background:
Made a contract arrangement with Vodafone in January this year for my aging mother -
Ultimate Home with Vodafone TV Sports (12 months)
Your package includes:
Unlimited Broadband Data
Fibre 100
Free Ultra Hub modem
Paper invoice charge
Voice with free calls to NZ mobiles and landlines^
SKY Starter
SKY Sports
Your special offer:
Free National calling (-$30.00)
6 months free SKY Sport
Total $145.08 a month
Awesome right? yeah nah!
Every month since we have received a bill for $160 to $260 with charges for national an mobile calls.
So I called Vodafone to get it sorted and for the life of me could not get a valid response on the subject with one email even suggesting that I needed to apply for power of attorney to make changes on my mothers account even though I'm listed as a prime.
So i figured - Hey, lets follow the rules an guidelines and escalated the complaint. Which still netted no understanding of my issue? so I again escalated the complaint and requested the assistance of the TDR.
Cool move right? surely something set up with the soul purpose of resolving disputes for telecommunications complaints would be the right place?
Apparently not, a further 2 months of talks then the person I was dealing with informed the adjudicator is now ready for my complaint and will handle things from here. Sounds really official and competent right?
First email from the appointed adjudicator -
Dear Mike
I am the complaint resolution practitioner assigned to work with you and 2degrees to try and reach an agreement regarding your complaint. If we are not able to reach an agreement I will issue a decision for you.
Hold up? 2 degrees? great start. Thankfully before I had the chance to email a correction they responded with a correction of their own.
Then after the allocated 7 days processing it and a very brief conversation with this person we receive a your complaint has Failed notice?
Reading through the document I can see that a lot of it has been cut an pasted from the first contact conversations and a few sections added from the fair trading and consumers act then what appears to be a bunch of assumptions from the practitioner on the reasons for my complaint?
So now we are in August - 8 months after the first official complaint. So is this normal? have we given our rights away?
I mean really? does anyone else think a clear cut complaint like this should fail?