Vodafone pleads guilty to breaching Fair Trading Act
Vodafone has pleaded guilty to five charges of misleading representations under the Fair Trading Act in Auckland District Court yesterday.
The Commerce Commission is seeking a penalty in excess of $500,000 from the company and has laid charges in relation to six different mobile and promotional campaigns.
The outcome dealt with one of those cases and Vodafone was defending the other five cases, which will be heard at a later date.
Vodafone said the charges related to the initial stages of accessing the internet via a mobile phone in 2007.
"During this period there was differential charging between V-live! and the rest of the mobile internet."
The company said the commission had accepted that the differential charging was an unintended result of technical problems and at no time did Vodafone intentionally mislead customers.
"However we accept that we could have done a better job explaining the charging mechanism.
We have apologised and co-operated fully with the Commerce Commission and wherever possible we believe we have refunded all the affected customers."
Vodafone said it had since put in place and would continue to improve measures to ensure customers were not confused by data charging.
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Comments and questions17
Vodafone has ....
The advent of 22 degrees is like a breath of fresh air.
There is 22 of them?
The only reason this case was won is because the loosely worded way around vodafone live. Most people are to **** to realize that vodafone Live means their web portal and not the greater internet.
With another six court cases pending.
I just some research on your post and found out that you are actually NOT the real Hursh Saha of New Zealand. Why are you hiding behind a name that is not yours? I am also reporting this to NBR.
The advent of 22 degrees is like a breath of fresh air!
erm more like a stale fart with their crapulent 2G mobile data!!!
God Bless The Commerce Commission
lets all use 2 degrees. vodaphone sucks.
Vodafone's a ripoff, no matter who or what the charge is regarding.
Failure of their topup systems, for hours at a time, denying customers service while being unable to account for their money, and charging to speak to customer service about this problem..
That's a range of prosecutable charges, in itself.
Down with Vodafone.
@ Thomas W - Vodafone removed the charge to call customer service for pre pay ages ago!!
Vodafone are a pack of ****. They still owe me $8 from 2years ago when i bought a game and it did not download then when i tried to call customer service they charged me a dollar a call. I called 3 times and it said they where unavailable every time but still charged me >:(
Folks per5haps you should Vote with your SIM card and move to another provider if voda are that bad, I did and it was the best move ever
nabharu chakigu alla
Changed to 2 degrees 8 months ago. Best move ever and it only took about an hour.
@apt1 you are very lucky indeed - I have had a horrible time with them - half the time I get little to no 3G on my phone and call quality is terrible. making matters worse their customer service call centre staff are terrible when you can get through to them
Vodafone told me that if I signed up I couldn't use continuing network problems as a reason for ditching them because I was aware of them before I signed up.
A few minutes earlier Vodafone had just got off the phone with me apologising that there was some setting that had accidently been switched on that was diverting calls to message bank... and they implied it was also the cause of some other problems (but remained very vague even when queried).
This was a very unpleasant conversation as non-performance remains a valid reason for terminating a contract. They were arguing that current non-performance is an excuse for future non-performance. The implication is that network problems will continue and we shouldn't expect them to get better.
Doesn't anyone at Vodafone see the ridiculous nature of the statements? ...and the harm you're doing to your image?
Shame Vodafone. Shame!!!