Huge bill on Orange stolen phone.

custardy

petrgill wrote: »

Hi
I understand the lack of sympathy here and I wasn't looking for it. I did pay the bill. But the point of the post was to emphasise the unlimited liability which you sign up for. There also seems to be no checks and no caps on usage, as eg in the case of credit cards. Note also that most of the costs were in fact incurrred in the first couple of days, so if it takes you that time to decide your phone is gone, not mislaid, (or it takes you that time to actually get through to someone) you are screwed. Also if the phone is kept charged and never locked, does the pin still apply?

Orange can 'soft block' your phone if you feel you may find the phone again
you can then call them and get the block lifted
so theres no need to risk a couple days
as for taking 2 days to get through to Orange? come on
never in over a decade with orange have I had to leave a call till the next day,let alone two

Jon_01

petrgill wrote: »

A bit harsh Jon01. I am not avoiding responsibility. I've paid the bill. I'm was only trying to make those aware who might not already be of the liability. I think people should be made aware that if you, say, cant find you phone and think, "oh did I leave it at Joe's last night", or its stolen in the evening and you only find out in the morning, then in that time many thousands of pounds can be racked up (its happened). I do think also that the mobile companies could do more in terms of capping. There is no voluntary capping made available, for example, which I certainly would have taken advantage of in this case.

Sorry, that did come out 'harder' than I intended.

The problem with 'capping' and the question comes up in a number of threads is that the billing system (which is the only on you could base capping on) doesn't work in real time.
There can be as much as a 24 delay between a call being made and the billing info reaching the system.
The system only catches up as it approach your billing date.

MyRubyRed

Jon_01 wrote: »

Sorry, that did come out 'harder' than I intended.

The problem with 'capping' and the question comes up in a number of threads is that the billing system (which is the only on you could base capping on) doesn't work in real time.
There can be as much as a 24 delay between a call being made and the billing info reaching the system.
The system only catches up as it approach your billing date.

Jon Ive just posted on a similar note re T Mobile re capping. You are right

emily1504

Obviously I feel sorry for you with your son (I can bet my brother would have done the same thing!!). A similar thing happened to me recently, I was camping and lost my phone, I was very very ill over the weekend and didn't notice it was lost and when I did I did the usual ringing for it, looking everywhere, checking all the lost properties etc and eventually realising it was stolen, blocked it. However, in that time period repeated calls had been made to Algeria, France and China for up to an hour at a time, costing me hundreds of pounds. Same as you, orange told me I was liable under their 'policy' despite the fact that they were in no doubt that it wasn't me. I said their policy benefits criminals and their profits and they couldn't give me a good reason why they had a policy like that. I asked why they didn't flag the calls as unusual and they said that they had far too many customers to even consider doing that. I was horrified and doubted they were even incentivised to have such a scheme when they stand to make a fortune from theft and further couldn't believe they'd be willing to treat their customers so appallingly. It's a double victimisation - you're stolen from and then when you go to your company expecting help and assistance after being a valued and reliable customer for years they tell you they're not interested and you have to pay. I can't believe the world we live when we treat each other so disgustingly. What would the say to the person who had their phone stolen in a violent robbery, burglarly or rape victim who failed to announce the theft of their phone immediately and subsequently had these calls ran up? It's beyond a disgrace and have begun taking my case further with the complaints department and the ombudsman.
Don't trust these friendly looking sales people that want to con you into taking out expensive contracts and don't alert you to the policies that could leave you liable to hundreds or thousands at no reasonable fault of your own. Or at any least at like some anti-social moron who doesn't let their phone leave their side in order to be on constant alert.

