Vodafone fined €11,500 and ordered to pay €10,500 in costs for over-charging 4 customers
By Tom Tuite
Vodafone has been hit with fines totalling €11,500 and has been ordered to pay €10,500 in legal costs for over-charging four customers.
Dublin District Court was told today that customers were “exasperated” and “did not know whether to laugh or cry” when they tried to get the company to resolve the problem.
The telecom giant pleaded guilty to eight charges under the Communication Regulations Act for over-charging which can result in fines of up to €5,000 per offence.
It was prosecuted after four customers in Dublin, Cavan and Kilkenny complained to industry watchdog Comreg last year. Evidence was given by Comreg compliance analyst Lorraine McCoy.
Judge John Brennan noted the early guilty plea and remedial work done by the company as a result of the investigation. However, convicting and fining Vodafone, he said previous convictions for similar offences and the frustration the customers felt were aggravating factors.
Lorraine McCoy said the first case involved complaints from a Kilkenny woman, an existing customer who had tried to cancel her mobile bill and to move to a pay-as-you-go account. However, Vodafone failed to switch the account and continued with monthly direct debits from her account.
She continued to complain to Vodafone and visited a retail store and contacted their customer care team. During one call she was kept on the line 40 minutes. In April last year she cancelled the direct debit through her bank and she wrote to the phone company but received no reply.
Six months later she received a letter from Vodafone “advising her that she owed them money”. She wrote further letters outlining her complaint and “expressed frustration that she did not know whether to laugh or cry”.
It was resolved in October last year after Comreg contacted Vodafone and she was refunded €366, the court heard.
The Comreg official told the court another existing customer in Co Cavan attempted to switch from Vodafone to a new provider. Ms McCoy said the man decided to change his landline and mobile services to Sky and was told that would be be done on October 18, 2016. Shortly afterwards he was billed again for €50 by Vodafone who told him that Sky had failed to take over his account.
After making contact several times with Vodafone, the issue remained unresolved and he lodged a complaint with Comreg.
Ms McCoy said this customer had been “exasperated” and had been unable to establish which provider had been at fault.
The court heard that the industry watchdog established that the broadband service had been transferred and he received a refund from Vodafone.
A Dublin customer was over-charged €695 when his phone data allowance was not applied, Ms McCoy told the court. The customer originally had a 10GB monthly data allowance which was later increased to 16GB a month. In July and August last year, the man received bills that he felt were quite high, Ms McCoy said.
He examined his bills and thought the data charges were excessive. In September last year he received a text notifying him to review the data usage on his account and that he had exceeded his allowance.
It was established that there had been an error and he had not received his data allowance so he was charged for all the data. He contacted Comreg in November last year and received a full refund.
The fourth case related to a new customer who had switched to Vodafone from another provider for a landline and a broadband package. Vodafone advised her she would be able to retain her existing telephone number.
Shortly afterwards she realised she had not been getting any incoming telephone calls and discovered that she had been allocated a new number. She asked for her order to be cancelled if Vodafone could not provide her original telephone number.
The woman also told the company she would not use the landline or the broadband until the issue was resolved. Two weeks later Vodafone told her the number had been re-instated.
However, the woman ended up being double-billed - for her original number and the new one - the court heard. The judge heard that €101 was later credited to her account when the issue was resolved.
Ms McCoy agreed with prosecution counsel Ronan Kennedy that Vodafone had been co-operative. It had previously been prosecuted by Comreg and fined. It also had convictions for data protection offences.
She agreed with defence counsel Niall Buckley that Comreg had seen a drop from 252 to 158 complaints about Vodafone from early 2016 until early to mid-2017.
Pleading for leniency, Mr Buckley asked the court to note that Vodafone pleaded guilty at an early stage and sincerely regretted what happened. It was not caused by systemic problems but a result of genuine human error.
In two of the cases the customers had been refunded before Comreg got involved, he said, adding that the other refunds followed promptly.
The company has spent €120m on a new IT system which will be up and running in early 2018. Customer service agents were being up-skilled to allow them deal with issues at point of contact and to given them greater freedom to resolve issues, he said.
He also asked the judge to note that there has been a drop in complaints about Vodafone.
He said the telecom company had also agreed to pay €10,500 in prosecution costs and it had been fully co-operative from the first instance Comreg got involved.
Judge John Brennan refused the company's plea to order it to donate money to a charity instead of a fine and convictions.
A Vodafone Ireland spokesperson said: “Vodafone Ireland notes the outcome of today’s District Court ruling. We sincerely apologise to each of the customers impacted. …We have reviewed the cases in detail and have put in place procedures to mitigate against these types of issues arising in the future.”
