Vodafone cuts CommsDirect dealer contract

Vodafone has terminated its contract with premium dealer Communications Direct after a newspaper report alleged it was using irregular business practices that included privacy breaches to poach customers from competitors without their permission.

Staff from the Sydney mobile phone reseller known more commonly as Comms Direct did not answer phones today or last Friday when CRN called to seek a response; its website was offline on Friday downforeveryoneorjustme.com showed but it now redirects to a domain name reseller.

In an emailed statement, a Vodafone Hutchison Australia spokesman said the telco had over the weekend ended its relationship with Comms Direct, despite earlier saying that staff caught over the affair were already sacked.

"Vodafone had arranged for the termination of its dealer arrangement with Communications Direct Australia on Friday, 21 January due to alleged business practices that breached the terms of its dealer agreement," the company said. 

The Sydney Morning Herald last week carried allegations that customer information in a Siebel database was illicitly accessed by Comms Direct staff who it said searched without authorisation for those at the end of their contracts.

Comms Direct staff then posed as the customers seeking to terminate their services and sign new contracts with the dealer, the paper said, because these were more lucrative than upgrading existing customers and padded sales staff commissions .

The paper said the telco dealer's staff used "top-tier" access to the national database of customer details and call records, a practise known as "Siebel farming", to poach other dealers' customers without their knowledge.

And it reported that Comms Direct managers condoned "SIM stacking", adding phantom mobile numbers to customer accounts so sales staff could reach quotas.

The Australian Privacy Commissioner is investigating  the privacy-breach allegations.

Vodafone's chief executive officer Nigel Dews publicly apologised to customers last month after network outages crippled its service and prompted software engineering graduate Adrian Brimo to start the #Vodafail campaign against the telco that has joined 12,000 customers to a class actionand culminated in a damning 30-page report handed today to regulators.

Are you a Vodafone dealer that knows more? Contact nsalek@techpartner.news to share your story.