What can I do about a £3500 bill on lost mobile?

Nige1999

Hi there,

First time on the board so please be gentle.

On Saturday lunchtime I realised that I had lost my phone/had it stolen the previous night. I called O2 to cancel. Nothing was mentioned about any unusual usage.
Today I called O2 over another matter, to be told that I had a high bill...
My normal bill is less than £30 a month and has been so for years. From the early hours of Saturday my bill had jumped to £3500!!!! I was, and still am, in shock.
They say I will have to pay as the calls were made in the hours before I reported my phone missing. I pointed out that when I took out my contract with O2 some years ago i placed a call limit on the expenditure on my account. They say that counts for nothing now.
I asked why they hadn't stopped my account when they saw such abnormal usage...apparently they won't stop an account if they think you have a good credit rating.
Is there anything I can do? Of course my phone was not insured.

mchale

Do you have any records showing you asked for a call limit on your account?
I would ask to see a itemised bill detailing calls made up until you advised them of lost phone, as £3500 seems a lot in maybe 12hrs, unless they were ringing premium/overseas numbers. If you get a new phone I would active the pin security code on it.

Nige1999

Thanks for the reply.
That limit was placed on the account years ago when I was a new customer, and of course I haven't checked the small print since then and no I haven't kept contract documentation that is about 10 years old. In anycase O2 don't give a hoot about that.
If the phone had been lost/stolen whilst it was turned off I'd have been OK as I had put a pin lock on startup, but sadly it was on.

As an update I have had 3000 texts since using my replacement SIM in an old backup phone, all from 3 numbers, 82070, 80777 and 84070.
The first one is sort of rip off auction thing (smstowin.co.uk) that charges £1.5 a message. Someone has been doing some serious messaging to rake up over £3000 in a few hours.

nic_santorini

firstly, you need to report your mobile stolen to the police, you may have initially 'lost' it, but because the finder has used it and assumed ownership rights of it, it is now stolen. Don't suppose you have phone insurance do you? If you have internet O2 - this may show the limited useage activated. On t mobile it does. You will just have to fight this and due to the huge cost would do well to see citizens advice beuraux or solicitor because this needs to be fought.

redux

Those messages have arrived since you reported the phone missing, and since they've sent a new SIM?

I could be completely wrong, but maybe there is more scope for some recovery than if it was simply loads of international calls.

Going by the sound of the name, at least one of those is a prize draw or something. I think this ought to be some help. I would imagine that the idiot sending the messages was hoping to win something, and might therefore have given some identifying details.

I agree that you need some legal advice and should also discuss this with the Police, whom you might encourage to ask both O2 and the message providers for help with their enquiries - particularly with reference to the message contents.

Then the question arises of the goodwill of both O2 and the message companies, and I hope a lawyer should be able to advise you about questions of law as to whether charging you can be deemed to be receiving the proceeds of a theft. Also, as well as any O2 credit limit that should be in there somewhere and seems to have been negligently bypassed, I'd have thought that the premium rate message companies should have some controls in place to protect them and the network and customers from this sort of thing, like a sensible fair use limit for cases which can obviously only be either theft or people who appear to have a serious gambling problem. Speak to Ofcom to find out what recommended practices are.

You need to get this further up in the management of O2 than so far. On the call menu don't waste time on the ordinary customer services, go for the options about less than happy with the service received, which is another department called Customer Relations or something like. If there's still not much improvement, or you've already spoken to them, ask them to refer it urgently to their Executive Office or the equivalent. Also fill in the contact form on the website. I'd imagine the first thing is you need them to agree not to appoint debt collectors while this is in dispute and under review.

paulmx3

so your phone had been "stolen",you reported this but had had £3500 worth of usage on it,then got a replacement sim which then has possibly another £3000+ of usage on it since you got it.so now possibly £6500+ bill.....:eek: im amazed there isnt some sort of cut off point or security checking from service providers as if your bill is normally low that is far from normal or expected usage.

rash.m2k

Heres the website:

http://www.sms2win.co.uk

Looks like a total scam to me - even the website, it has no winners and no auctions running.

O2 do say not to use the credit limit as a way to control spending.

Also isn't it a legal requirement for people running these scams to have some sort of limit on them to prevent people going over the top?

lawbunny

There is probably nothing you can do about the charges run up by the thief. You are liable for all charges on your account until the point you report it lost/stolen so the network can block it. You have always had the option to purchase insurance which would normally allow you to claim for any usage within the first 24 hrs of the theft (as well as replacing the handset).

Although networks do have credit limits on accounts, it is possible that if charges are racked up VERY quickly then you can go over this limit. This limit is to protect the network's interests, not yours. Even if you requested a limit years ago when you first had the contract, no networks (to my knowledge) offer this service anymore, and if you have done any upgrades (which I'm assuming you have in ten years) then every time you upgrade you agree to the most current T&Cs at the time, so I would imagine you have been without this limit for some time.

As for the charges from the premium texts, you may have some basis for a refund then. The network can see that these started when the phone was stolen, so they should either put a premium rate sms bar on your account or change your telephone number for free, as well as refunding for these texts, as it seems obvious it was not you who signed up for them.

Nige1999

Well so far O2 haven't got back to me as was stated but I have checked the current bill on line. They have refunded £7492.99 (before VAT) for services recieved after the call bar was put in place but still expect £1928.28 from me for sevices recieved in the hours before. i will be getting onto them first thing in the morning.
I am suspecting you are right Lawbunny, and I may be stuck with that. I am suspecting, by the letter of my present contract, that they will be happy to charge me and stuff customer protection and service.
This will be the last contract I ever have with a phone provider. I can't even see how I can get out of the rest of the 3 months left to run.

jamespir

Nige1999 wrote: »

Well so far O2 haven't got back to me as was stated but I have checked the current bill on line. They have refunded £7492.99 (before VAT) for services recieved after the call bar was put in place but still expect £1928.28 from me for sevices recieved in the hours before. i will be getting onto them first thing in the morning.
I am suspecting you are right Lawbunny, and I may be stuck with that. I am suspecting, by the letter of my present contract, that they will be happy to charge me and stuff customer protection and service.
This will be the last contract I ever have with a phone provider. I can't even see how I can get out of the rest of the 3 months left to run.

you can cancel your contract youd have to pay the reamsining line rental and the 1928.28 so youre stuffed either way you should have blocked the phone the minute you lost it

Jon_01

You are responsible for all the usage up to the point you call and report it stolen, sorry not much help to you...

I'm surprised that O2 let it get that out of hand, I work as a fraud agent for one of the other networks and this level of usage would have flagged on our system well before that. One of our team would have called the phone to security check the person using it and then (if they passed) would have alert them to the size of the bill (if they failed we'd have blocked the phone for all calls and texts).

I do know that the billing staff wouldn't have seen the usage go through as the billing system usually lag, sometimes by a day or more, while the fraud systems run 2 seconds behind real time.