Vodafone to issue refunds after hitting former customers with €2m in charges

The company said it will begin refunding a total of €2.09m back to former customers, with all overcharged customers expected to be refunded by the end of February.

Vodafone is to refund more than 74,000 of its former customers for hitting them with charges after they had cancelled their contracts with the company.

The company said it will begin refunding a total of €2.09m back to former customers, with all overcharged customers expected to be refunded by the end of February.

The matter came to light following an inquiry by communications regulator ComReg. 

Vodafone Ireland Limited carried out a review of its billing system to determine whether its customers were charged for services beyond the cancellation of their contracts, which are termed "post-cancellation charges".

Rather than refunding affected customers, Vodafone kept the charges as credits on inactive accounts and only issued a refund if one was requested by a customer.

As a result of the review, Vodafone advised ComReg in June that more than 74,000 customers were impacted by the charging of post-cancellation charges and credits remaining on inactive accounts.

The refunds will be made up of €1.3m in post-cancellation charges and €790,000 for other credits that remained on inactive accounts. Vodafone said it would refund customers using the email address they have on record and that customers will have 90 days to claim the refund.

Comreg said Vodafone has confirmed that in future, credits will not remain on inactive accounts and that Vodafone will proactively refund such credits to its customers.

In a statement to the Irish Examiner Vodafone 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.”

In March this year, Three Ireland refunded €2.6m to 173,000 former customers for similar charges imposed after they cancelled their accounts.