Vodafone refused to cancel my contract before December 2025 Even tho I didn’t get the product

18 comments

1. >they couldn’t give me the phone

   that was your opportunity to cancel the whole thing for once and for all

   >I didn’t care much about arguing in German just for 60€ a month

   that was a very expensive mistake you have made (24*60=1440 euro). now after a year its difficult to correct it.

   considering the amount of money involved, contact a lawyer who can oversee all the details and advise you properly

2. Do you just sign anything without checking the contract terms?

3. Maybe you can try to get someone to speak with them on the phone in German for you?

   Vodafone is known to have some strange tactics around their contracts. My fiance once made a contract with unlimited data and a new phone (a Black Friday deal) and collected the phone from a shop a few days later. After two weeks they cancelled his contract since he “never collected the phone” (which he held in his hands) and he couldn’t get the deal back that he originally got since the deal no longer existed. After a lot of back and forth he suddenly had two contracts running at the same time and after more back and forth with multiple people from their service hotline he got everything resolved and has his original contract back.

   In your case it is very strange that they charge you for a phone you never received. They should have cancelled the contract after two weeks. But I fear that you should have directly resolved the issue when they asked for your address. (Or even better: directly in store when they couldn’t hand you the phone. You should’ve cancelled right there. Sign a paper and then be done with it) Not doing anything at that point might have been like admitting the contract is fine and can continue. If you want to get out of the contract you need to fight with them and hope you’re in the right. Not having the phone from the contract or the SIM card is a good point, but you need to speak with higher ups, or write on their forum to ask for someone to MAYBE resolve this. But I fear you’re out of luck with this one after such a long time. Good luck!

   Edit: I agree with the others, you should always very carefully read the terms and conditions of such contracts and you should’ve cancelled everything directly, regardless if it’s a little bit inconvenient for you at that time.

4. Was there any particular reason for not taking a prepaid? 60€ a month is simply insane!

5. For the Vodafone to come out as the good guy in this whole thing, it was sure an unexpected turn.

6. Is the 60 EUR/ month just for the telecomunication package or also for the phone? If the second, then it seems to me that Vodafone breeched the contract by not giving you the phone and are grounds for you to cancel the contract. You have to look in detail in the contract and AGB. Not sure what are the next legal steps if my assumption is correct. But it’s a starting point for you

7. I have had similar experiences with Vodafone. Just stay away from this service provider in Germany. It is not a service provider rather money leech, especially by trapping people in contracts.

8. Time to learn German. You could have cancelled the vodafone contract in the beginning. Now you are stuck with both to pay. A lawyer might be able to leverage the fact that you never got the term of service but I doubt that because they did offer (or even send) the SIM. Maybe, there is a way via the phone issue. But that is unclear. Anyhow, you really need to learn German if you want to live here

9. Wait a minute.

   You didn’t care about paying 60 Euros per month for nothing?
   While you had that contract running, you decided to get a second contract from another company bundled with a phone for 3 years?

   Congratulations!

   You have now to pay 2 contracts until February 2025, but only when you make sure you cancelled the contract with Vodafone correctly.

   You did everything wrong, that could be done wrong. Was there no one who could have helped you? Any friend who is a native German speaker?

   At your current point, you are in a very bad situation, and I’m not even sure, if a lawyer could help you, and a lawyer would be even more money to throw at that problem.

10. Since you didn’t take care of it right from the beginning with the 30 days widerufsverfahren, I highly doubt you will find a solution now on your own. You most likely have to contact a lawyer for this.

11. Everybody in the comments: tell me you are german without telling me you are german

12. Don’t ever again make a contract with vodafone. It’s lesson to learn.

    You will never get a “free” phone from any company. You always pay it. This said, you would be better off, if you just get a cheap prepaid SIM (I recommend congstar) and buy a smartphone from your own money. Calculate the costs for a year or two and you will see that this is not only cheaper, but also you do not have to deal with vodafone service.

13. Well the lesson for you should be to not sign things you don’t understand.

14. The same thing happened to me, it was a gift for my wife too. As an immigrant learning German it was hard to even get through the IVR but the good folks over at the Vodafone community speak English and helped me recover most of the money that was deducted from my account.
    Use chrome with translator and visit the Vodafone community forum first and explain the full details of the case. I’m sure they will respond to you in english, I don’t know the particulars of your case but it’s eerily similar to mine, ordered off the net and went to collect at the store and was denied because my blue card was close to expiration date but continued to deduct the monthly payments for several months, I didn’t notice it because I had a Vodafone internet connection with the same amount so I assumed it was the internet payments, only caught on because i saw there were multiple payments every month.
    Good luck.

15. Vodafone doesn’t have English support in Germany?

16. Welcome to the German mobile scam industry

17. Bei den meisten Verträgen in Vodafone und Telekom macht die Geräteoption nur 10-30€ im Monat aus, die auf den Tarif aufgeschlagen werden, damit die Grundgebühr des Vertrags nach der mvl hoch bleibt wenn die Leute nicht kündigen.

    Bei dir kam der Vertrag zustande nur eben die Hardware Option nicht. D.h. den Vertrag kann man nicht Sonderkündigen.

    Das einzige was man versuchen kann mit dem Shop zu sprechen warum sie den Vertrag weite geleitet haben, obwohl die Hardware niemals ausgeliefert werden konnte.

    Eventuell liegt da eine arglistige Täuschung vor.

    Generell empfiehlt es sich, Mobilfunkerträge nur übers Internet oder Telefon abzuschließen, da man dadurch ein 2 wöchiges Widerrufsrecht bekommt und die Verträge meist 50-70% billiger sind. Der Vodafone Shop bekommt knapp 400-800€ Provision pro Vertrag, online Händler geben dir ein Teil dieser Provision zurück.

18. Not sure who you talked to here but Vodafone customer service generally does not work with WhatsApp. I’m guessing you talked to the store and not Vodafone.
    Withholding the phone is a violation of the contact and allows you to immediately terminate the contract.

    Am i missing something?