O2 Gprs Rip-off - Need Advice

stojio · 27 November 2006 at 5:18PM

my most recent bill from O2 came in at £160+ instead of £35. £100 was GPRS charges, which i seriously doubt i could possibly have used.

I am obviously willing to pay if i am genuinely due the money, but i am seriously questioning the amount.

I haven't altered my GPRS usage noticably in the past few months.

would o2 have to show me itemised billing for the time and dates i used gprs to charge me for it? customer services tell me to ignore the times and dates on the bill because those are they dates they collected the information. Surely I am entitled to know when i supposedly accessed GPRS enough to cause my bill to be so high? if i could see when i was supposed to have accessed GPRS then i could prove i do not owe this money.

I've never been charged for GPRS before, but they say they sent me a text in May to confirm charging would soon begin, and can prove it. but is this really enough to notify me of changes in billing? I am aware the T&C's say they can do this via text message but I'm sure that I never recieved any text message (although they're adament they sent it).

All this from a company who, one month ago, sold my personal details to a debt recovery agency for someone elses debt (regarding which i am going to make an official a complaint anyway).

What is going on with O2? Are they right to go about charging in this way or is there anything i can do about this? any advice whatsoever would be greatly welcomed. thanks folks!

ila · 27 November 2006 at 5:32PM

I'm on PAYG with O2 and last night was charged about £2 for browsing about 5 pages (can't be exact as I only knew what my balance was roughly before)

Had a similar thing a couple of years ago and they agreed I had been overcharged and refunded me - I think their sytems for charging for GPRS are very unreliable

charltonfan1 · 27 November 2006 at 5:48PM

their billing system in general is poor and often is wrong. They should be able to give you itemised billing for it like normal phone calls

redux · 27 November 2006 at 7:40PM

There is a monthly allowance of 100k on my contract.

All usage is accurately itemised, and has cost me about 40 pence since January

stojio · 4 December 2006 at 1:56PM

o2 are still persuing this bill, adament that i owe them the money.

they've sent me a "correct" itemised bill for GPRS usage, showing the times that I supposedly accessed GPRS, and i've been charged twice for the exact same thing.
surely this shows that there is an error in the system?
they've also said that i've accessed GPRS several hours in a row at the exact same time, to the second (i.e. 3:10:59, 4:10:59, 5:10:59, 6:10:59, etc). does anybody else agree that there is something weird going on here? there are also times shown that i couldn't have accessed GPRS because I was at work, but how can I prove this?

espresso · 4 December 2006 at 3:23PM

What handset are you using? Is it automatically checking your e-mail every hour?

webkami · 4 December 2006 at 5:30PM

I would also suspect its either some app trying to access internet everyhour (email / any other internet app) or its their error.

What phone you got and what are apps installed?

teeb · 4 December 2006 at 5:57PM

espresso wrote:

What handset are you using? Is it automatically checking your e-mail every hour?

Or RSS feeds, if your phone uses them.

qasdfdsaq · 4 December 2006 at 7:06PM

I think you might be jumping the gun a bit by saying there's an error just cause there are four accesses exactly an hour apart. However, I'm also reluctant to agree with the other posts here saying that it's something on your phone checking every hour - the latency of GPRS makes it extremely unlikely for four seperate requests to be accurate to the second.

DrFluffy · 4 December 2006 at 7:11PM

stojio wrote:

o2 are still persuing this bill, adament that i owe them the money.

they've sent me a "correct" itemised bill for GPRS usage, showing the times that I supposedly accessed GPRS, and i've been charged twice for the exact same thing.
surely this shows that there is an error in the system?
they've also said that i've accessed GPRS several hours in a row at the exact same time, to the second (i.e. 3:10:59, 4:10:59, 5:10:59, 6:10:59, etc). does anybody else agree that there is something weird going on here? there are also times shown that i couldn't have accessed GPRS because I was at work, but how can I prove this?

Any chance that your phone could have accessed GPRS by accident? I'm always taking my ohone out my bag to find that the contents of my bag have managed to press the right frickin buttons to cost me a small fortune... Massive design flaw of the W550i - stupid lock button on the side that easily gets moved in your bag or pocket, taking the lock off (*ends rant!*).

stojio · 5 December 2006 at 2:52PM

well, i use a w850i but at the time of this bill it was a d500 i was using. there were no rss feeds in use with the d500 and i hadnt installed any software to use GPRS.

qasdfdsaq: "I think you might be jumping the gun a bit by saying there's an error just cause there are four accesses exactly an hour apart. However, I'm also reluctant to agree with the other posts here saying that it's something on your phone checking every hour - the latency of GPRS makes it extremely unlikely for four seperate requests to be accurate to the second."

in answer to the above quote, it was actually eight times in a row and only happened on one day. never happened again according to the bill. and my MAIN reason for thinking there's an error (aside from the fact i hardly used any GPRS!!!) is that there are two identical entries that i've been charged for. same date, time, bytes uploaded, downloaded, same everything! my reckoning is that if they can make one mistake by double charging me, the whole bill could be full of mistakes!

O2 Gprs Rip-off - Need Advice

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