Tesco mobile cancelling during cooling off period

johnbongo

I returned my iphone3GS back to Tesco Mobile within the 14 day cooling off period. I had took out the 12 month contract of 35/mnth + 200 for the handset.

When I phoned to cancel, they told me I had to pay for what I had used in the 10 days I'd had the phone - fair enough. I wasn't prepared for the £311 of charges due to the very high data rate cost of £4 per mb - I used 70mb = £280. Which isnt a huge amount on an iphone, the rest being call and txt charges.

Having looked through the terms and conditions, I am fairly snookered because it states I have to pay the full charges during the period.

In my simple maths, if I pay £35/month for 750mb, this roughly equals £0.05p per mb. Therefore £4 for 1mb = 80 times higher. It gets worse if I apportion the £35 with calls and texts...

After challenging Tesco customer services, all they kept referring back to was that I had agreed with the terms and conditions. However I asked surely they should tell you what the rough charges would be when I cancelled it. Apparantly they are not obliged to tell you. I may have decided to keep the iphone had I known this.

Its not really a cooling off period is it, if you get saddled with these outrageous charges! I feel violated!

johnbongo

UPDATE. Had a phone call back from Tesco. They are refunding me back the whole lot. I'll reserve judgement until the cheque arrives.

Please be aware when you take out a contract with Tesco!!!!

kenozz

johnbongo wrote: »

UPDATE. Had a phone call back from Tesco. They are refunding me back the whole lot. I'll reserve judgement until the cheque arrives.

Please be aware when you take out a contract with Tesco!!!!

I agree think Tesco Mobile should be looked at by someone, my experience is still an ongoing nightmare, when I took out my iphone contract with them I was treated exceptionally well, made to feel important as I parted with almost £400, the phone was fine but at my home/office location I could not get an acceptable signal, so after 3 days of testing I rang to get a cancellation under their 14 day cooling off period, Oh how their attitude changed from happy and positive to surly and unhelpful, I to was told that my initial payment would be refunded including my first months contract amount leaving me to pay for any data and calls I had used at their premium rates, and as stated the data is charge at £4 per meg (£400 per 100 meg) my bill was £47, but this was only the start of my ongoing nightmare, no one would help me return the phone, Sales said I had to ring contracts , contracts said I had to ring, customer services , customer services said I had to ring Tesco Direct, finally Tesco Direst helped and arranged for the collection, the carrier arrived and to my amazement just pick up the phone scanned a label he put on it and left with out giving me any paper work at all, I will stop now as I am getting angry again :-0, the current situation is that my phone is now at Dulwich distribution centre, and will be entered onto their system next week as they are short staffed, my contract as been ended (yesterday 8 days after I asked to cancel) I got an email this morning telling me the contract was ended and I would get my refund at my next payment date (22 August 10) this will be 6 weeks after I asked for cancellation and refund, no one will talk to me about it, and all remain inflexible about my refund, in reality it means I will have paid my CC bill by then, I am without a phone because I need the refund to buy another one, so beware Tesco Mobile will ride rough shod over you and as they are so big and powerful no one seems to be able to curb their aggression, this as been my experience in trying to cancel a contract, I am no one special, quite an ordinary chap, I had no reason to dislike Tesco as I shop there every week, I would say I am their typical core customer, and I have been treated in this way, so beware if you are considering getting a contract with Tesco Mobile , you will be their best friend whilst they take your money, but become their sworn enemy if you as for it back

Oscar_The_Grouch

I'm pretty sure that the term within the agreement falls foul of the Unfair Terms In Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 (clicky). Look at Schedule 2 part e.

DarkConvict

Its an old topic, but.

You should be charged not at the out of contract rates, but the contract rates.

So, on a £40 contract, after 10 days it should be (£40/28 *10).
Any out of contract usage should be chargeable. I.e. Picture messages, exceeding call/text allowences.

But still, not charged £4 a MB, 20p a min per call. But at the rate you would normally be expected in the contract.

watcherman

Same here, tried to charge me £90 for three days usage on an iPhone. The £20 line rental paid in advance at the till on top of the handset purchase price is returned, then they charge you for using the phone with no allowances, so £76 for data for 3 days, and £14 for calls and texts......

