£2,000 Internet usage bill

Svengalie

I received a £2,000~ bill from Vodafone for a mobile telephone. Unsurprisingly I questioned this bill. They said it was internet usage. I asked for a breakdown which they sent but it was gibberish – it only told me how much data (in kb) the phone used per day, and on what times/days. I asked for a breakdown of websites (the phone is barely used for internet)

The lady claimed it was “against the law” to tell me that because of the data protection act. She went on to hint at the phone had visited an adult website, and this might be the problem.

Now, the phone is on a business account. It isn’t mine but my colleagues. He is adamant that this is not true.

I would like to send a “subject access request” with my £10 fee to request all data held by the company.

Would I send the SAR request in my name (the bills come to me, it is my company) or would I send the SAR in the company name? Or would I send the SAR in my colleagues name? Or send three requests to be sure?

Interestingly the data transfer is at all hours of the day (many at 2,3,4,5 am when my colleague isn’t using the phone).

Furthermore many of the amounts of data are large for a phone (12mb is common) – which when it takes over a minute to download a small 32kb image I find impossible to believe.

Frankly it is my belief the bill is wrong, but they say they cannot give me any more information – or justify the bill is correct.

I said to them “what if you send me a bill for a million pounds tomorrow? I’m just supposed to pay it and not question it?”

Her only answer was if I think the bill is incorrect would be to contact the police as it would be fraud. Like I’m going to waste police time over this?

I’ve disabled gprs on the phone for now.

So my plan is to request the data via the SAR to establish a list of websites visited on the phone – something that would prove my colleagues innocence. Do you think I’m likely to get anywhere down this route?

macman

Why can't your colleague obtain the list, since the contract is apparently in his name? Since he has nothing to hide, he can't object to this. If it's in your name, or the name of your business, then they should give it to you.
Is it possible someone else in his household is using it without his knowledge?

Jon_01

The network servers don't keep a record of the address that the frontline staff can see, that's why they can't tell you.

If you apply under the DPA then someone from the network support team can pull the records.

12 meg would be about right for an iplayer streamed file (or something similar).

s4mmy

We have recently had a huge bill from O2 for internet usage and like you data transfer was at strange times of the day when everyone was in bed. I hope that you have more success than us as O2 were not in the least bit sympathetic. Several people have also had similar problems with Blackberries.

Svengalie

macman wrote: »

Why can't your colleague obtain the list, since the contract is apparently in his name? Since he has nothing to hide, he can't object to this. If it's in your name, or the name of your business, then they should give it to you.
Is it possible someone else in his household is using it without his knowledge?

Thanks for replying. That's what I'm asking! The contract is my name, but I cannot request someone else's data, or is it my data?

reehsetin

the contract is in your name so the sim belongs to you and all billing/account issues are yours, you have to request it no one else
did they tell you how many mb they thought you'd used?

hieveryone

Data usage isn't always displayed on your bill at the actual time that you use it, phones 'reset' themselves and can download the days data all at once - this is why many phone bills display data usage at 00:00:00 or 00:00:01 - because the phone is resetting itself at midnight.

Svengalie

reehsetin wrote: »

the contract is in your name so the sim belongs to you and all billing/account issues are yours, you have to request it no one else
did they tell you how many mb they thought you'd used?

The contract is in a company name. Does that matter?

reehsetin

Svengalie wrote: »

The contract is in a company name. Does that matter?

send it from the company then, not sure what voda's process is but others even if it is the company name it has a persons name on the account so write from both mr so and so on behalf of company so and so

macman

They might ask you to provide some evidence that you are a director of the company, that's all.
If your original approach was to say the phone belonged to a member of your staff, then maybe that was why there were reluctant. If you just say it's a phone under your business contract then that should be sufficient.

soul619

stupid wuestion but is bluetooth switched on?? its very common for your internet to get hacked via bluetooth and ur responsible for the bill when this happens so i have heard