MyUserNamesTaken

There's a simple answer to this; if you can't find your phone, ring up your network straight away and ask them to restrict calls for the time being. If you then find your phone, you can ring the network back and ask them to lift the restrictions. If you don't find the phone, you can then ask the network to block the imei and send you a new sim card. This works with Orange, by the way. I couldn't find my orange phone the other day - I was straight on the phone to them and got the calls restricted. I found the phone a couple of days later, called them back and had the restriction lifted.

emily1504

do you know what's even simpler? rather that hiding very important policies away in the small print so 99% of customers are not aware of them and end up being potentially liable for hundreds of thousands of pounds,the companies could try to give a crap and let you when you're signing up to the contract and tell you that you need to report it that millisecond. Most people take more than 30 seconds to notice their phone missing and look for it and conclude it's actually been stolen and I think if we knew that the horrendous companies did not consider such human nature when constructing their policies we'd all be constant alert. If I'd known I would have kept my phone in my hand 24/7 so I'd known immediately if someone had taken it. But I guess if they bothered to do that they'd wouldn't stand to make the unbelievable profits from theft as they do at moment. As I said, it's a double victimisation and I can't believe that a customer focussed industry would not take in account simple human nature when developing their policies

ruggedtoast

Are they even open at night? This is a real problem and for all the defence of Orange on here, its a policy that the networks have no intention of changing because they make a lot of money out of it.

Carphone Warehouse used to sell Vodafone phones with an automatic £500 per month limit on the account. If you went over that then the phone was immediately blocked. Vodafone took over their contracts and guess what, no limit.

I called Vodafone and asked why when my contract changed from CPW to them I wasnt informed that this vital and reassuring security feature had been removed. "Its not a service we offer". Its a service they offer when a big reseller wants it for their customers but when its down to the network screwing their own customers directly its suddenly impossible.

Unfortunately you basically have to treat contract mobiles like a credit card with an unlimited spend and no fraud protection at all. And make sure you get insurance that covers fraudulent use.

emily1504

I don't understand why everyone is so bothered about defending them anyway. I mean can everyone see their phones right now? When people go out shopping or whatever for the day are people literally holding their phones in their hands checking at all times that it hasn't been stolen? Because if not then you are perfectly capable of ending up in the same situation and being liable for a small fortune. So the advice really is: superglue your phone to your hand to make sure it's never taken to make sure that there is never even a five minute gap between when u last checked that your phone wasn't stolen, because ringing up and temporarily barring it is futile if it's been missing for more than 30 seconds and all the calls have already been racked up

custardy

emily1504 wrote: »

I don't understand why everyone is so bothered about defending them anyway. I mean can everyone see their phones right now? When people go out shopping or whatever for the day are people literally holding their phones in their hands checking at all times that it hasn't been stolen? Because if not then you are perfectly capable of ending up in the same situation and being liable for a small fortune. So the advice really is: superglue your phone to your hand to make sure it's never taken to make sure that there is never even a five minute gap between when u last checked that your phone wasn't stolen, because ringing up and temporarily barring it is futile if it's been missing for more than 30 seconds and all the calls have already been racked up

how do you work that one out?
whats the most expensive 30 second call you can make?

MyUserNamesTaken

emily1504 wrote: »

do you know what's even simpler? rather that hiding very important policies away in the small print so 99% of customers are not aware of them and end up being potentially liable for hundreds of thousands of pounds,the companies could try to give a crap and let you when you're signing up to the contract and tell you that you need to report it that millisecond. Most people take more than 30 seconds to notice their phone missing and look for it and conclude it's actually been stolen and I think if we knew that the horrendous companies did not consider such human nature when constructing their policies we'd all be constant alert. If I'd known I would have kept my phone in my hand 24/7 so I'd known immediately if someone had taken it. But I guess if they bothered to do that they'd wouldn't stand to make the unbelievable profits from theft as they do at moment. As I said, it's a double victimisation and I can't believe that a customer focussed industry would not take in account simple human nature when developing their policies

It's not hidden away. It's there in black and white in your contract - you know, the one you agreed to. I thought it was common sense that if your phone is lost or stolen and then misused, you would be held responsible for the cost of the calls upto the time you inform the network.

OP, you're angry at the wrong people. You should sort your son out for failing to inform you. If he's mature enough to have a contract phone, he should be mature enough to tell you straight away when he can't find it. I hope you made him pay you back the £1800.