Our collection policy
At Vodafone, we understand that life can take unexpected turns. If you’re facing financial difficulty, we’re here to help.
Financial difficulty can happen for many reasons including loss of income, sudden illness or injury or change of family circumstances. It can affect your financial situation for a short while or longer periods.
If you are having trouble paying a bill, please let us know by contacting our Collections Team to discuss the matter. You can call them on 1300 650 405 from 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday.
Your contract with us, much like an electricity or gas account, is legally binding. We trust that you will pay for your service as stipulated in your contract. If, however, you fail to do so without informing us of a change in situation and without responding to our attempts to contact you, we will proceed with collections activity.
Collections activity
Collections activity will commence on an account that is overdue and is not in our financial hardship assistance program or on a mutually agreed payment arrangement.
If you don’t pay your bill on time, you will be charged a late payment fee of $15 each month your account remains overdue.
If your account continues to remain overdue, your service will then be suspended followed by a disconnection. If your services are disconnected your current plan(s) and number(s) may not be available to reconnect once you have cleared the overdue balance.
You’ll be issued a final bill that will need to be paid to finalise your account with us and will include any overdue amount plus any remaining monthly service charges and/or early termination fees and/or any remaining mobile/device/accessory charges which will all become due and payable.
Failure to pay the final bill may result in a credit default listing, external collections activity and/or sale of the debt to a debt purchaser.
Additional information
Yes. It’s your responsibility to ensure the contact details we have on record for you are up to date to ensure that you receive our correspondence. This includes a physical residential or business address, a valid email address and an alternate contact number if your mobile service with us is suspended or disconnected.
If an account is overdue and remains unpaid, we will make several attempts to contact you by SMS, email, phone or letter. If you don’t respond or fail to adequately explain the reason for the overdue amount, we may suspend and/or disconnect your service.
We’ll send you an SMS of our intention to suspend your service at least 5 working days prior to the suspension taking effect. If your service is suspended, you can pay the full overdue amount and we’ll reinstate your services.
We’ll send you an email or letter of our intention to disconnect your service at least 5 working days prior to the disconnection taking effect. The only instances where this will not be the case is where we do not have updated contact details for you or we assess you to be an unacceptably high credit risk or where there is reason to suspect fraud or attempted fraud on your account.
If your service is disconnected for more than 6 months your plan and number will not be available to reconnect even if you pay the full overdue amount.
You will be referred to our debt collection agents to commence action if you don’t pay your final bill by the due date.
We’re entitled to recover from you the cost of pursuing your debt. This cost may be up to 25% of the balance on the account being referred. These agencies may, at their own discretion, seek to commence legal action in order to recover the debt and that may also involve further costs to you.
We’ll lodge a credit default with Equifax (formally Veda Advantage) and Illion (formally Dun & Bradstreet) 60 days from the due date of your final bill. A default listing on your credit file can remain for up to 5 years and may affect your ability to obtain future finance or credit.
Debts may be sold to a Debt Purchaser that is a current member of an ASIC approved external dispute resolution scheme once all collection activities are exhausted and your final bill remains unpaid. You’ll be notified by the debt purchaser within 14 days of your debt being sold.
If an amount owed is the subject of a dispute, no collections activity will be undertaken on that amount until the dispute is resolved. Any undisputed amount is due and payable and will be subject to collections activity if remains unpaid.
For information on how such disputes are dealt with, please refer to the Complaints Handling Policy.