Vodafone Callya credit frequently disappears...
 

I have been using Vodafone's callya (prepaid service) when I visit Germany. When the credit gets low I get a notification and I usually charge it by 15e. However, when I charged last time, the credit become less than 2e after 3 domestic texts and one call (all in germany to germany, the data disabled). The same thing happened when I visited last year but I didn't have time to dig deeper. So this time I went to a Vodafone shop and explained my situation but the agent said there is nothing they can do because they cannot show my usage. And oddly, he said he is not surprised that my credit just disappeared, so I am left with the impression that this actually happens a lot. Did it happen to someone else? How should I go about this? Any ways to get my credit back or at least check why the credit disappears?

Have you been in an official Vodafone shop in not a one of those "we sell all kind of crappy contracts" shops?

The Vodafone service team can see the outgoing calls and SMS over the last 90 days and in doubt e.g. for a law suit even produce a statement of all calls.

Call the service hoteline ( 0172 229 02 29, should be a free call in the vodafone network) or go to a Vodafone shop and let them call the CallYa service desk.

Sad thing is, that most of the shops are really bad in service and just trained to sell contracts and phones but not to follow up on or resolve customer issues. In 99% of the cases they will need to call the backoffice and get them to sort out the problem. But that is something they should - even without you pushing them for it.

Seems to me the just looked for a quick way to get rid of you, probably since they also didn't feel to comfortable speaking English? (still a big problem in Germany...)

With many of the prepaid cards, the credit disappears if no call are made for a certain period of time, usually six months or so.

the credit disappeared within a week of recharge. And it is not like all of your credit disappears, it is more like a large fraction of it disappears, in a way that expiration cannot explain.... And this happened twice to me in the past year. I probably charged 4 or 5 times within a year. So this is not about expiration.

I visited the actual vodafone shop and the explanation was that they cannot provide the details of texts, calls or any transaction for Callya plan, which is the prepaid plan. Are you sure they can see these details for Callya specifically? I can go to a different shop if they can because I totally agree with you, they avoid you if you start speaking English or in general, they don't really care...

Yes, I'm pretty sure customer services can see what has been charged to the card - although the guys in the shop cannot.

(info from the Vodafone Germany Support Forum)

So, you can either go to the shop and let them call customer services or call them yourself.

About the English... Being German I'm really ashamed that even thigh everybody learns English it is very hard to get around. Quite the opposite here in Sweden... Every room maid speaks better English than a lot of German Executives ;)

Thanks a lot, I will give it a try on Monday then. And the second part really made me laugh, I hope it gets better :)

Good luck!

Na, as long as they keep going with synchronizing every movie and TV production and even in university strictly keep the course work German (even though sometimes English literature is used), I don't see it changing. You just don't need to speak or listen in English in Germany.

Anyway, here in Sweden you arre forced to learn English as 70% of your TV program is English with subtitles and most universities offer all courses in English.

Probably the two languages which are more useful to learn as German are Turkish and Russian ;)

I've been with Vodafone prepaid for quite a long time now. Don't ask me why, it's clearly absurd. But I use the phone often enough, despite being abroad much of the year, to justify keeping it going. I find I haven't lost any credit as such, but that Vodafone offers constant enticements (through its Callya Toppings dog biscuit loyalty thing) such as extra credit if you top up a certain amount within a certain period of time. Then you have to use the extra credit within a certain amount of time, usually a week (at the moment it's 5 Euros extra, if you top up with 15 Euros). And previously (possibly still now) you have to use up the 15 Euros you topped up before you can get at the 5 free Euros credit...before it vanishes into thin air. So this promotions push you to use use use, phone phone phone, spend spend spend. Solution: I just ignore it all and do what I want, occasionally making use of the promotions they send me for being a Vodafone customer for more than 10 years.

In short, German mobile telephony utterly sucks and is damned expensive...if you're doing it the prepaid way like me. But I think it utterly sucks whichever way you are doing it, and customer service is DREADFUL. There isn't a single operator in Germany I would currently consider, but I am open to suggestions if anybody has one.

Do you have a smartphone? Maybe it establishes a data connection to update its system or some apps and so uses up your credit? Seems to be the most plausible explanation IMO.

The mystery has been solved. It was a technical error on Vodafone’s side. A configuration error caused that customers where charged for LTE data consumption even if the smart phone was not active. Vodafone identified the affected customers (over 10,000). They will be reimbursed.

Datenpakete: Vodafone stellte Zehntausenden Kunden überhöhte Rechnungen

I think flyingfkb's explanation might explain why I lost credit. I know some apps can use internet AS SOON AS I connect to internet. I am aware of it, so I always turn off the mobile data before plugging in the sim card abroad. Anyway, I lost something like 10e, I hope they get the credit back. Unfortunately, I left the country, so I cannot check or talk to the CS. I am a bit disappointed by the german tech guys as I always thought Germans are very reliable...

To be honest ever since Vodafone entered the German marked buying D2 Mannesmann the best advice was to stay away from them... go to T-mobile or O2.

Nothing to do with Germans in itself, my experience is just that Vodafone never delivered exceptional service or quality in Germany (can't say about other markets). The only thing which made them successful was that they took over the pretty great D2 network and lots of corporate customers.

It is also possible that once you put 15€ on your Prepaid card, it immediately activated a certain plan that costs 10€ or more. You could try checking if you have any plan subscriptions that activate automatically once you have enough credit.