Last week I called Vodafone to pay my wife's account, using my credit card. An one off payment. All went very smoothly.

This week I call them again to pay my own account. I passed the name in the credit card, number, type and expire date. The CSR came back to me with a "Sorry, this card is registered to someone else's name".

Surprised, I replied "It can't. The card is mine, this is the name on the card.".

Then came the explanation:

"Oh, no I am not talking about the name on the card, but this is someone else's account already".

The penny drops. I used the card to pay my wifes account, and the CSR back then entered the card into my wifes account so that next time if she calls she can just follow the deep-six menu and enter the last four digits of the card and pay from there.

So I explained this to the CSR, passed my wife's PIN and she confirmed this was the case. The card was removed from the account and the payment went through.

What a strange system, Vodafone. A credit card belongs the card holder, the person whose name appear in front of the card, not to the person your billing system thinks it belongs to.

Note 1: technically a credit card belongs to the credit company, and used by the card holder. But you get the idea.
Note 2: Can anyone get the inline joke about the menu system? Post a note here and I might have a prize for you.