T Mobile

Pudgenator

Any help on this issue would be appreciated. I have copied and pasted below a draft of a letter I will be sending to T Mobile. Basically, my mobile broadband stick was stolen without my knowledge and used to make phone calls totalling £600 which I am now apparently liable for. The full detail is in the text below - any comments/ideas/similar experience/abuse welcomed. Cheers.



Dear Sirs,

I am writing to express my disapointment in T-Mobile's response to the recent theft of my mobile broadband USB stick. I have called T Mobile on three separate occasions to explain the circumstances surrounding the theft and have been referred only to the following point included in T Mobile's terms and conditions:- 'report your lost or stolen phone right away. Until you notify T-Mobile you're liable for the cost of any services used on your missing handset'.

By way of detail, the mobile broadband stick in question was stolen alongside my flatmates laptop in mid-July. As the stick was not used by myself or my flatmate, neither of us realised this at the time. As it was never used, it was not noticed missing until I received a bill of £105 for the period up until the 20th July. It appears that when stolen, the SIM card was removed from the USB and used to make a number of international calls to Iraq and Pakistan, amongst other places. The additional charges incurred in the period 20th July until the point I reported the stick stolen are £484 (as per my discussions with my T-Mobile colleague). As per your terms and conditions, I am apparently liable for those charges, even though common sense clearly indicates that they were clearly not incurred by myself. I have a police report detailing the date that the theft took place should you wish to see further proof of this.

Under normal circumstances, should I have had my mobile phone knowingly stolen and neglected my responsibility to report it, I would reluctantly accept liablity in accordance with your terms and conditions. However, given the specific circumstances listed below, I cannot accept that I can be held liable for these charges.

• As you may have record of, I previously had a number of discussions with T-Mobile where I expressed my displeasure in the way in which the mobile broadband package was sold to me. I was called by a T-Mobile operator and offered a 'loyalty bonus'. I was informed that my usage of the service would be 'capped', never costing more than £10 and 'would work out about 30p a day if you used it for one day'. As I am sure you will agree, to express something as being 'capped' is grossly misleading in this context, and you can imagine my surprise when having never used the service, I received a bill of £10. At this point I attempted to cancel the service on the grounds I had been mis-sold the service. I was informed that I could cancel should I wish to pay up the remainder of the 24 month contract. I did not opt to take the matter any further and continued with the contract. My annoyance led to me switching my mobile phone operator for the first time.
• I was never made aware at any point of how this product could be used. Whilst it may seem obvious to people in your industry that what I actually had was another phoneline, there should be no assumption that your customers have similar knowledge. As far as I was aware, I had a 'capped' service that allowed me to access mobile broadband, hence my apparent disregard for its value. That this product should then be fraudulently used in a manner I was not aware possible only adds to my annoyance.
• I find it difficult to accept that when T-Mobile sell me a service 'capped' at £10 a month, you would then not notify me/cap the service when the usage has reached approximately 60 times what the normal charges in any given period would be. Not only this, it was being used for a purpose that it was not intended to make international phone calls to countries which I have absolutely no ties. It appears that T-Mobile were more than happy for charges to continue to be incurred in his fashion.

As I am sure you will appreciate, the fact that I am being told that I shall be liable for the full amount of the charges incurred has left me angry and disapointed. I have unknowlingly been the victim of crime that I had no knowledge there was a risk of, all in relation to a service that I still maintain I was deliberately misled into agreeing to purchase. As I have explained, I understand the contractual point which I have been referred to previously. Given my above comments, I cannot accept that it should apply in this case. As such, I have instructed my bank to suspend any further payments to T-Mobile until this matter is resolved, as I will be willing to take the complaint further should you not agree to rescind the charges. I would request that this amount is not passed on to any debt collection agency while these monies are in dispute.
I look forward to receiving your comments in due course.

sporedude

Its a simcard.....Ofcourse it can be used in a phone. You really have no chance.

Freddie_Snowbits

Seems the Honourable Mrac is giving his usual advice. Absolute Codswallop again.

Wow, hang on this is a theft. I bet the following have not happened.

1 have we told the police?
2 What about my household insurance.

From the days of my apprenticeship, said item is a V&A piece opf equipment. That is. it is VALUABLE and ATRRACTIVE.

No wonder if not carefully guarded it went walkies.

Bet Not, but cannot be of more help than the Honourable Gent and his ability to navifgate his way round these shores using Google!

Note to editors, CODSWALLOP sounds much better than the proganity filtered SUGARED, or does it!

Proc

Definately email a chief Exec. He'd love to take time out of his busy day to write-off your phone bill. He would just bounce it straight back to customer services.

Okay, well the situation is this: It's your property, and it was stolen. You should report the theft the moment it went missing. T-Mobile aren't liable; you are. It's really a simple case of taking some responsibility for your own actions. Pay the bill, put it down as a little lesson in life.

At best T-Mobile may offer something like a 40% discount off the call charges. But it's doubtful.

Equaliser123

sirmarcus wrote: »

Suggest that you escalate and complain to Richard Moat, T-Mobile Chief Executive, via sending your letter as an attachment to his email address [EMAIL="MDTMOB@t-mobile.co.uk"]MDTMOB@t-mobile.co.uk[/EMAIL].

Good luck and hope this helps.

Do you ever actually read the posts rather than just googling an email address - 90% of the time an incorrect one?

adam.mt

Agree that T-mobile are likely to stick to their guns; but, guess it causes no harm in writing (as long as you don't follow sirmarcus' advise that is!).

re: your letter, I think where you say "The additional charges incurred in the period 20th July until the point I reported the stick stolen are £484" you need to make it clear that you reported the stick as stolen to T-mobile as soon as you received the bill for the period up to 20th July, ie. that there was no delay between getting the first bill and you reporting the stick stolen. As long as that's actually correct, of course. Probably best to state the dates (and times if you have them).

It would probably also be best to continue paying the £10 monthly charge and just dispute the additional call charges. That way it's just the one complaint; if you wanted to dispute the contract in the first place then you should surely have done this before now (as you did do, but you then didn't pursue it further). Bringing it up again now, in my opinion, just complicates the situation further and possibly makes you appear unreasonable.

Freddie_Snowbits

I would go along with Adams Advice here

Darksun

sporedude wrote: »

Its a simcard.....Ofcourse it can be used in a phone. You really have no chance.

Well, it's trivially easy for the provider to bar phone calls and only allow the sim to be used for data. It's not unreasonable to expect this to be the case on a sim provided with a mobile broadband package.

Anyway, to the OP, there's a story on the BBC website about a similar situation, and T-Mobile did agree to waive the charges (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10185221). However, there's no guarantee they will in your case.

Equaliser123

Equaliser123 wrote: »

Do you ever actually read the posts rather than just googling an email address - 90% of the time an incorrect one?

Sadly nothing else from chap other than the usual "suggest you escalate...." on other posts.

adam.mt

Darksun wrote: »

Anyway, to the OP, there's a story on the BBC website about a similar situation, and T-Mobile did agree to waive the charges (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10185221). However, there's no guarantee they will in your case.

The story reaffirms what's been said here and even that for O2, Vodafone, T-Mobile and Orange no firm 'cap' actually exists!

IMO T-mobile only waived the person's charges in the article since it got in the national press; that often happens, so by all means OP if you can get the media to pick up the story you may get 'special treatment'. Otherwise, it's a very long shot.