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:

super_furry

Wahey! I got €39.98. Really good timing too, cos I'm skint.

GenericName

My mate's always checking the football scores on WAP. He must be on it constantly. He was refunded €140!

BigMoose

For those wondering how the figures were worked out and how the seemingly arbitary timescale of 18 or so months was picked, I can assure you that as far as the latter point goes, VF were able to pin point exactly when the problem started and using archived usage data were able to work out for all subscribers fairly accurately what the over charge was. A lot of people have been working on this for some time!

PhoenixRising

Has anyone on post pay been refunded?

flywheel

BigMoose wrote:

For those wondering how the figures were worked out and how the seemingly arbitary timescale of 18 or so months was picked, I can assure you that as far as the latter point goes, VF were able to pin point exactly when the problem started and using archived usage data were able to work out for all subscribers fairly accurately what the over charge was. A lot of people have been working on this for some time!

well they implemented their 'per page' charge for WAP content about 18 months ago - so doesn't look arbitrary taking that into account

with a decent data warehouse and capable staff it shouldn't have been that big a deal to sort out - just time consuming - pity it took them so long to spot though - at least they admitted their internal systems need attention

Vodafone is also adopting changes to its content management processes and deploying additional resources to enhance the integrity of its billing procedures.

let's hope their implementation of the upcoming 3G billing system goes better for them (and their customers)

BrianG

flywheel

PhoenixRising wrote:

Has anyone on post pay been refunded?

nope - only got texts to handsets with pre-pay SIMs in them so far

BrianG

robo

PhoenixRising wrote:

Has anyone on post pay been refunded?

Not yet and am a bit peeved off at them cos I use the WAP service quiet a bit for football results, news and sheer boredom when not at my pc...maybe they are sorting it all alphabetically! :mad:

PhoenixRising

robo wrote:

Not yet and am a bit peeved off at them cos I use the WAP service quiet a bit for football results, news and sheer boredom when not at my pc...maybe they are sorting it all alphabetically! :mad:

Yeah I'm in the same boat. I use WAP almost daily and haven't heard a thing about being due a refund. Seeing as over 550,000 customers were affected and being a regular WAP user, I was pretty sure that I'd be due something back.

flywheel

on Post-Pay I got no SMS but this month's Bill had a credit described as "Call Credit" - have confirmed it was for the WAP overcharging - so you should see any credit applied listed on your 'Account Statement' page

BrianG

Wertz

Oh joy.


*wonders how to spend the €0.01 refund while visiting more than one shop*

:rolleyes:

robo

DubWireless wrote:

on Post-Pay I got no SMS but this month's Bill had a credit described as "Call Credit" - have confirmed it was for the WAP overcharging - so you should see any credit applied listed on your 'Account Statement' page

BrianG

Just checked my bill and no refund yet!! Am not very happy about this at all!!! :mad:

Wouldn't have minded a bit of credit as my bill is a little big this month due to roaming charges up in Belfast...are they ever gonna get rid of that for travelling to the North!!!??

flywheel

hi, Vodafone offer an account option called the Ireland-Wide Tariff

BrianG

robo

DubWireless wrote:

hi, Vodafone offer an account option called the Ireland-Wide Tariff

BrianG

Thanks fro that BrianG.

BrianD

I got an unexplained call credit from Vodafone that appeared on my latest bill. Usually I get a dropped call credit of about 0.25 but there is no explaination for this one. Would it be a chargeback from recent overcharging issues? It would be nice if they explained to customers that they over charged you and were now making amends.

flywheel

hi, have a read of the above (now merged) thread

BrianG

BrianD

Oophs! sorry mr. mod! I don't use WAP much but there was one bill where I had used it more and thought the charge was a bit steep.

Only that I - and other boards users here - are more aware of the situation would I suspect what the credit is for. There are probably 1000's of consumers out there who have no idea that they have been overcharged and quietly reimboursed.

flywheel

not sure what the apology is for?

only that you - had started a new thread about a topic already being discussed so it was merged in - just house keeping...