time again, I went to the nearest Vodafone Store (in Nerul east navi mumbai) and met the executive Faiz there. He said that no usage is being shown for Blackberry service. He then told me to talk to Ejaz who in turn told me that if you do video streaming or check facebook videos, then there can be charges and that these services will be used through Vodafone live!. This was the first time that I was hearing that there are additional charges for Video Streaming and that I what I was promised when the BB2499 plan was explained to me was completely false since I was told that I will not be charged anything apart from the 2499 every six months for using the Internet. He did not listen to me .I then also told them I did not know how to use Vodafone live! at all and that previously with the 299 plan I used to get an error is any service was not accessible through Blackberry service. Ejaz justified that this was not the case with BB2499 plan and that in case of BB 2499 plan whatever is not accessible through blackberry service will be charged through vodafone live! I was in a complete state of shock at this point and was unable to believe how a company like Vodafone can cheat their customers by charging for certain services without asking or even informing about the same before taking their money. Ejaz then told me to call up 55666 in order to confirm the usage and there I spoke to Ms. Rajlaxmi who in turn spoke to Ms. Archana and then she told me that she is from technical team and will not be able to resolve my matter and that I need to talk to the Vodafone person.
I again talked to Ejaz and he told that I should give a complaint for the same to Faiz. When I asked Faiz to write a complaint and request for refund all he did was that he gave me the vodafonecare.[protected]@vodafone.com email id and told me write the entire happenings at that email id in order to resolve my issue and cancel the extra charges of INR 1158.40.
Sir, I am writing to you since I feel all my effort for saving my hard earned money being looted by Vodafone is going in vain and that all I am getting is a door-to-door hit by all vodafone executives who do not care for their customers.

I hope bringing the matter to your notice will bring me justice by cancelling the INR 1158.40 charges in my bill and also any Vodafone live! charges in my next bill.

I wrote the above mentioned details to the vodafonecare.[protected]@vodafone.com and the vodafone nodal officer. Today I got a call from some Ms. Ruby and all she did was justify that what has been sold has been sold and that I will have to bear the charges. She also told me that the plan details are mentioned on the website whereas when I activated the plan, the details were not present online. So I am completely in a mess here and do not want to pay extra to vodafone for misselling me the package.

I hope you can guide me how to get justice in this case.

Kind Regards,
Tushar Bansal
98333xxx95