o2 raised monthly charge w/o notice - help!

PegLeg_3

My Girlfriend has had a mobile phone contract(pay monthly) with o2 for five years on the o2 400 tarrif and never goes over her free calls limit.

This year she is a full-time student studying for her PGCE, so she needed to batter down her monthly outgoings before starting her course.

So she rang o2 (14 months ago) to cancel her contract, and go 'pay as you go' - they managed to persuade her to stay though - by offering a reduction of 50% to her monthly bill (from ~£40 to ~£20).

On the 18th March this year she renewed her contract (got a new phone), and there was no mention of her monthly charge changing, however upon receiving her bill this morning she got a nasty shock to find out that she had been charged £42 (double what she normally gets charged).

So she got on the phone to o2 to sort out what she assumed to be an administrative error, but they will not budge (she spoke to the manager, and then the managers' manager!)- and they say she cannot cancel her contract because the cooling off period of 14 days has passed.

Is there anything she can do? Or have o2 successfully hoodwinked her out of over £200 (for the next year) ?

Thanks for reading . . . .

HugoSP

You may have a sympathetic ear with OTELO? (Regulator). I believe they used to be called OFCOM.

H

Alltheloginsaretakenappar

I had a very similar situation with T-Mobile a couple of years ago. It turned out that the reduced tariff offer was only for 12 months. So 12 months later when I accepted a new handset and signed up for another 12 months I was actually agreeing to the full tariff. They didn't actually mention that my tariff was (as I saw it) going up, since they claimed I had been told the reduced rate was only for 12 months and after that I was back to the old rate.

I had also just become a student so it was pretty bad timing, but there was nothing I could do other than wait it out and take my business elsewhere next time.

MissG_2

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news!!

The above poster is correct, their tariff which was negotiated 12 months ago was exactly for the 12 months.

I am sure you will find it a fruitless effort trying the regulator.

Hope this helps

Regards

MissG

PegLeg_3

Thanks for the advice guys.

She decided not to pursue a complaint or contact the regulator. A further call to o2 did result in them knocking 20% off the price though.

She will be leaving them when her contract runs out.

magic

thats too bad. as someone said above, it usually only lasts for 12 months when you negotiate these deals. they probably would have agreed to it again if the issue was brought up at the time she renewed her contract this year. at least you got 20% though.

jnm21

I think she was wrong to accept 20% - she should have stood firm & mentioned the regulator (whatever their name on the day in question;)). mentioning them takes you into the 'higher complaints' arena, bit like shopping with retentions instead of retail.

missk_ensington

Ive just had a similar problem with Orange, I was on 400min 1000 texts for £50 a month which was all fine and dandy until they phoned me up some 5-6 months ago asking me to upgrade, as they do. Obviously in doing this, i would be renewing my contract for a further 12 months. Again, was happy to do so. He asked if I was happy on my current price plan, I said yes and all went through fine.

This week I got a bill for £130 because my 1000 minutes have stopped. Apparently this was an 18mon promo which has now finished. I wasn't told this when I renewed, I wastold my price plan would continue until my next renewal. Is this not misrepresentation?

Also, my dear old mum has recently learnt to text god bless her and is doing it loads. Or at least she was until she got a £200 bill. She didn't realise that going over 160 characters meant she was charged another text. On discovering this, she scoured the manual and ALL literature and said it says nowehere that a standadr text is 160 characters.

I am seriously considering taking Orange on a multi-party action for misrepresentation and just bad, dishonest conduct. Hows an old woman supposed to know a text is 160 char? Any legal eagles out there!!?

moneyandmountains

missk_ensington wrote:

I am seriously considering taking Orange on a multi-party action for misrepresentation and just bad, dishonest conduct. Hows an old woman supposed to know a text is 160 char? Any legal eagles out there!!?

It is much eassier to go to the regulator first. After all, that is what it is there for.

Otelo are nice helpful people. For the sake of a phone call, they will let you know where you stand. If your contract was missold then you definitely have grounds for complaint.

jnm21

On your case, worth a shot - my advice above applies. On your mum's, all I can ask is how many txts? at 12p, even with an average of 3 per concatenated text, thats....... 600!

In short, both are unlikely to go anywhere - you can't prove you weren't told (possibly in a civil case, the courts may accept that your word + orange not proving the contrary, considering they record calls, to constitute reasonable proof) and your mum's would likely be against the manufacturer/retailer (the phone is sending multiple texts, not one, AFAIK).

All this is IMHO, so you should probably seek legal advice, IF you think the odds/sums involved in each case warrant it.

By the way there is a typo in your post - was it the minutes or texts which ended (just out of interest)?

missk_ensington

The texts, I should have had 1000 per month (which was the only reason I kept the package!) just stopped without any warning, other that 2 teeny weeny lines at the bottom of last months bill that I never saw! But even if I did see them, I was still told when I upgraded and renewed my contract that "you will stay on the same tariff as you are on now for a further 12 months" and there was no mention that the 1000 texts would only last 5 months of that.

There are SO many things wrong with Orange- I've phoned their 150 to find out how many minutes I have left at the end of the month (want to use them as they don't roll over) and its said "This service was last updated (1 hour ago) when you had 86 minutes left." So I then use 86 minutes thinking if I don't use them before midnight they'll be wasted, and when I get my bill it says Ive used an additional 100 minutes! The tracker was completely wrong telling me I had minutes when I had none! Surely that has to go against ethical trading rules, if such exist?

If I sat and thought about it, I could give you at least 10 examples of how Orange have been unethical, and witheld vital information about your contract, which had you of known, you wouldn't have taken out the contract. As for my mum, she's gone text happy and was sending about 20 texts a day, at the size of 3 texts (thinking she was 'getting her money's worth'. Obviously of her £180 bill, £35 of that was her package costs. If you cancelled your direct debit, and they took you to court, would the owness not be on them to prove they gave you the information, not for you to prove they didn't? Its not like I have access to their call records, how am I ever going to obtain evidence, they're not exactly going to hand it over to me!

Any idea's?