BEWARE!

thelawman

Likewise, I'm being charged £212 for the five days before I cancelled. It's absolutely outrageous that they can charge £4/Mb for data and not the contract rate.

I've emailed a complaint after getting nowhere on the phone. I'm not really expecting much though.

kenozz

thelawman wrote: »

Likewise, I'm being charged £212 for the five days before I cancelled. It's absolutely outrageous that they can charge £4/Mb for data and not the contract rate.

I've emailed a complaint after getting nowhere on the phone. I'm not really expecting much though.

no they are very inflexible, I only had to pay £47 (thank goodness for a poor signal) my gripe is that even though they have cancelled my contract and confirmed the phone was received ok with no problems, they are making me wait 6 weeks for the refund on my initial payment, outrageous, :mad:

big_syke

oh man, i took my one back today just before the 14 days was up.

i know the call charge will be high and im prepared to pay what i owe for that, but i have a major issue with the £4/meg data charge. basically i had been keeping tabs on my usage anyways and mainly use wifi on it at home . so today i check my usage in the settings is around 10mb since i got the phone. i still believe this is higher as i noticed it creeping up without me using it. so anyway i begin to remove my itunes logins etc, wifi passwords, and all of a sudden my usage has jumped to over 40 megs!!! what the hell happened. i explained that my data was going up for no reason to the guy in tesco and also the person he asked me to speak to on the phone but i dont want to end up paying more thsn 200 for a broken phone i had for less than 2 weeks!! is there anything i can do to have an outcome like the first poster who got a full refund? even still i would be prepared to pay around 50 punds for what i think i should owe.

when i asked the assistant he told me they couldnt give the amount i would have to pay them as it had fully gone through

kenozz

big_syke wrote: »

oh man, i took my one back today just before the 14 days was up.

i know the call charge will be high and im prepared to pay what i owe for that, but i have a major issue with the £4/meg data charge. basically i had been keeping tabs on my usage anyways and mainly use wifi on it at home . so today i check my usage in the settings is around 10mb since i got the phone. i still believe this is higher as i noticed it creeping up without me using it. so anyway i begin to remove my itunes logins etc, wifi passwords, and all of a sudden my usage has jumped to over 40 megs!!! what the hell happened. i explained that my data was going up for no reason to the guy in tesco and also the person he asked me to speak to on the phone but i dont want to end up paying more thsn 200 for a broken phone i had for less than 2 weeks!! is there anything i can do to have an outcome like the first poster who got a full refund? even still i would be prepared to pay around 50 punds for what i think i should owe.

when i asked the assistant he told me they couldnt give the amount i would have to pay them as it had fully gone through

Like you I noticed unexplained data use mainly in chunks of 500k, and at times when I was connected to my wi-fi network, I got out after 3 days at a cost to me of £47, :mad: have been fighting them for a week now with no success, they will not move on the data charge and are making me wait for 6 weeks to get the refund I am due for the handset,:( the first poster to this thread didn't come back and tell us if he did get a refund as again like you I would like to know how he did it!!!!! Tesco Mobile been a really bad experience for me, still I'm wiser now and shopping at Morrisons in the future:T best of luck with your Tesco struggle hope you get something back:cool:

big_syke

kenozz wrote: »

Like you I noticed unexplained data use mainly in chunks of 500k, and at times when I was connected to my wi-fi network, I got out after 3 days at a cost to me of £47, :mad: have been fighting them for a week now with no success, they will not move on the data charge and are making me wait for 6 weeks to get the refund I am due for the handset,:( the first poster to this thread didn't come back and tell us if he did get a refund as again like you I would like to know how he did it!!!!! Tesco Mobile been a really bad experience for me, still I'm wiser now and shopping at Morrisons in the future:T best of luck with your Tesco struggle hope you get something back:cool:

well im fortunate in the fact when i set up the contract they gave me a 1st of the month bill date, which is when i should be given a refund. now my concern is the 260 they will refund me will be taken back straight away by them mainly for data charges.