Piper Alderman partner Sasha Ivantsoff isn’t someone you want to mess with. A former Vodafone Australia customer, Ivantsoff is now leading the class action against Vodafone on behalf of more than  20,000 customers. “I was a customer at one stage,” said Ivantsoff. “I saw the stories in The Sydney Morning Herald and I could see that there were a lot of angry and disgruntled customers out there, so I decided to see if I could do something about it.”

The firm launched a website for customers to register earlier this year and has since then received approximately 20,000 registrations. “I was hoping to get 20,000 people registered, but I never expected it to happen this quickly,” said Ivanstoff.

Piper Alderman is currently looking into litigation funding for the case and will be asking those who have registered to fill in a survey within the coming weeks. “People have lost business as a result of network dropouts and missing voice mail messages. Vodafone has a contractual obligation to provide a service to those customers,” said Ivanstoff.

While not as commonly associated with class actions as the likes of Maurice Blackburn and Slater & Gordon, Piper Alderman has a strong history in litigation. “We have a very heavy focus on litigation and it’s something we have always done. This class action will not change the kind of work we do, if it’s appropriate then we will look at a class action,” he said.

The firm represented 50 local government creditors in the liquidation of Lehman Brothers Australia. The firm, on behalf of the councils, won the case in the High Court, opening the way for a A$1.2bn class action lawsuit from councils both in Australia and overseas.

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