£121 bill on £15 contract. T-Mobile

ispartacus75

Ive had a T-Mobile contract now for about 6 months. I get the following in the £15 per month contract;

• 300 call minutes
• 300 sms
• unlimited internet (FUP)
• 1 flexible booster (currently gives me unlimited sms)

Each month I have been way under my allowance for call minutes, and as sms and internet is unlimited this has never been an option.

Last month, for some unknown reason, I went over my allowance minutes. I admit, I went over big, 350 minutes over. The problem is T-Mobile want to charge me £121 for the months bill, thats £106 for 350 minutes of phone calls.

I find this astronomical and am very angry about it for a number of reasons;

1. Over the past 6 months of the contract I have paid for much more than 350 minutes that I never used
2. A £25 month contract gives someone 900 minutes (my total usage last month was 650 minutes for £121)
3. Given my below allowance use over the contract so far I would have expected some kind of red flag to go up somewhere that this month the use was high and either a notification sms or automated phone call go out (in fact a fromt line CS asked me if anyone had contacted me regarding the high use

I rang T-Mobile yesterday. After 10 phone calls I was offered £10 off the bill as a good will gesture. Within 10 seconds this was increased to £30 off as a final offer. After I refused it I was then offered £50 off, again as a final offer. I rejected this as I still think it is astronomical to expect £55 on top of the original contract for 350 minutes of usage when they sell customers 900 minutes for £25. I was then put through to a very abrupt manager who took all offers off the table and stated that T-Mobile would do nothing with the bill as all the charges were legitimate.

I pointed out to the manager at this point that I had introduced both my wife and my mother to T-Mobile as contract customers and my 2 kids have PAYG sims with them, so T-Mobile are receiving £80 per month from the group of us, and if this was the way I was going to be treated we would ride out the term of the contracts and then take our business elsewhere. The manager told me I was free to do that.

I found the managers attitude to be appauling and was simply not interested in either helping the customer or keeping the customer.

Dont get me wrong, I wasnt asking for the bill to be reduced to my original £15 contract. I even offered to pay £50 in total (£15 for the contract portion and £35 for the 350 minutes) but I was told that the bill was £121 and if I decided to go to OFCOM they could do nothing about it.

Am I right in thinking that some companies DO send out an SMS or automated call when a customer has reached their allocated minutes? Is this voluntary company to company or is this something that they are supposed to do?

I know that ultimately I am at fault for going over my minutes, but this is the first month that I have gone over since the contract started 7 months ago, and as I said I have paid for much more than 350 minutes that I have never used over the previous months bills.

I would like to know what you all think, I plan to write to T-Mobile now about the bill as 10 phone calls to CS and then the managers attitude just drove me mad last night.

Cheers

HappyMJ

It doesn't work like that. If someone paid £25 and used exactly 900 minutes calling mobiles on other networks then the mobile network would actually make a loss.

MissKeith

Read the t&c of your contract, that's what you agreed to, your network is under no obligation to do anything. By pushing so much you've ended up worse off than before. A £50 goodwill gesture for something that is your fault was better service than the majority of networks will give, I don't blame them from withdrawing all offers frankly. I don't know of any network who still notify when the user is coming to the end of their allowance and they have no obligation to do so. You've used the minutes, you should pay for them. You wouldn't expect a refund from a restaurant if you'd eaten a whole plate of their food would you?

My advice? Pay for the service which T-Mobile have provided you and learn from this lesson.

ispartacus75

But the fact is they still charge £25 for 900 minutes, whether they are making a loss or not. Im not even asking them to bill me the £25 and thats it, I offered £50 which is £35 on top of my contract. I wouldnt expect this if I was regularly going over my minutes as that would just be silly. But this is the first time I have gone over my minutes, in fact this month I have only made 145 mins of calls so far and the month ends in 5 days, so yet again I am going to come in well under my allowance. My usage this month wasnt because I knew about the bill so was kurbing my calls, far from it, as I only found out about last months £121 bill yesterday.

