A costly end to a phone contract

In early July decided to terminate by contract with Vodafone that had three more months till the end. I contacted their customer service and asked to guide me through the process of termination.

They told me I had to pay £224.50, which was weird as one month costs £35.50, and there were only 3 months to the end. The person I was talking to said it was an automatic calculation, but the right sum was £106.50. When I asked why their automatic system showed £224.50, the chat was already ended.

Then I started another chat and another agent said the same sum of £224.50. I told her about our chat with another representative and the miscalculation. She confirmed it, but at the end of July Vodafone took £217.91 from my bank account.

I contacted the customer support again, but once I asked about the payment, the chat was closed. I then phoned Vodafone and a recorded message informed my that my mobile number did not exist. Can you help?
Patrick Kavanagh, via email

Terminating a mobile contract early is notoriously expensive and difficult, but it shouldn’t cost more than your monthly line rental multiplied by the number of months you have left before it expires. I didn’t have any luck finding out from Vodafone why Patrick was quoted and charged more than he should have had to pay. A spokeswoman simply says: “We’re sorry about the error with Mr Kavanagh’s termination fee due to an isolated system error. We’ll refund the overpayment and waive the remaining balance on the account.”

The question is, how many other Vodafone customers are unknowingly paying far more than they should to get out of their phone contracts?