Customers in line for a Vodafone refund should “keep an eye on their inbox” to ensure they can claim in time, according to Jess Kelly.

It comes after a ComReg investigation found that the telecoms giant owed tens of thousands of customers ‘post-cancellation charge’ refunds.

The company is now refunding almost €2.1m to customers who were wrongly charged after cancelling their accounts.

The investigation found that the company was keeping the post-cancellation charges as credits on inactive accounts and “only issued a refund if one was requested by a customer”.

The operator has promised to refund all affected customers and to proactively return any post-cancellation charges in the future.

On Newstalk Breakfast this morning, Newstalk Tech Correspondent Jess Kelly said customers now need to keep an eye on their email for a compensation claim form from Vodafone.

“ComReg got on to a number of mobile networks and discovered that Vodafone has been charging customers money after they cancelled contracts,” she said.

“Also, they didn’t refund credit. This only came to light after the investigation and now Vodafone has to pay €2.1m back to the 79,000 customers who have been impacted.

“You need to keep an eye on your inbox because you’ll be sent a PDF form you have to fill in and then the money will be refunded. So, keep an eye on your email.”

Refunds

Jess said the individual payments are “not going to be huge amounts of money” and will vary depending on your original contract.

“We think it is going to be 79,000 people the €2.1m will be split up amongst,” she said.

“It’s likely for example that if you were paying a certain fee every month you may get a month’s contract fee back. It could be €30; it could be €60 – something in that region.

“But it is good to see it being put right and this is something that has happened before with other networks, so it is great that ComReg is catching it and implementing this process to get the money back to the people who own it.”

ComReg has said the refund process should be completed by the end of February 2023.