I have been a Vodafone customer since the year 2015. But from the last two years, I have been facing severe issues of balance deductions on my number 8447730661. My phone’s balance has been deducted under the guise of activating unnecessary services like caller tune, astrology services, wallpaper downloading, fitness services, friendship services etc. and other promotional services. Till now, I have lost more than 500 Rs in the past one-and-half years in this fraudulent manner. Most of the time, whenever I have noticed such unlawful deductions from my phone’s balance, I have informed about it to customer care agents by calling on 199 and 9828098280 numbers. But everytime, I have been told that those services had been started after my permission via. FLASH MESSAGES. Obviously, I have never chosen to initiate such activities deliberately from my end. It is very obvious that vodafone telecommunication services initiate such services in deceitful ways. Following such interruptions in vodafone’s network services, i had even discontinued vodafone’s network services a little while ago but then returned to this network again hoping some improvement. But now again, Vodafone is doing the same unethical activities by using ways of deceptions to fudge its customers.
This is the pattern that I have observed and I am narrating it to you.
Vodafone fudges its customer by deducting their phone’s balance. They send some FLASH messages. FLASH messages are promotional messages which appear on the screen of the user instantaneously. When such messages pop-up in the midst of a user’s work on his/her phone’s screen, the user (while touching the screen ) unknowingly touches that FLASH message which contains permission seeking promotional services. Vodafone takes that unwilling “screen touch” of the FLASH message as granting the permission for random service, about which the user does not even have any idea. All of sudden, Vodafone deducts the balance for that service and starts that service on the user’s phone. Vodafone sends a confirming message about the initiation of that service on the user’s cell phone. Most of the time, the user avoids looking at that message because the user has a busy life to earn a living and cannot waste his/her time in reading promotional messages. By the time, the user notices about his/her phone’s balance deduction and informs about it on the customer care, it is too late to get his/her refund back because of the fraudulent policies of Vodafone. Vodafone policy says that the customer must inform within 24 hours of such incident to the customer care to stop uninterested services and get his/her refund back.
The Vodafone company fails to realize that it is the responsibility of the telecommunication service provider to inform its user about every small updation and upgradation on his/her mobile service and then make sure that the user is aware about such upgradation and updation of any such services. If the customer is unaware of any such service on his/her network account then it is the duty of the service provider to refund his/her unjust deducted balance at that very moment.
Till today, i have lost more than Rs 500 in the past one-and-half years due to such fraudulent activities by vodafone. In the past two months only, I have lost about Rs 140 due to similar unethical activities of Vodafone service provider. Whenever I have tried to raise a complaint about this and whenever I have asked for my money back, I have not been heard even one single time. The customer care service agents on number 199 and 9828098280 have either told me that my money cannot be refunded back or had cut my calls in between the conversation either by putting it on hold or while transferring my calls to “senior authority” or have told me to call later because their system was either not working or their system was upgrading. How many times does a customer need to call customer care to get his/her query resolved ?
Everytime i had to ask them to stop all such promotional activities on my phone by activating DND (Do Not Disturb) facility but the Vodafone service provider kept sending me such promotional service pop-up messages. Everytime I had asked them to stop sending me FLASH messages, they assured me that it had been stopped but then after every few days, again they would start sending me the FLASH messages. They tell me that there are three ways to STOP popping-up FLASH messages on the phone. One, the FLASH messages needs to be stopped from the service provider’s end. Second, the FLASH messages need to be stopped from the user’s end. Third, the FLASH messages need to be stopped from the customer care’s end. Also, Vodafone’s DND facility doesn’t seem to work at all as it doesn’t STOP unnecessary disturbance to the customer by the network service provider.
Every single time I have asked the customer care agents to register a complaint about each and every balance deduction, I have been told that the company’s policy does not either allow agents or provide facility to the customer care agents to register complaints. Sometimes, it is due to some system’s problem on their part and sometimes it is some policy constraint that they face.
Cases and issues like these causes mental agony and are responsible for mental and financial harassment.
