T-Mobile; another huge bill due to thievery

wantmemoney

Originally Posted by wantmemoney
personal opinions are opinions.

would somebody please link to the specific UK Law(s) that T-Mobile would use to argue their case in court to justify their claim.

eranou wrote:

I dont think there is a specific law to this. would it not be down to the judge to decide if t-mobile were at fault?

the law of 'fault'

Originally Posted by eranou
You could also use the question how can the customer provide solid evidence that they did not make the calls themselfs or give the phone to a friend to use?

Wintermute wrote:

The latter happens all the time, people let friends make "a quick phone call" only to find out they've dialled premium rate numbers, international numbers and often run up quite a large bill.... That or people just don't want to look stupid and blame it on "a friend"

and what source have you acquired this nonsense from

eranou

wantmemoney wrote: »

the law of 'fault'

and what source have you acquired this nonsense from

i used to work for t-mobile customer services, you would always get people calling up after noticing charges on their bill that they didnt want to pay so they would claim it was not them that made the calls but we had a system that could tell exactly which sim card, phone and phone mast the calls were made from

After proving the calls came from their phone, SIM and general area they would then try to get out of paying by claiming a friend borrowed their phone so they should not be liable.

Jon_01

I've also had calls like that when I worked on the phones. A guys give his phone to his workmates who then think it's really funny to text a stack of premium rate number. He get a mountain texts at £2+ each and then calls the network and blames us ??

The guy with no data on his acc who let 'some guy in a pub' set his email up on his new phone. The 'guy' sets it to check every 30 seconds (so it works like a Blackberry!). At the end of the month he get a bill for data usage a little over £200. And yet again, it's not his fault but the networks ?

People just refuse to accepted responsibility for their own actions. . .

ampletime

gjchester wrote: »

And the first time this goes wrong and locks out a Kid who needs to call mum for a lift home it will get pulled or face a Daily Mail Nowtrage over the evil teleco's.

What if the person with the handset is ill and needs those calls making and can't answer the phone and clear security

Or what about corporate contracts who do spend millions a year on calls, they'll opt out or move to another network. We have people at work who travel a lot abroad and easily top £200 a month on a phone. For a business man they use a mobiel first and foremost no matter where they are in the world.

Sorry but you can't expect technology to solve a problem that is so easily remedied with a pin and caution

I agree that a pin for both phone and pin is very wise but a simple text message to the phone number asking the user to call customer service in a set time of x amounts of mins would be a good way to do it.

I also feel that networks should set proper credit controls on handsets no matter what your credit score. A £100 per month is plenty for most people.

ampletime

Jon_01 wrote: »

I've also had calls like that when I worked on the phones. A guys give his phone to his workmates who then think it's really funny to text a stack of premium rate number. He get a mountain texts at £2+ each and then calls the network and blames us ??

The guy with no data on his acc who let 'some guy in a pub' set his email up on his new phone. The 'guy' sets it to check every 30 seconds (so it works like a Blackberry!). At the end of the month he get a bill for data usage a little over £200. And yet again, it's not his fault but the networks ?

People just refuse to accepted responsibility for their own actions. . .

Anyone who supplies credit has a duty to protect their customers and credit card firms do this very well when it comes to accounts, mobile networks don't.

It may also be worth looking at the Consumer Credit Act, that may help the OP.

Jon_01

Mobile contract aren't a credit agreement, they are a service contract.

Wintermute

wantmemoney wrote: »

and what source have you acquired this nonsense from

I take it you've never worked in the mobile industry?
I'm my own source for this one, but I'm sure anybody who's ever worked in a customer facing role in the mobile industry will back me up. People routinely phone up to dispute charges and when told that the calls/SMS originated from their phone excuses such as "well it was my son", "my friend borrowed it to make a quick call" or similar are common place.

gjchester

ampletime wrote: »

I agree that a pin for both phone and pin is very wise but a simple text message to the phone number asking the user to call customer service in a set time of x amounts of mins would be a good way to do it.

I also feel that networks should set proper credit controls on handsets no matter what your credit score. A £100 per month is plenty for most people.

Possibly but your missing my point.

If this was your kid, and he'd ran up a bill without you knowing then got cut off. He then needs to call home for whatever reason, be it an emergency or just needing a lift home.

Who's fault would it be? Probably the parents who should not have let him have a contract phone with out precautions but who do you think the papers would go after?
No network wants the grief, T-mobile used to do a plan like this but dropped it, why no demand or hard to enforce? Dunno only TM know that.


As I said if some of my managers at work got that sort of text, or any restriction then the network would be told pretty bluntly either knock it off or we move contracts to another provider.

It's a VERY VERY small minority of people who this affects, usually people who don;t read the T&C. Why should everyone be penalised for their lazyness.

The provisions are already there (such as PIN no's) and they don't use them.

When you leave the UK you get a text saying how much calls and data is where you are (or at least I do on Vodafone) again people don't heed it.

It's pretty common knowledge how expensive data is outside the UK, and we get posts about it on here weekly. It usually boils down to someone not bothering to ask the cost then coming on complaining how they are "ripped off" for data, when if they had asked they'd have known the costs.

Sometimes you really cannot protect people from themselves, no matter how hard they try, If you had a limit people would call up or reply to a text saying OK and still scream when they get the bill.

imaginarynumber

Jon_01 wrote: »

Mobile contract aren't a credit agreement, they are a service contract.

A service contract with unlimited credit limits...

Why are telcos the only ones who offer unlimited credit knowing that the customer can be exposed to such levels of criminal exploitation (especially when scam/criminal premium rate numbers exist)?

Just out of interest, I ask because I don't know the answer, if I go on holiday for a month and come home and discover that someone has broken into my home and left all my gas/water appliances running and have been stealing my electricity- would the service contract suppliers roll their eyes (in disbelief) and pursue me for the full amount or as a victim of a crime would the service provider have to take a partial hit?

Wintermute

Got to agree with gjchester, he's spot on!

You've got to be an adult to take out a contract, the majority of adults like to be treated as adults, so putting a bar on a customers account and making it so they can only call customer services (this can take 24 hours to come into effect), making them wait in a queue to request the bar to be removed (which could take another 24 hours) and generally causing people a lot of inconvenience is going to really upset a large percentage of customers.

People kick up enough fuss when there's restrictions placed on their accounts for non-payment of their bills and even more of a fuss when they find out they could potentially be waiting another 24 hours to get full service back to their phone, I can only imagine what would happen if networks started placing restrictions on customers "for their own good".

You've also got to remember that most of these call centres aren't opened 24 hours a day, but we live in a 24 hour society, if somebody has their phone barred due to high usage for whatever reason and this happens outside of their call centre opening hours then they're going to potentially wait for hours before getting full service back on their phone.