Vodafone WAP overcharging - reimbursing customers..

PhoenixRising

Apparently Vodafone has been overcharging WAP customers over the past few months. The total overcharge to customers was in the region of €2.65 million!

They say that they will credit all effected customers for the amount they were overcharged + 10% in the next 48 hours.

The press release is here.

eoinmurphy

About time they admitted to it they've been ripping people(me included) off for ages.

Did you know that on the continent for Vodafone ready to go customers you have to pay to top up. If you go to a shop in Italy for example and ask for €10 top up they will give you a card that says €8 airtime and €2 recharge cost!! And if you ask for €25 credit they give you €20 airtime and take the other €5 as a recharge cost.Basically they charge you a fifth of what you pay, as a top up charge.

Is this legal?

SF1

that would be right

i'm reald p!ssed off now

i've been with vodafone/eircel for years

jesus_thats_gre

Over the past few months, Vodafone has been conducting an internal review of all of its tariffs and products and services to identify any potential tariffing discrepancies following a recent over-charging incident in June ‘04. As part of this internal review, Vodafone WAP services were analysed and a billing inaccuracy was identified. The identified issue related to incorrect ratings for certain categories of WAP URLs (Uniform Resource Locator). The subsequent detailed appraisal of Vodafone’s billing processes for WAP services involved the examination of over 500 million WAP impressions and over 20 million Unique URLs involving data collected over a 19 month period. The detailed review enabled the impact of the issue on individual customers to be calculated.

At the request of the company, PricewaterhouseCoopers conducted an independent review of the arithmetical accuracy of the impact calculations. The impacted customers were over-billed by on average 25c per customer per month or, in total, an average of less than €5 each. As 550,000 WAP customers were affected, the resulting total overcharge figure was €2.65million. Almost half of those affected were overcharged by amounts of less than €1.

Customers have every right to be a bit peev'd but did you actually read the press release? I would be quite satisfied in the knowledge that a company goes to such an effort to verify that their charging is accurate.

Doublezero8

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Customers have every right to be a bit peev'd but did you actually read the press release? I would be quite satisfied in the knowledge that a company goes to such an effort to verify that their charging is accurate.

No offense but you make it sound like Vodafone are doing thier customers a favour . Why should i be happy in the knowledge that a company goes to such an effort to verify that their charging is accurate ? Is this not what i pay for ??

The only reason for these internal investiagtions is so that down the line they are not caught leading to even bigger scandals !

I would be much more happy if they could get the charging correct the first time !!!

008

sound_wave

just received a message form vodafone informing me that i am being refunded €5 for WAP charges. i dont even remember using my WAP

Seriously this country and its rip off nature and getting way way outta hand!

Ruu_Old

a mate of mine got 12 euro this morning, hah!

jesus_thats_gre

Of course it would be better if these sort of thing didn't happen at all. But they do happen and I would relatively happy knowing that they go to these sort of lengths making sure that if it does happen, it will be spotted.

flywheel

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

did you actually read the press release? I would be quite satisfied in the knowledge that a company goes to such an effort to verify that their charging is accurate.

erm... it's a Press Release issued by Vodafone - so after finding the 2 or 3 facts presented (mainly the costs and resulting action) the rest of it, as a Press Release usually is, a PR exercise - all they did was analyse the problem and hire consultants to check it

one example of reading through the 'PR' was where they had to take a data set that spanned over a year and half to analyse - suppose it only made it into the release because the marketing person though it would sound impressive - whereas to me it read they were unsure how big the problem was, or, the problem had gone unnoticed/unchecked for a significant amount of time...

BrianG

JTMan

I got a message from vodafone saying I was getting a refund but my number is no longer with vodafone .... How they plan to refund I have no idea.

jesus_thats_gre

Seemingly they will send you a cheque, allow you to apply it to another number (a family member maybe) or donate it to charity..

sound_wave

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Seemingly they will send you a cheque, allow you to apply it to another number (a family member maybe) or donate it to charity..

lol

Bah

I ported to Meteor a few months ago, got a message this morning saying that I was getting €31.79 credit for "incorrect WAP charges". Rang them on 1907 and they said they'll send me out a cheque in the next two weeks. Never realised I even used WAP that much... Should come in handy over christmas though

Astro1996

Got 48euro credit :eek:

eoinmurphy

i got €22.50! whay!

PhoenixRising

Are they notifying customers who are due a refund or are they just applying the credit to the customers account without contacting them?

Also, those who have been refunded - are you bill or ready to go customers?

eoinmurphy

they text all the customers that they are refunding with an appolgy/explaination for what happened and with the amount.

I'm RTG.

JBoyle4eva

I got EUR 43:75 off them this morning! Actually surprised that I got overcharged this much(Leaving out the Extra 10% they gave)

Dr. Dre

Grand total of €1.84 here

norbert64

Never really used Wap, that much, got 5.15.
thanx vodafone

qBot

I got €3.35....and i wouldn't mind but I use wap the whole time....multiple times a day...must be got to do with when u joined them..i'm only with vodafone since the beginning of the summer.

Stark

Got 16c from O2. I'd say they've ripped me off FAR more than that.

spanner_head

Got my dad a RTG Vodafone phone a couple of years ago and they refunded a whopping 8c today. Thank you vodafone!

spanner_head

RobertFoster

cableguy wrote:

Well thanks to Vodafone I'm off to spend my 36c refund I got. Yipee!!!!

snap!

Stark

Actually the credit I got from "O2" must have been from my Vodafone days (I changed but kept my number). So it looks like they're able to catch up with you whereever you go.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

SF1

at about 11am yesterday i was woken by a text message on my phone.
it was vodafone it said i have been overcharged on using wap on my phone and they gave me €19.52
did any one get this as well

dublin_apache

eireman1916 wrote:

at about 11am yesterday i was woken by a text message on my phone.
it was vodafone it said i have been overcharged on using wap on my phone and they gave me €19.52
did any one get this as well

WOW ! :eek:

Fudger

yea but only got 3 euro. Obviously companies are being very careful since the whole AIB overcharging thing. If not I wonder if vodafone would have been so upfront and honest ???!!!!!!

Doublezero8

Fudger wrote:

yea but only got 3 euro. Obviously companies are being very careful since the whole AIB overcharging thing. If not I wonder if vodafone would have been so upfront and honest ???!!!!!!

Try this thread.

Link

008

Hal1

I got an amazing 0.02 cent :rolleyes: