Vodafone "zu Hause" service and random billing

Hello you clever forum people. Has anyone else had problems with this "service" from Vodafone?

The situation is this. Last October my good lady and I were sold this package, which we were told meant that we could call America and England for free (landlines or mobiles) providing that the mobile was registered in the "home zone". This service costs 45 Euro per month plus tax and any other charges eg. SMS were charged as additional. That was all dandy and fine and seemed like a good solution to call home (although I later found out that Arcor do a much better landline plan, but, oh well, we were new in town etc.).

The problem is that every month they overcharge by sometimes as much as 150 Euros even though the phone never leaves the house so is always in the "home zone". The phone says "Zu Hause" so we think that we can call safely. After making calls on a monthly basis (pretty much every time we get a bill), Vodafone have always accepted their mistake and deducted the overcharged amount from the next bill. Initially, they said that it "takes time to get the billing right with new accounts". We have been very patient although it is massively inconvenient to keep calling and holding for sometimes 20 minutes each month. Anyway, I digress. This month the bill arrived, and bear in mind that the phone has not left the house and we never SMS from it, sure enough it has registered 80 Euro worth of call charges, so we make the usual call. This time however, Vodfone are now saying that calls to US and UK mobiles are not free and if we don't like it then we can write and complain, but we must pay.

It is like they have a license to make it up as they go along and also have free-range over our bank account.

If this was back in blighty, then the simple answer would be to just cancel the direct debit and if they want to argue that they have not consistently failed to produce or offer a reliable service then "I'll see you in court" etc., but here in Germany it appears impossible to stop them taking the money out of one's bank account. Is the only option to shut the bank account down? I feel that we have been very patient with this incompetent company, and they never disputed the terms of the contract before so why now? Also, if it is the case that they have now changed the rules, and keep in mind that I was very clear about asking exactly what calls were allowed at the time of taking on the contract, surely that is a hideous breech of contract?

Anyway, I wondered if anyone else has had this experience with this service and what they did to solve the problem.

Thanks in advance,
D.

I don't know of any "flatrate" service from any provider to UK that includes mobiles in the plan. It's common in flatrate plans to the US (where mobiles and landlines are treated the same from a call/billing point of view) but transfer charges onto the UK mobile network make these calls prohibitively< expensive, and easy to abuse. I'd suggest that whoever advised you was probably confused and essentially mis-sold you the plan, probably without ill-intent, but at the end of the day it's the small-print in the contract which will stand up in court, where I'm sure it's clear that calls to UK mobiles are chargeable (and probably pretty expensive)

Just be glad it wasn't a bill for half a million quid, like this bloke

The Register: Vodafone presents punter with £500k phone bill

As YorkshireLad6 already pointed out Vodafone do not offer a flatrate to US/UK mobiles. You probably have the HappyInternational option which allows free calls to UK/US landlines:
ZuHauseOption & Flatrate

The price for the flatrate to all the German mobile networks (SuperFlat XL ohne Handy) starts at €79.95/month,. So I guess you should think yourself lucky that Vodafone do not backdate your charges.

There should be no difference in charges for US mobiles and US landlines, and now with number portability there's not really any way to tell if a US number is a landline or mobile.