Vodafone Ireland is to refund more than €2 million to customers who were wrongly charged for services after they had cancelled their contracts.
On foot of an inquiry by regulator ComReg, the telco conducted a review of its billing system and found it had imposed “post-cancellation charges” on customers who had previously terminated their accounts. On some inactive accounts, it also found other credits unrelated to post-cancellation charges, which had neither been claimed by customers nor refunded by the company.
More than 74,000 customers here are understood to have been affected by the two issues.
“Rather than proactively refunding affected customers, Vodafone kept the post-cancellation charges as credits on inactive accounts and only issued a refund if one was requested by a customer,” ComReg said in a statement.
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“Vodafone has also identified that customers had other types of credits, unrelated to post-cancellation charges, on their inactive accounts, which had not been claimed by customers, or proactively refunded by Vodafone, following the cancellation of contracts by these customers,” it said.
“As a result of the review, Vodafone advised ComReg in June 2022 that over 74,000 customers were impacted by the charging of post-cancellation charges and credits remaining on inactive accounts.”
Vodafone confirmed that all affected customers will be refunded to the value of €1.3 million in post-cancellation charges and €790,000 for other credits that remained on inactive accounts. This would imply an average refund of about €27.
The majority of affected customers will be refunded using the email address that Vodafone has on record, the company has confirmed to ComReg. The email will advise the customer of their refund amount and a unique pdf document will be attached, which they can present to a Payzone retailer in order to claim the refund.
The customer will have 90 days to claim the refund and refunds will commence with immediate effect, to be completed by the end of February next year. The company also confirmed that, in future, credits will not remain on inactive accounts and that it will proactively refund such credits to its customers.
Vodafone has apologised to customers. A spokesperson said: “Earlier this year, a number of operators, including Vodafone, engaged with ComReg on policies related to cancellation charges and other refundable credits.”
“As part of Vodafone’s review, it was found some customers were charged for services beyond their contract cancellation date — known as post-cancellation charges. These charges were refunded on request, not automatically applied.
“As a result, refundable credits remained unclaimed on some customer accounts. Vodafone is reaching out to those impacted and is in the process of fully refunding customers. Vodafone apologises for any inconvenience caused.”
