Please help!

searzie

Hi

My husband and i both got contract phones to save a bit of money, i got mine through phones 4 u who have been great, my husband got his on the o2 web site, £0 per month contract 400 free min's + texts. He has always been with o2 and they have never charged for internet browsing before.
Now this is the bit thats the problem.............................the internet was turned on by accident we think it may have been our 3 year old, it was left on for about 15 hours, o2 have taken in total £735 DD from our account and left us with nothing and i mean nothing, we have no money at all and we have 6 kids as you can see im a bit upset.
We rang them and they said that they would investigate but we still have no money for food!!!!!
Sorry this was a long one

piper5

as far as im aware, unless it was caused by a fault on o2, or they promised you it would be free to browse internet, you are quite stuck... sorry! did you get your bill previous to 'warn you' of the total??
if not you can use this as your arguement...
ring them and see if you can break it down, or pay in instalments.. ive never dealt with this personally, but had customers who were told by orange browsing was free, and then got a £400 bill, orange reimbursed them £210 for the inconvenience.

the_tired_one

YOu are in a bit of 'doo doo'.

Wasnt there a credit limit setting on your account so that you couldnt go over it? (eg I have one set at £100). If yes, then you could use that as a bargaining chip.

I hope you find some solution - thats killer of a bill!

searzie

We expected a bill through the post but when we rang they said that the bill is only viewable on line which we had no idea how to get to! we were checking on the wrong bit.
i just don't know if we will get some back and then be allowed to pay bit by bit as they obviously already have the money.
It's just typical that it's the month that i got a mortgage payment holiday to make the month easier!!!!

piper5

oh im so sorry for you. was it o2 online you dealt with??
i work in mobile retail and we advice our customers to never go online.. fair enough fantastic deals but issues like this always arise.
use the fact that you were not aware of the viewing bill system on line, so therefore were not aware of extent of bill!!!!
see if they can do something.. after all your husband has used o2 for a while? so may be regarded as a loyal customer!!!

piper5

but £735!!! how can they justify that?? if your husband has used o2 they would have a record of his previous bills, and usage, and if it was low.. this should have sent alarm bells ringing!! why did they not contact you? i had tmobile ring me about my direct debit not going through, so rang to arrange it before they made a charge on my account - very nice of them, but back to you, kick off that you have a family you need to provide for, and they have left you with nothing!!! good luck!!

searzie

thamks for your advise!
It's just so upsetting the lad at the other end of the phone was saying how unreasonable it was and was trying to be nice about it,i keep telling my husband to keep ringing and be nice and hound them about it! they might just get sick of us! anything is worth a try!

Waste_not...

Searzie you have my sympathies, but I would be hopeful that O2 will be reasonable.
One thought that may, or may not, be relevant: I thought that O2 charged for the amount of data downloaded rather than for the length of time you are connected for? I have only used phone internet briefly so I may well be wrong, but £735 would be an awful lot of data to download.

reehsetin

^thats what i thought and it would take a lot of mb's to make that much! even if the kid set a video to download or something - that cost - the mind boggles!

barjam_2

wow your battery life must be brilliant on your mobile..... 15hrs surely using the internet must use up power

searzie

We thought the same! and there was only one download actually done.
i will get on to them today anyway, thanks for all your comments