Vodafone

In Sept 2006 I took out an 18 month contract with vodafone. 11 days later they increased my cost plan by 60%. This was achieved by removing free MMS and long text messages from my package. The contract says they can increase costs by upto 10% within the 18 months, but they must give me 30 days notice and I have 15 days to complain.

The 30 days notice was given 19 days before I became a vodafone customer.
The 15 day comment period ended 4 days before I joined vodafone.
Therefore this change did not comply with the contract yet vodafone refuse to accept any blame.
Almost 2 years later I am still unable to get any sort of refund, or get vodafone to admit they were wrong. However vodafone and Othelo (the ADR scheme paid for by Vodafone) have almost run out of lies/excuses to avoid dealing with this issue. Finally I will have exhausted all other options and will be free to go to the small claims court.

The small claims court is like the ADR scheme, but it is not a private company whose success depends upon attracting more clients. The only way to impress a client, is to not find too many rulings against them. Vodafone are free to swap ADR schemes at any time, or set up their own.
When ADR schemes have to compete for bussiness it can never be truly impartial.

During this time vodafone have lied repeatedly. Orginally they blamed phones4U who provided my handset, not my contract. Following letters and finally a meeting with phones 4U I managed to prove in writing that Vodafone were misleading me. On the 8th Feb 2008 VF apologised for their staff "misleading me" in writing, but by the 2nd July 2008 they denied misleading me, and denied thier own apology. They have lied to me repeatedly, most of it in writing as I refuse to talk on the phone to this brutally dishonest firm, yet there is nothing I can do about it and VF will never be fined for their lies, no matter how big, or to how many people.

Ofcom`s failure to protect 3 million consumers from this contract change is inexcusible.
Due to Ofcom`s failure the first time round, Vodafone have done the dirty two more times, again without a reaction from Ofcom. The other communications companies have followed VFs example, and now the tariff`s we signed up to are as useless as the contract and the code of practice.

Ofcom`s responce on all this is that "we dont deal with individual complaints". Even when this affects all contract customers of our second largest provider Ofcom still refuse to carry out their core role as a "communications regulator".

Whilst Virgin Media are lying dishonest bastards, they arent very good at it. Vodafone have shown the whole industry how to do it properly.