Envirophone/Orange £2,600 bill - help needed

Keifeh

Hi All, I'm wondering if anyone out there has experience with the following.

My partner is very impatient... So much so that they decided to upgrade their handset to an iPhone 3GS with O2 back in early June. To offset the difference for paying off the remainder of the Orange contract, the old phone was sold on to Envirophone. Because the loyalty bonus would be removed if the contact was paid off in one hit, we agreed it would be cheaper to see the contract out by continuing to pay monthly. Great I thought, this way would be the most inexpensive, only costing us £60 in line rental. That was, until yesterday.

My partner checked his internet banking to see that approx £850 had been DD'd from their current account. Upon calling Orange, we found that a further £1,800 of calls have been made. All calls are roaming calls originating from china, Orange have confirmed the SIM is in China. It's certainly not in our front room any longer, where we both thought it was. The only logical explanation I've come up with is that the phone was sent to Envirophone with the SIM in the handset. I've already had a bat-!!!!!!-crazy episode but I think we've moved beyond this now to questioning how we're going to manage this.

The SIM is now blocked and we have cancelled the direct debt. The calls are so completely out of character that I would have hoped some sort of fraud prevention software may have picked these calls up, but I'm told that it wouldn't. The bill has never previously been above £25 and the handset/SIM never out of the UK.

Does anyone here have any sort of experience with this sort of situation? Can anyone offer us any practical advice?

OneADay

Not going to help but here goes

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2553043

Keifeh

Scray thought. We've already paid £850 because apparently, bills aren't worth checking. I'll pen a letter to Orange tomorrow asking for some of that goodwill. I hope they have some left! They just took the money we were saving for a Xmas getaway and we have nothing left to pay the other £1,800.

My God this is horrid!

mcjordi

why did you send the sim with the phone? always take the sim out when you sell/dispose of a phone,

you may get some of the bill reduced but tbh i wouldnt hold out much hope.

Money_Grabber13579

Cancelling the DD wasn't a great idea either because Orange will try and take it out, only for it to be refused. This will trash your credit rating if not sorted out before then. Best option is to phone Orange, rather than wait for letters back and forth. And remember to acknowledge that it is your fault, and grovel loads! Otherwise they may not be inclined to do anything for you.

GeoThermal

You'd think Envirophone would check for sims before selling them on.

eranou

The problem is that you have no proof that is was envirophone that caused this.

Orange arent at fault as for all they know you just went on holiday to china for a bit and made a lot of calls there is a delay in the roaming network passing the info to them so they could not stop this.

jamespir

if you had paid off your orange contract orange should ahve cancelled the sim

Fifer

jamespir wrote: »

if you had paid off your orange contract orange should ahve cancelled the sim

They didn't pay it off to maintain their loyalty bonus.

timberflake

This will sound a bit cold but you only really have yourselves to blame, you would have saved all this hassle if you'd just taken the SIM out.

Try writing a letter to Orange, but just remember that they have absolutely no obligation to write off the debt.