Vodafone charges for paper bills despite agreeing to a contract price

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ageorge

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#154619 2-Nov-2014 20:13

Vodafone $1.5 paper charge.

First off, I think this is a fair price for a paper invoice service, BUT what I dont think is fair, and most likely a breach of contract is most customers have agreed for 12 months to a contract which includes specific items eg call waiting, caller ID paper invoicing and so on.
WE HAVE NOT PREVIOUSLY AGREED TO A NEW PAPER CHARGE.
If Vodafone introduced the charge on the next contract negotiation, that would be open and fair, but to slip it in during a contract period in my opinion is illegal.

I have argued this with Vodafone, who insists that the charge is fair and they are donating heaps to 'Dinky Books' or whatever. Lets face it, for many, when our contracts started there was no such charge because the costs were already built in to the overall price of the contract.

Despite Vodafone have notified us of this charge during our contract, if I notified them that I was going to quit Vodafone tomorrow because of this unagreed charge, they would try to fine me around couple of hundred dollars for breach of contract. At this stage, I dont wish to do this, but its a pretty one-sided deal when they can tutu around with a contract, but we cant.

I have moved to email invoicing, but am really grumpy about Vodafone putting this charge on because the bigger picture is its a possible wrought of hundreds of thousands of dollars when you consider their huge customer base who mostly are on contract with agreed pricing for agreed services.

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raytaylor

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#1167136 2-Nov-2014 20:45

Vodafone retains the right to change the terms of the contract - industry standard practice is with at least 1 months notice.
Under consumer law, you have a right to end the contract if the new terms do not meet your expectations to what you signed up for at the beginning.

So if there is a price change, vodafone give you 30 days notice, so that if you dont agree, you can cancel the contract without penalty.

Ray Taylor

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dejadeadnz

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#1167179 2-Nov-2014 22:08

As a rule (and this is coming from a commercial lawyer who's far more familiar with contracts and the commercial realities of contracting then the relatively one-sided ranters, both pro and anti-VF in this thread) most in-contract price changes are not substantial nor commercially unreasonable in the grand scheme of things. The $1.50 charge is hardly creaming it - a standard letter costs 65 or 70 cents to send for a retail customer. Even if VF gets a discount for bulk mailing, when you account for the cost of postage, the envelope, the admin and human costs, $1.50 is simply hardly worth getting outraged over.

On the other hand, I wish the very best of luck to any company stupid enough to substantially increase the price of services on the basis of a notice provision during a time where a customer is locked into a contract and must pay a pre-agreed early termination fee or suck up a massive increase. It won't quite work to just say "It's in the contract!" -- contract law requires very deliberate, specific notice of particularly onerous terms to the offeree before these can be fully take advantage of by the offeror in the case of "take it or leave it" standard form contracts. If the increase is onerous enough and someone decides to contest it in those circumstances, I can see a Disputes Tribunal referee reading in proviso that all price increases must be reasonable or giving the consumer other suitable remedies. And there will likely be CGA-based remedies available as well.

But here in the real world, most companies act fairly reasonably to people locked into fixed contracts. For those who aren't in fixed contracts, just leave. For all the areas in which our telcos often fall short, it does pay to remember that competition is pretty fierce here and by and large we have things pretty good.