READERS' FORUM:Have your say

Last week a reader called Georgina discovered that Vodafone had taken about €700 from her account, which she describes as extraordinary, as her bills are usually about €80. She is on a fixed-price plan and hadn’t opened her bill, but when she saw the money disappearing from her account she rushed home to do so – and, to her horror, found a bill for €6,348.

“I panicked, obviously, and went through the bill. While it was unclear, it appears the charges were for data use – including several items where I had been charged hundreds of euro, and in one case more than €1,000, for individual bursts of data use.”

She contacted the company and was told that the bill of more than €6,000 had been a mistake “and that I had been credited with about €5,700. There was no satisfactory explanation given for why the ‘mistake’ was made, or for why I have been left with a bill of over €700, which is much higher than anything I have ever paid before.”

All she has to go on now is a bill that the company admits is wrong. “No explanation, and I am €700 lighter – while wondering if the same thing will happen next month.”

We contacted Vodafone to find out more. It fully accepted that its policy “fell down here in terms of process, and we take that seriously and are looking into what happened”. A spokeswoman said the company had resolved the specific issues for this customer to her full satisfaction and fully credited her but said that the company was “still investigating how it could have occurred”.

She said the investigation into what went wrong had “proven to be more complex than we had anticipated. What I can tell you is that Georgina was on a non-data plan. This should not have been the case. It is Vodafone policy to proactively switch customers to the correct tariff when they upgrade to a smartphone, so we have a team in here looking into why this did not happen in Georgina’s case.”

The spokeswoman said Georgina had used 6.45gb of data in the month in question, “which is obviously extremely high for a smartphone. We can see that the majority of this data is happening after midnight, but unfortunately data protection precludes us from checking what exactly is using the data. We will need the customer’s permission to check this, and this may then give us a more solid explanation.” She said our reader had been switched to a data plan and until that plan is activated, on her next bill day, a temporary data add-on had been attached to her account.

Mobile insurance: two claims and you’re out

Catherine O’Meara has had her mobile-phone insured with Zurich for several years and has never missed a payment.

She recently broke her iPhone 4 and, having paid €9 a month since she bought it, was confident the insurance would cover it.

“However, the claim was denied on the basis that I had had two claims on the policy in the last 12 months. I appealed this decision but again it was declined on the basis that I had had the two claims,” she writes. She says the first of the two claims was exactly 51 weeks before she made the claim for her iPhone and points out that, had she not claimed for another week, her phone would have been covered.

“I think this is quite unfair. I was honest in my dealings with the insurance company. I genuinely broke the phone, and I paid the insurance with good faith every month. If I had known the phone was not to be covered, why would I continue paying the insurance?,” she asks. “I realise it is in the terms and conditions, but I still feel it is unfair.”

Seniors should travel for a better quote

Last week a reader complained about the difficulties people over 70 years of age have getting travel insurance. Philomena Lawler contacted us to say that she and her partner had that problem when they switched their health insurance from VHI to Aviva and lost their VHI travel-insurance policy.

“However, after some searching we got annual travel insurance with the AA. It could not have been simpler. The price was €180, but this was reduced when I could show that Aviva covers me while abroad for medical expenses,” she writes. “We eventually paid €150 for the year. I suggest she takes her business there. The staff were efficient and very pleasant on the phone.”