19/06/2012

Vodafone Owes Customers €1.1m In Refunds

Mobile phone giant Vodafone has not returned more than half of the €1.9m it overcharged customers, according to a report by the Irish Independent today.

Vodafone admitted two months ago that it had overcharged prepay customers using services such as gambling and psychic hotlines over a three-year period of December 2008 and December 2011.

However, it has now emerged that less than half of this cash has been given back to customers; and there is little likelihood the remainder will be returned.

Vodafone has only refunded customers who were overcharged after December 2010, saying it had paid out €800,000 so far to 56,000 customers overcharged from December 2010 to December 2011.

The Irish Independent has reported today that Vodafone did not send texts to its customer base to alert them to the issue so that they could seek a refund; despite its frequent bombardment of customers with marketing texts urging them to sign up for different offers.

The result is that Vodafone is only likely to pay back up to €1.05m of the €1.9m it overcharged users.

However, the firm has also agreed to pay more than €951,000 to state watchdog ComReg as a penalty for the overcharging blunder, and this sum will be passed back to the Exchequer.

In response Vodafone has said it had not received any applications for refunds from customers who were charged too much between December 2008 and December 2010.

"Any monies not refunded to customers from the €250,000 will be donated to charity. The charity is yet to be decided," a spokesman said.

ComReg said it was monitoring Vodafone's provision of refunds to affected consumers.

(H)


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