30 Mar 2006 dwmw2   » (Master)

Bloody telcos.

For a long time, there was a second mobile phone on my account, which was no longer used (for various reasons) but never got cancelled. I paid Vodafone a fair amount of money because I never quite got round to cancelling it.

They have a duty of care to their customers -- arguably they should have contacted me and asked if I realised that I was still paying for this phone which was never even switched on. But they didn't.

Last year, I finally got round to calling them and telling them that I wanted to close the account.

A month or so later, I closed the direct debit and informed them that I had done so.

Now, I'm receiving threatening letters from a debt collection agency, demanding payment for the three or four months more which elapsed before Vodafone finally did close the account at their side.

Now, are they just being muppets, as we have come to expect from telcos, or are they deliberately behaving dishonestly in an attempt to defraud me?

The extra few months' line rental is nothing in comparison with what I paid during all the time I left it due to my own incompetence -- there's a school of thought that says I should just pay it and make them go away. But obviously I'm far too obstinate to let them get away with that.

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