When Andrew Kerr collapsed in his kitchen in 2022, his blood pressure was so high that even his wristwatch knew he was in trouble.

“They put a monitor on me to check because my [smart] watch started going off … saying [there was] a fibrillation or something,” the family man from Bangor in Northern Ireland says. “This is where the stress is probably pushing in at its highest level for me.”

But Kerr’s problems lay deeper than high blood pressure and a struggling heart, as he discovered at a subsequent medical appointment arranged by his concerned wife.

“I thought I was going for another heart checkup … I walked into the room and there’s a counsellor sitting there, because they literally thought that I was going to kill myself with the stress and the pressure,” he says, in a soft Ulster accent, which occasionally breaks slightly. “I found myself in a position of trying to convince my wife that I wasn’t going to take my life. That’s where this company leads people to.”

The company he is referring to is not some Wall Street investment bank that burnt him out over countless risky multimillion-dollar trades.

Kerr is a seemingly normal middle-aged family man, who had worked as a Vodafone manager for three years before taking up the telecoms group’s offer to start his own business to manage two of the brand’s franchised retail stores in County Down.

The lure was the chance to be your own boss – as well as the supposedly “uncapped earnings” depending on how much each franchisee improved the performance of the stores. But his entrepreneurial dream turned into a personal nightmare as the UK emerged from the first Covid lockdown in the summer of 2020, when Vodafone abruptly changed the commission rates it paid franchisees for selling mobile handsets and airtime.

Suddenly, Kerr – whose retail business had effectively been in a Covid-induced stasis for months – found it increasingly difficult to turn a profit in the new financial world, with revenues down “by 27% overnight” from pre pandemic levels. His business deteriorated to the point where he thought he was going to lose his father’s nest egg, initially invested to seed his new venture.

“[Vodafone] just left you on your own,” Kerr says. “Whenever you push back … it was very much: ‘No one else is saying this, no one else is doing this. This is only you saying this.’”

Only it wasn’t only Kerr. He didn’t know it at the time, but scores of other Vodafone franchisees were also panicking that the FTSE 100 group’s unilateral commission cut was about to cost them everything, too – including others who felt cornered enough to say they considered suicide.

Once they realised they were not alone, they started pushing back en masse – in a move that some compare to the campaign by post office operators during the Horizon IT scandal. “I’m just fighting for justice – the right thing,” Kerr says. “You shouldn’t have to fight for the right thing.”

The company said in a three-page statement: “We are sorry to any franchisee that has had a difficult experience. Where issues have been raised, we have sought to rectify these and we believe we have treated our franchisees fairly.”

‘I hate the fact that they did this to me’

There was a specific moment when many of the franchisees feared their businesses were doomed. That came on 17 July 2020, when Vodafone invited its 150 franchisees, who operated about 400 stores, to join a video call – with the late Friday afternoon timing suggesting they were being primed for unpalatable news.

It was then that Vodafone announced to franchisees, who it routinely called its “partners”, that the commissions paid to them for selling the mobile group’s products and services were going to be slashed.

About 350 miles from Kerr’s Bangor base in Rochester, Kent, another franchisee was running his numbers.

Rikki Lear played American football for Great Britain and once worked for Phones4U, which was founded by the memorably demanding John Caudwell. Lear used to run 100 metres in fewer than 11 seconds and was drawn to gridiron instead of sprinting because: “Hitting people, there’s much more fun.” He is not a person that immediately strikes you as fragile.

Yet as Lear relives that July 2020 franchisee meeting – and the growing realisation that Vodafone’s commission changes meant a slow death for his business and his family’s ambitions – he becomes increasingly emotional.

“I hate the fact that they did this to me,” he just about manages to say as his emotions threaten to overwhelm him. “I mean they made me feel vulnerable. And so yeah, they left me with no money.”

Like his Ulster colleague Kerr, Lear says he was locked into a contract where costs remained pretty stubborn as revenues plummeted – meaning he was slipping over the financial precipice with no obvious way of clawing himself back up. “I was encouraged [by Vodafone] to go and take personally guaranteed loans … They did nothing for me and then years later they conducted a … review to see if I’m fit and proper – and used that very lending to remove me as a partner with financial risk.”

Almost broken financially and struggling mentally, Lear was given three months to get out of his stores by Vodafone, which says it has regulatory obligations to conduct “fit and proper” tests and make sure franchisees are financially stable.

“Giving me 90 days to stay in the business doesn’t sound like they’re worried about me,” Lear adds. “That tells me they know what they’ve done. They left me in ruin.”

The franchisees claim they were effectively funding Vodafone’s high street presence, by dipping into savings or taking out personal loans. Many of the franchisees say they ran up debts of £100,000 or more. Family homes that had guaranteed loans were now on the line.

Vodafone is now offering mediation – and says it has reimbursed disgruntled franchisees almost £5m – but that does not appear to be assuaging the franchisees’ outrage. “I spent my own money to keep Vodafone stores on the high street,” Lear says. “That’s why I’m angry.”

Claimants were ‘shanked’

One thing that Kerr and Lear decided to do while they battled Vodafone was support other franchisees affected by the commission cut.

That is how it dawned on Donna Watton, a Vodafone franchisee running two stores in Lincolnshire who says her revenues slumped by about 30% because of the commission cut, that her problems might not be solely her fault.

“It was actually Rikki [Lear] that I started talking to first,” she recalls. “Every time I raised an issue to start off with, [Vodafone would say:] ‘You’re the only person that’s complaining. There’s nothing wrong with the model. It works.’ … You think to yourself, ‘Jesus Christ, am I really that bad?’, if I’m the only person that’s complaining or has got an issue with it.”

More and more people joined this group and realised they were all experiencing remarkably similar problems. In the end, they took action.

On Tuesday, 62 Vodafone franchisees from this forum felt so sure their businesses had been wrecked by the telecom group’s decisions that they filed a £120m-plus legal claim against the company in London’s high court.

Or, as their filing puts it, Vodafone “indiscriminately … operated to enrich Vodafone at the expense of its franchisees”.

The claim, which the company had not seen when approached for comment but says it “strongly refutes”, goes on to allege that the telecoms group knew exactly what it was doing, referencing a voicemail message left to one franchisee on 31 July 2020, in which a Vodafone executive appeared to acknowledge the harm the commission changes had “unleashed”, before conceding franchisees had been “shanked” – or stabbed – by the company.

So what, exactly, does “shanked” look like to the claimants? Lear says he is about £350,000 in debt. Kerr puts his figure at £250,000, while Watton claims she owes about £100,000 because of Vodafone’s actions. Still, whether the court case has the capacity to provide all the claimants with redress for every allegation is unclear.

“I’ve got so much debt that I need to now pay off. I’m probably going to have to sell my house to pay that off,” says Watton, who is 43 years old and fears some opportunities might now pass her by. “I really want to have another baby, but because of all this I don’t feel like I’m in a position financially to be able to have another child now.”

• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counsellor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org