Help - Phone stolen abroad and now £650 bill!

RichFog

Hello, I'm in need of some advice on behalf of my girlfriend.

Recently she was travelling in South America when she had her phone stolen late night on a train in Buenas Aires, when she realised it had been stolen she reported it to O2. However, as she was aborad she wasnt using her phone all the time (she got 600 UK msgs a month which could be used as 150 msgs from abroad and was very carefully counting to make sure she didnt go over her monthly allowance). When she realised it was the middle of the night and she didnt have a way of contact O2 until she could firstly find an internet cafe to find the number and then with skype to ring the UK and report it.

Anyway, I can only assume O2 barred it as soon as she told them, but looking at the bill this must have been 7 hours after it was stolen. In that time £650 of calls were racked up.

O2 are saying she is liable for all calls up until the time they barred it. I was named on the account to be able to speak and i found myslef hitting my head against a brick wall when trying to have a sensible conversation with one of their representative, they just repeated the same thing over and over again regardless of the question.

When I spoke to someone else, I asked them to suspend the payment until we'd had time to see if the travel insurance covered it. They agreed to roll over the payment to the following months bill.

But the ******* have taken the payment at the first date instead of delaying it, which has sent the bank account over its limit. There's going to be bank fees on top interest on top of this £650 phone bill. It seems outragous! What can I do? Is this legal? Why have O2 not looked at this usage (not one phone call made for 3 months then 7 hours worth of calls constantly) surely anyone with half a brain can look at it and say 'this looks a bit suspicious'.

Can anyone offer any help or advice? Anyone seen / heard this before? I'm fairly sure she'll be leaving O2 after this, but are other phone companies all the same?

Jon_01

I'm afraid its standard protocol for all the networks, you are liable for all costs until you report the phone lost/stolen. Not the info you want, I'm sure, but its always been this was or people could make a stack of calls and then say the phone was stolen. . .

RichFog

Well I can understand that point, but surely it must or should be flagged at somepoint to say - this person hasnt made any phone call for 3 months and now they've made 7 hours worth of calls from a foreign country. Credit cards detect these sorts of suspicious situations all the time, how come phone companies are incapable or are they just incompetant.

The second issue is the direct debit. having promised to delay it and then taking it anyway sending the bank account over its limit. Anyone know what the law is here? Will they be liable for any charges she incurs and what is the best way to go about claiming these from them and how quickly can we do it?!

Jon_01

I can't comment on the DD side, I haven't worked that side of a network.

On the calls side. When you're roaming the network you're on over there has no info on your usage. They just allow the phone on their network after checking the acc's live.

If the usage is high a 'high usage report' is past to the home network once every 24 hours, it's then up to the home network to check and allow the usage to continue or block the phone.
There is no real time checking going on, there can't be as roaming network can't report in real time back to the home network.

john1

Not sure about source but I remember reading, I think in the Guardian a few years ago

A lawyer had his phone stolen and then thieves racked up international calls before he reported it stolen. The operator requested full and immediate payment for these calls.
To cut a long story short he argued that as he had a monthly payment contract they had a “Duty of care” to their customer and had failed to exercise care due to unusual usage and suggested the case be decided in court.
The operator declined court action, not wanting to create a precedent, and cleared the charges.
Note lawyer had a monthly contract and not pay as you go as I believe this can make a difference

I have tried to check source but cannot find it if anyone else can it could be interesting

Hope this helps

Exemplar

I'm not criticising John1 here but if you were abroad and you had an accident and had to make calls then surely said 'duty of care' would make the provider cut you off? Anyway regarding the OP you are stuffed sorry. I believe that most/all of the networks have a 24 hour method of reporting lost/stolen phones and this is their 'duty of care'. Secondly I would advise purcasing PAYG sims in-country and taking a cheap PAYG sim free mobile. I do this whenever in the USA and the deals are far more attractive than having to use my own phone.

john1

no offence taken re

I'm not criticising John1 here but if you were abroad and you had an accident and had to make calls then surely said 'duty of care' would make the provider cut you off?

Simple when call threshold reached - a call to user with a couple of security questions would check authorised user as per credit cards authorisation.

DarkConvict

As above, there is a lag time between them getting the data especially on calls abroad, it is registered on their network, then sent over probably in a batch processing fashion.

Duty of Care can only be claimed if they could actually do anything about it, a poster was on here in the totally other situation a week or so ago claiming his phone was barred after a day or so of making roaming calls. He was angry he was cut off, but then we have to quote the otherside of the fence like this for people who get a great bill.

The only solution is to pin lock your phone, and turn it off when not in use. You are responsible for the security of the handset.

robt_2

As has been said, the bill is your other half's responsibility.

A couple of points:

The network has a 24 hour service for reporting lost handsets - it is not their fault they were not contacted sooner (which, to be fair, they could have been although I appreciate it could be hard to think straight when having your phone stolen at night in a foreign country).

Almost all modern handsets enable you to lock the handset with a PIN rather than a simple key combination to lock and unlock the handset. This wouldn't stop the handset being stolen but it would stop any usage.

As others have said, usage is not real-time when roaming. The local network needs to inform o2 of what usage you have made in order to bill you. It is not o2s fault this is not real-time.

As for the direct debit - how close to the payment date did they agree to carry the balance to the next month? If it was only a few working days it might have not been able to be processed in time even if they tried. You could go to the bank and invoke the direct debit guarentee and then deal with o2 separately - although they might restrict your service for non-payment of this months bill.

Exemplar

Thanks John1! I hate quoting other people!

RichFog

Thanks to all for your replies. The duty of care sounds like it might be worth looking into a bit further.

We have asked Orange what their policy is, to see if O2 was in line with the rest of the industry and Orange said that as long as it was reported within 24 hours of being stolen then she would've been covered.

On the DD, it was agree the payment would be delayed a day after the bill was produced so 13 days before the payment was taken which is plenty of time (i think its 3 days prior is the cut off?). O2 sent her to the bank and said they'd be able to call it back within 24 hours, when she got to the bank they told her that the way they could deal with it would take 7-10 days but that O2 would be able to send it straight away. She rang O2 again and they said it would take 10 days. This seems unreasonable that they took payment in error to then delay it being returned by 10 days, and the fact that she is being sent all over the place with everyone (within O2) telling her different things. I'm thinking that this is incompetence and giving missleading information. Does anyone have ideas on where we can take this?