Disgruntled VF 3g customer

[e1000]

I am posting this on behalf of a colleague at work.

At the beginning of June, he got a Nokia 6234 on an upgrade. It would not connect to the 3g network, so on 12th June he phoned Vodafone and they sorted this out for him. All going well so far.....

The other day he looked online to see how much his first bill would be. He told me that if he had printed it out, it would have been over 100 pages!!!!!!!:speechles

It appeared that from the 12th June (which happened to be the day he had the 3g enabled on the sim) until the 28th of June, his phone was automatically trying to connect to non vodafone live sites (weird how it didn't try to connect to Live!) and was randomly texting numbers that were in his phonebook on the phone at 2 in the morning while he was asleep (he never turns his phone off).

He has phoned Vodafone, and they are only 'considering' waiving these unexplained actions as they said it must have been due to something that he did to the phone. They have said it 'might' be the phone at fault but they doubt it, and that they would only give him a loan phone, not a straight replacement (probably a Sagem VS1 :devious: :devious: ) while the 6234 is being checked out. He's not happy with this, he doesn't want a loan phone, but he wants his 6234 replaced with another one. He also wants all these mysterious charges cancelled off his bill.

I do vaguely remember reading something on the net about this problem before, but I will be bu**ered if I can find it. Has anyone on here ever heard of this problem before? It's got me a bit concerned because if its a problem with the phone is my 6233 on Orange doing the same thing?????:confused:

It seems very strange that as soon as he had the 3g enabled on the sim (which he has had for yonks) all this started to happen.

Where does he stand on this?

[GC27vf]

Hi e1000,

I work for Vodafone and am sorry to hear of the problems your friend has been having.

I've never heard of any problems with the Nokia 6234 with regards to connecting to the internet. The only reason I can think of is if the mobile has an email client set up to run in the background and check for new email messages automatically.

Many handsets include the facility where you can set your email client to check for new messages at specific intervals. E.g. every 5, 10, 15, 30, 60.

If the phone has been set to check for new messages every 5 minutes, then it will make a connection to the internet twelve times every hour for the whole day and data transfer will take place on each occasion, even if there are no new emails being downloaded. As you can imagine if this is taking place every 5 minutes, it can lead to large internet data bills.

When a mobile leaves the factory the email client checker facility would not be turned on. This would be something that is altered after the product has been sold to the consumer. I've only ever heard of one mobile (the Samsung E370) which left the factory in bulk order with an email client checker accidentally turned on (this one was checking every hour) and this issue has since been resolved.

If you’d like me to arrange for somebody to look into your colleagues account for them, please can you ask them to send us an email? They can do this by visiting www.vodafone.co.uk and clicking on the contact us section.

They should type the code FIT135 in the body of the email. This is important so it guarantees that the email reaches the most suitable person to deal with issue.

If you have any other questions please let me know

[Phantom]

Hey GC27vf, I also work for Vodafone (outsourced call centre) up in Scotland, I've seen you mention FIT135 a few times but have never heard of it. What is it and can we give this out to customers who call in?

[midlands_lad]

Hi Phantom,

FIT135 is a code to allow us to monitor emails in from people on the forum and help us to route the query appropriately.

This code should never be given to customer's other than our referrals from the forums.

I hope this helps.

[chaos77]

the random texting bit sounds like a symbian virus, i would have the phone checked by an engineer!