Vodafone is to refund nearly €2.1m to customers for charges it imposed on them after they cancelled their contracts and for other credits that remained on their inactive accounts.
The move follows a review of its billing system that was conducted by the telecoms provider itself, prompted by an inquiry by regulator Comreg.
The look back discovered that certain customers had been charged for services after their contracts had been cancelled.
"Rather than proactively refunding affected customers, Vodafone kept the Post Cancellation Charges as credits on inactive accounts and only issued a refund if one was requested by a customer," Comreg said.
The company also found on some customers' accounts that there were other credits that were not connected to post-cancellation charges.
These had neither been claimed by customers or refunded by the business after their contracts had been cancelled.
Over 74,000 customers were impacted by the two issues.
The company is now to refund €1.3m in post cancellation charges and €790,000 in credits from the affected accounts.
"Refunds will commence with immediate effect and will be completed by the end of February 2023," Comreg said.
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Customers will be informed by email and will be able to claim the money within 90 days at a Payzone terminal using unique PDF document that will be sent to them.
"Vodafone has confirmed that in future credits will not remain on inactive accounts and that Vodafone will proactively refund such credits to its customers," said Comreg.
It is not the first time that issues have been uncovered with non-refunded post-cancellation charges.
In March, Comreg said Three Ireland was to refund over €2.6m to customers who were charged for services after they had cancelled their contracts.
Barbara Delaney, Director of Retail and Consumer Services in Comreg, said that Comreg has been looking at this area since 2019, and there has been a number of investigations with various operators on this matter.
She said that Comreg has notified four operators as being active in this space and €8m has been refunded.
She said that the amount of money refunded depends on the cancellation period within a billing period, but it ranges from a couple of euro to closer to the fee for the month.
She also says she understands that the Vodafone process was starting immediately and people do not have to do anything themselves as they will be contacted and should be able to get their credit automatically.
