My Orwellian battle with Vodafone

After launching an investigation into my missing phone, Vodafone informed me it could not deal with me any further until I went through a series of checks to prove that I was who I said I was.

I then became locked in an Orwellian battle with an automated system that sent email after email demanding, for example, that I confirm my email, until I gave up on my lost phone, because no amount of confirming seemed to work.

Maybe it was naive to try to tell Vodafone that one of their stores had sold me a Nokia that did not hold a charge, refused to refund or exchange it, then sent the phone away into the ether to be mended, where it apparently disappeared.

And that while I was in this store, a chirpy salesman made me sign a digital pad on the counter which it later transpires was them locking me into a new year-long contract without my knowing it — on the phone that doesn’t work.