My phone was stolen abroad and now I have an Orange bill of £2500

joebo

I have just come back from a 3 month trip and I have discovered that while I was in Thailand my phone was stolen and a bill of £2500 has been run up. After jumping through the usual call centre hoops Orange has told me that I am liable for the forthcoming bill. I have been told to write to the correspondance department to tell them my side of the story, however they are the department that have advised the credit department that I am liable.

Just before I boarded my plane I had called the service centre to de-activate my phone for the duration of my trip. I was told that it would take approximatly 24 hours to come in effect. When I landed roughly 13 hours later I made two phone calls to relitives to tell them I had arrived. Orange have since told me that I should of let them know that the phone was not de-activated and are therefore liable for the calls made 2 months later.

After my first phone calls I turned my phone off and left it in my bag. As I thought the phone was de-activated I completly forgot about it. So when I came home a couple of days ago and went through my paper work I discovered that a direct debit of around £400 was taken from my account and I now have a bill of £2100 due shortly.

Looking at the itemised bill all the calls were made from Thailand. The first of the phone calls were made when I was in India and I have the passport stamps to prove it!

My plan is to explain all this to the correspondence department and send them a copy of my passport as proof.

Does anyone out there have any further advise or tips to help my case?

Guys_Dad

The whole key to this is being able to prove that you asked for the phone to be deactivated. Trace the time of that call, ask if any notes are on your record and then ask for a copy of the recorded conversation with the rep when you made the call, if they have it.

The fact that you did not make the calls and can prove you were somewhere else is irrelevant if you can not prove that you asked for the phone to be deactivated.

However, there are 2 things that don't stand in your favour from your post.

1. If you had asked for the phone to be deactivated, why did you take it with you in the first place?

2. It is a bit hard for us to take that you didn't notice you had lost it for such a long time. Certainly, if you had taken it along with the intent of using local sims to make any emergency calls, then you would have seen it was missing, surely?

I am raising these two points because sure as eggs are eggs, Orange will.

The crux of the matter is that you are liable for all calls up to the time you report the phone missing/stolen unless you can prove that you asked for deactivation - which you need not have done if you had left the phone or even the sim at home.

Good luck, for I fear that you will need it.

Jon_01

Mr Dad above is correct (I afraid), you are liable for all calls made up until you report your phone lost/stolen to the network. They may do a 'good will' gesture and reduce it a bit, but your best bet would to to talk to them about a payment plan. .

joebo

From reading up on the internet I understand that this is not a new issue and that the odds are against me. In reference to Mr Dad questions:-

1. I still had the phone with me because I was still using it up until my flight and had intended to send it home from Australia (early part of my trip). The Australian post wont let you send mobile phones and so it could not be insured against loss and damage etc. (Obviously I now wish I risked it!)

2. While I was away my bag was never fully unpacked and I only stayed in the same place for no longer than 4 days! I was a man constantly on the move and didn't notice the phone was missing.

The only thing in my favour as far as I can tell is that I did ask for the phone to be de-activated. Also my situation at the moment is that I have no money, no job and no assets and the likelyhood of a debt collection agency collecting the outstanding amount from my megre possesstions is frankly low and payment plan would have to be arranged.

I'm assuming that Orange don't have any procedures to flag up unusual account activity? My bills up to this date have been no higher than £60!

Any further advise is greatly apreciated as opposed to 'closing the stable door after the horse has bolted' type of advice! :rotfl:

sparky7

It's not your responsibility to ensure they've deactivated it correctly. I would say that you agree to pay for any unauthorised calls within the first 24 hours, then tell them anything after that is their fault.

Jon_01

Orange do log unusual usage (but don't offer to police your acc for you). But roaming calls don't log on the home network, the network you're roaming on send them through in files every 24/48 hours. They still get processed but as roaming calls are higher than call made on the home network they may not flag up (with knowing how the usage was made it's hard to say if the calls would have flagged in a system or not).

The other think to consider would be if it gets to a debt collection agency then your credit file will be stuffed for the next 6 years ?

I think the issue may be that you said in the first post that you asked for the phone to be de-activate as you boarded the aircraft. At which point, I would think, you switched it off. The sim updates that do the job would never have go to the phone. BUT it should have left a audit trail on the network server. You need to call and get a team leader to go through your acc and confirm that you asked for the phone to be switched off. Once you've got them to confirm that you'll be in a much better position.

Guys_Dad

I think that you will have gathered that the key to this is getting Orange to acknowledge that you DID ask for the phone to be deactivated otherwise the debt rests with you, unless they make an ex-gratia waiver of some of it. Keep on at them till they trace your call. It won't be hard. You will be able to prove that your flight out of UK was within an hour or so of that call to them and what other reason could there be for calling them?

But, and I apologise for slightly hijacking your post, there is a sombre lesson here for all readers that, before setting off with your mobile phone, ensure that there is a sim-lock activated on your phone so that any thief needs to put a password into the phone before he/she can use your mobile account. Then remember never to leave it switched on unless you are using it.

Silk

joebo wrote: »

Just before I boarded my plane I had called the service centre to de-activate my phone for the duration of my trip. I was told that it would take approximatly 24 hours to come in effect. When I landed roughly 13 hours later I made two phone calls to relitives to tell them I had arrived. Orange have since told me that I should of let them know that the phone was not de-activated and are therefore liable for the calls made 2 months later.

Hi Joe,
Sorry to read the story, and just thinking it through.
Do you know if there is a record of the phone call to them from the airport for instance does it show up on the bill or have they admitted you made the call requesting it ????

joebo

Hi Silk,

Yes they had admitted that I had requested for the de-activation. However they claim that as I made two phone calls when I landed I should of informed them to notify them that the phone had not been de-activated. I was flying to Kuala Lumpur and the flight time was roughly 13 hours (I have emailed the airline to get the flight time) so when I landed and made those calls I figured it was within the 24 hour period of the phone still being active. They claim that the calls were made 25 hours after the original de-activation call! There maybe a mix up with time zones etc which should be cleared up when I gt the email back from the airline.

So they have admitted that I made the request and claim I should of notified them after my two phone calls worked. It might come down to the time when my request was made and my phone calls after the flight!

Guys_Dad

joebo wrote: »

Hi Silk,

.

So they have admitted that I made the request the

Then make sure you know the name of (a) who has admitted that and how they can tell and (b) try to get it in writing. That means you will need to write to them after you get (a) in order to get (b).

You look to be on a winner. No one would expect that a termination would be exactly 24 hours after request and that a couple of days leeway might occur.
It is down to them for not activating a request that they had confirmed that they would do and given you an approximate timescale for it happening. It is not up to you to double-check their work and, of course, you were abroad and it would have cost you money to ring them back to report that your phone was still working if you did.

DarkConvict

I think the fact Orange admitted the phone should be deactivated within 24 hours goes in your favour. As you say your phone calls were made 13/14 hours later still within the active period.