Stolen phone trouble

ncw

My nephew had his phone stolen in New York & couldn't report it for a week. In that time the thief had racked up a huge internet gambling fee. My nephew (aged only 17) has to pay the bill. Does anyone know if he can get any help anywhere so he doesn't have to pay?

tehone

Why did he not report it? I doubt there's anything that can be done, the onus was on him to report the loss straight away. I'm assuming the huge internet gambling fee is due to data usage?

The implication seems to be that he had a contract phone rather than a PAYG phone, so assuming the contract is in his name then maybe some negoiation is possible with the phone company as I always thought you had to be 18 to enter into a credit agreement.

lawbunny

If your nephew is under 18 then he should not have been allowed to get a contract in his own name, so you could argue this point.

If however, as I suspect, the contract is actually in someone else's name but your nephew has use of the phone and pays the bills, then there is really no way out. The account holder is liable for all charges on the account - if a phoen is stolen/lost it is up to him/her to report it to the mobile network immediately so they can block the sim to make it unusable to theives. She/he will remain liable for all charges up until this point.

Your nephew could have called the network from another phone whilst abroad to suspend the sim.

mikegahan

yes lawbunny is correct. The standard T & C will specify that the contract holder is liable until they notify the network of the loss. The other point is that the network here will have to pay the USA network for the cost of the data transmission that was used after the phone was stolen so they will not have that much room to manoeuver