Problem with Virgin Mobile, advice required

philharg

Hi Everyone,

Basically im a virgin mobile customer on pay monthly, £35 for 600 text and 600 minutes, 18 month contract that runs out in December 09.

Now on my contract I have this 30p per day internet use thing, unfortunately I wasnt aware that this was capped at 25mb/day. I had the phone plugged into my laptop and as you can imagine passed that quickly. They then started to charge me a massive amount, it was basically 48p every 20 seconds and I used it for a couple of hours totally unaware...

I then get a text from virgin saying my credit limit had been surpassed and that my phone would be cut off until further notice etc. Contacted their team and after speaking to two utter useless people I finally got through to someone that said he was going to get the finance team to ring me back to deal with it.

Now.... the last I heard from that guy was that my bill had surpassed £200!! Saying that I had a credit limit set on my account for a reason at £150 im hoping this is a good thing in an odd way?! Does this give me any standpoint in being able to try and release myself from the contract saying that they had broken the condition of the credit limit. (The guy I spoke to himself admitted that it was their systems being slow fault that it had got to that much)

So to sum it up im a student that has just graduated and has no source of income and cant afford to pay close to £150!! Any people experiences of advice on this situation would be massively appreciated!!

Phil

Malky

I very much doubt you'll be released from your contract over this issue. You broke the terms and conditions by using your phone as a modem. Each mb used over the 25mb allowance is charged at £2 per mb. No surprise that your bill bill went so high so quickly.

Virgin T&C's

Unlimited Mobile Internet – 30p a day: Our daily charge for access to the mobile internet is subject to a fair use allowance of 25MB per day. If your usage exceeds this amount then we reserve the right to charge you for the excessive element of your usage at the per MB data rate for your tariff outlined in our Tariff Table. Unlimited use is within the UK and is for your personal, non-commercial use only. It doesn’t include making internet phone or video calls, peer to peer file sharing, using your phone as a modem, or while you are abroad and any of these uses will be charged at the per MB data rate for your tariff outlined in our Tariff Table

philharg

But how can they allow it charge over my agreed credit limit? And as far as im aware they arent aware that it was used as a modem, the phone can still be used at the time and just uses the phones connection to the internet but instead displays it on ure computer... I have used it before u see this way but not gone over the 25mb limit and they havent charged anymore...

Malky

I'm sure Virgin will know with the data at hand that you were using the phone as a modem. Even the fastest mobile won't rack up £1.44 per minute when using mobile internet.
Why have a credit limit of £150 per month when you know that you're unable to pay for it anyway? To have that limit in the first place leads me to believe that you were going to hit it at some point.
If anything, they may waive the £50 or so you went over your limit but you'll definitely have to pay at least £150

robt_2

Isn't your credit limit just a courtesy offered rather than forming a part of any contract?

They will be able to tell it was being used as a modem if they want to (they probably don't care if you pay - which you have to) unless you disguised your user agent and tricked your web browser into thinking it was your phone. Pretty sure there is a Firefox addon which can do this.