Last months usage has definitely been an exception, a one off. Instead T-Mobile are treating me like this is the norm for this contract.

ispartacus75

MissKeith wrote: »

Read the t&c of your contract, that's what you agreed to, your network is under no obligation to do anything. By pushing so much you've ended up worse off than before. A £50 goodwill gesture for something that is your fault was better service than the majority of networks will give, I don't blame them from withdrawing all offers frankly. I don't know of any network who still notify when the user is coming to the end of their allowance and they have no obligation to do so. You've used the minutes, you should pay for them. You wouldn't expect a refund from a restaurant if you'd eaten a whole plate of their food would you?

My advice? Pay for the service which T-Mobile have provided you and learn from this lesson.

While I can understand your point I want to bring up your restaurant analogy.
The restaurant says you can fill a plate and eat it for £15. You do that, you then decide to have a second plate of food, and they bill you £106 for the 2nd plate. Is that fair?

I was contracted to pay £15 for 300 minutes. I used another 350 minutes in top and they want another £106 for those minutes. Not fair.

And I believe Orange do something if their customers go over their allowance as a friend is with them, she went over her allowance, they called her and asked her if she wanted to move up a tariff for 3 months.

Soubrette

ispartacus75 wrote: »

While I can understand your point I want to bring up your restaurant analogy.
The restaurant says you can fill a plate and eat it for £15. You do that, you then decide to have a second plate of food, and they bill you £106 for the 2nd plate. Is that fair?

I'm sorry but the analogy would be much more like - The restaurant says you can fill a plate and eat it for £15. You do that for several meals in a row, in fact leaving half your plate. One time you eat a plateful and have several more plates. When you go to pay you are billed £106 but protest. The manager points to the small print which states that extra food will be charged for and gives the pricing policy.

You feel that this is unfair because
a) You have left far more than £106 of food on your plate from previous visits
b) No one told you that a second plate would cost so much as you were about to eat it
c) No one noticed that you had finished your first plate and as this was an unusual pattern of behaviour they should have.

From the facts you have given you are in the wrong and are lucky to have been offered a goodwill gesture.

Still, it might be worth writing, if you don't ask, you don't get.

Sou

lozzaman

HappyMJ wrote: »

It doesn't work like that. If someone paid £25 and used exactly 900 minutes calling mobiles on other networks then the mobile network would actually make a loss.

This is actually true, but is totally ignoring the fact that the network is relying on the probability of that user also receiving calls.

To the OP, the charges are clearly laid out when taking out a contract. Yes, they are a rip off (in many ways as the "unfair" bank charges were) but as you did make the calls I think you should have accepted the £50 gesture of goodwill. I'm surprised they made this offer to be perfectly honest.

greyster

this is how the networks make money. I've had a contract for years and on a rare occassion, you mess up and they make money. That is how they profit.

You need to accept the goodwill gesture and just be cautious in the future. It has happened to nearly everyone I know, some a little less charges, some a lot more.

The final line: they've done nothing wrong. It is down to the consumer to control their spending, to ensure they get the best deal possible. Those who end up in this scenerio often, should move to PAYG and protect themselves from financial ruin.

spaceman5

u do know what a contract is dont you, part of your monthly contract gives you free minutes( well not free as technically you pay the contract but you know what i mean), any minutes you go over your monthly allowance you pay for at whatever the network charges are in your contract, judging by your post, your network has charged you 3.3p a minute, so they not exactly charging you an awful lot per minute, it is just you used 350 minutes, which makes it seem more expensive, you cant go stoozing your minutes, i,e you have a 300 minute allowance, so use only 175 1 month, 125 the next month and 600 the next and think you wont get charged, your monthly allowance is just that, to be used in any given billing month

flyingscotno1

It was 30p a minute I think. PAYG is 25p a minute on the same network.

Whilst the OP can point out that a 900minute contract might be only £10 more or what have you, it is banking on the fact that they have to pay that for every month throughout the contract term and that said contract holder might just make 400mins, 600mins or what ever and not fully use the allowances. Pricing has always been a curve like that and not a simple divide the mins up.

As others have said I think the goodwill was fair.

A quick text of AL to 150 for allowances, and BA to 150 for balances keeps you abreast.

mrochester

Storm in a tea cup. You need to accept that you've got to pay for any minutes used above your allowance. These charges were laid out to you when you took the contract. If you didn't want to be charged for those minutes, you shouldn't have used them. If you didn't agree with the cost of those minutes, you shouldn't have taken the contract. It's really that simple.