Vodafone ruined my credit score. Now it won’t help me

I made several calls to Vodafone to explain that I had never visited the shop, but I was told that it had video evidence of me going there. This was impossible as I was attending an appointment that day in my local town.

I was getting nowhere so I contacted the telephone number attached to one of the new contracts and spoke to a lady, who it turns out has the same name as me.

She was horrified about what had happened and said as soon as she was well enough she would visit her local shop and sort out the issue. I then immediately phoned Vodafone to explain what I had discovered and was told that the only way to resolve this was if this person with the same name visited the shop.

By this time I was starting to get very stressed and anxious so I called the shop the next day and spoke to the manager who acknowledged that it was Vodafone’s error. She was able to remove the two contracts from my Vodafone account and I was later reimbursed for the monthly payment.

Then in May I discovered that this issue had damaged my credit score and that the details of the other customer now appeared on my file. I phoned Vodafone to ask it to remove this information from my credit file, but it said it couldn’t. It said that I would need to dispute the incorrect information with the credit reference agencies so they could update my file, though it warned that this could take a while. This means that I’ve got to spend yet more time sorting out this mistake and I’m now worried about the effect on my finances.

I am at the end of my tether and would be grateful if you could take up my case.
Anne Cutts, Sudbury

Troubleshooter says

It’s appalling that Vodafone sent you on a wild goose chase to fix its error. I’m also surprised that it initially told you that the other customer had to sort out the issue.

What made this situation even more absurd was that the other customer spelt her name differently from yours too.

If, as you were told, an ID check had been carried out in the store, how did the agent manage to link someone with a different name, address and date of birth to your account?

It turned out that a typo was to blame: the agent had entered the spelling of your name into the system, which incorrectly linked the contract to your Vodafone account. Vodafone said the agent didn’t follow the correct process and that its staff will receive training to prevent this from happening again.

But what about the impact on your credit file? Mobile phone contracts appear on your credit file because it’s a type of borrowing. Because your credit score was damaged, this can affect your ability to borrow in future and leave you paying higher interest rates on credit cards and loans.

Experian, Equifax and TransUnion are the three main credit reference agencies, so it’s always worth checking what information they have on file in case anything is amiss.

Companies like Vodafone have the power to make changes to the information on a customer’s credit file, so I was surprised that it left you to sort this yourself, especially because it was to blame for the incorrect details being there in the first place.

Once I got involved it agreed to work with the credit reference agencies to make sure there was no long-term damage to your file. This month you told me that the other customer’s details have finally been removed from your file and your credit score has been repaired

Vodafone said: “We’re really sorry for the confusion and inconvenience this has caused the customer. We have refunded the customer and offered a financial gesture of goodwill.”

It has given you a total of £600 compensation. You were pleased it was resolved but disappointed that it took Vodafone eight months to get to this point.

• ‘I’m head of fraud at a bank and my identity was still stolen’

€225 just to clean up some sand? Thanks Hertz

During a holiday to the south of Spain in August my wife and I rented a Hertz car.

Unfortunately there was a drought during our trip so none of the showers were working, which made it impossible not to bring half the beach back with you. There was also a sand cloud that covered the car in dust.

These were circumstances beyond our control, but the day after returning the car at the end of our holiday, Hertz charged a €225 cleaning fee. I hadn’t been warned about this fee, even during the inspection when we dropped the car off. In fact, my wife apologised for it being messy and asked if that was going to be an issue, but was told that it wasn’t a problem because it would be cleaned anyway before being returned to the fleet.

We ended up returning the car a day early so it wasn’t as if it was out of service for the clean. If I had been warned in advance about the cleaning charge, I’d have made sure to have the car valeted before returning it, just as we did with refilling the fuel tank.
Name and address supplied

Troubleshooter says

While it’s normal for hire cars to need a tidy up before being given to the next customer, in your case the rental needed more than the usual clean. This left you paying a penalty charge, which Hertz said was to account for the fact that the vehicle is out of the rental rotation for longer than expected.

The terms and conditions of your car hire agreement did say that an extra cleaning charge would apply if the vehicle needed more than the “standard clean”. But the agreement didn’t say what a standard clean involved and how much you could be charged if it needed more than the usual vacuum.

If Hertz had warned that you could be charged as much as €225, I’m sure that you would have gone out of your way to get the car cleaned before you gave it back — and paid a fraction of the cost too.

You also said the car had been inspected when you dropped it off, which would have been another good time for Hertz to warn you about the fee. Hertz said that the car was dropped off at 9pm, which meant that it wasn’t until the next day that the staff realised that it needed a deep clean.

But given that none of this was communicated to you until afterwards, I felt that Hertz should refund you. Once I got involved the company agreed to reimburse you in full.