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14, 000 prepaid and 33, 000 contract customers are affected
In recent months, mobile service provider Vodafone has over-invoiced tens of thousands of customers and falsely debited money. The reason for this is an error in the billing system.
According to the current status, the first errors in the Vodafone billing system have been reported since May 2015. Customers who complained about overpayments and amounts wrongly debited were reimbursed for their money. However, the fact that there could be a systematic error behind the problem only became clear when, after several weeks, a major investigation was initiated.
The public was made aware of the incorrect invoices by the mobile portal Areamobile. The editors of the website discovered the error, as editors reported that had been deducted from two Vodafone prepaid SIM cards money for mobile Internet, although this was not used. If no additional data volume package, the so-called Callya Smartphone Special, is booked for prepaid cards, the cost of mobile internet is 9 cents per minute. However, since the mobile Internet had been turned off on the affected phones, there should have been no charges. Nevertheless, 9-cent amounts were repeatedly debited at irregular intervals.
The editors watched the phenomenon and eventually turned to Vodafone customer service. They said they had everything examined. Ultimately, however, once the debited amount of five euros was well written. Areamobile reports that other customers, who had received similar bills, would also have their money back.
Only now, however, it became known why these wrong debits came. The reason for the high bills was a mistake in the LTE network of the mobile operator Vodafone . Even if the mobile Internet was not used, customers were charged so-called "signaling packets". These serve to enable the mobile networks to maintain contact with the devices in the LTE network. These are also active if the user is currently not using the Internet at all. Since the observed SIM cards did not use the Callya Smartphone Special, money was charged for "contacting" the signaling packets. The amounts of 9 cents each came about because these are the cost of one minute of mobile data usage.
Vodafone has since discovered that a total of 47, 000 customers using the LTE network are affected by this issue. Of these, 14, 000 are users of a prepaid card and 33, 000 are contracted customers. Anyone who has paid too much money in the last three months will now be credited the respective amount.
If you have any questions, customers are kindly requested to contact either the Vodafone hotline on 0800-0800 1721212 or the MeinVodafone app.
