T-Mobile overseas charges

Queen0000

Hi Guys

I need help with this one please.

I am with T-mobile and have been for a few years. I went overseas for Christmas and have been doing so for a while. Unfortunately this year it was due to unhappy circumstances so I made a few outgoing calls as well as received them.

On my was back to the UK I find that my bill is over £600. Now I expected at least £300 as I of course had been making calls and I assumed it would cost me, but I find that I have been charged for receiving calls which total £295 and also that I have been charged £80 for calls which total 3 seconds. They charge £.150 a minute to call but all these 3 second calls are me having called someone's phone, heard its gone to voicemail and hung up. £80 worth of calls below minute!!!

I have called Customer Services and they said they sent a text when I arrived, I never got this text and have said so repeatedly but they do not seem to be addressing this issue at all. Prior to this I tried to leave t-mobile due to several issues i.e. going through 3 blackberrys in 2 weeks as they were all faulty, GPRS issues, false promises by customer service managers, the list is endless.

I put in a complaint with the complaints team and they have said that the charges are correct, they say they will take of 1/2 the amount for the calls under a minute which is £40 in full and final settlement. I said no. I sent an email to richard moat and tom alexander (CEO'S) explaining everything advising them I have not received a text, I have just come out of an IVA as well as just coming out of counselling due to depression and anxiety and this is not have a great affect on me. Someone from Mr Moats office called me repeating the decision of the complaint team but he hadn't even looked into my complaint.

Now I have just seen on the OFCOM website that they must send an SMS to you to advise of the charges but from what I can see it is only EU. I went to Africa.

What is my next step for this (if I have one) as I have no idea what to do. I have paid the part of the bill which consists of the outgoing calls and texts I made before they were due. The remainder of the bill is due on Feb 3rd

Thank you so much for reading.

NFH

Try to get them to tell you their cost price of these 3-second calls, and then negotiate whether you can pay that amount instead. Also ask them what their business justification is for rounding up calls to a whole minute.

It's high time Ofcom did something about overcharging for lengths of calls. In the 1990s, the trend was towards per-second billing on fixed lines and mobiles, but now the networks are going the other way and overcharging for lengths of calls again. £1.50 for 3 seconds equates to £30 per minute which is extortionate and unjustifiable.

Having said all this, you should have checked the charges for using the service before you used it, and you should be aware that if a call is answered (whether by a human or by a machine), you will be charged for the call. One of the reasons I refuse to have voicemail on my own phone is to stop people being charged when they don't get through to me.

vixmony

I completely agree you should have known this would cost you an arm and a leg its bad enough when in Europe but Africa the network would hammer you for making calls using your mobile . Ironically its very cheap to buy a pay and go in afica that you can use to call someone in Uk, so i suppose the best option you have is really to negotiate with Tmobile cause to be fair you used the service.

getti

Roaming charges are done by the minute. The same happened with me when I was on Three and roaming in the USA about 4 years ago, I had a voicemail which the call kept cutting out on me when calling and each time i tried calling was charged at a full minute.

As far as I know all networks do this.

alf

I always use a global roaming sim when overseas which are free to receive calls in most countries

Jon_01

Most roaming networks change by the minute. And as you've roamed in Africa they aren't going to give a damn about any rules in the UK/EU. They will want paying by T and therefore T are going want paying by you.

Some of these networks aren't what you'd call customer centred, all they want is their fee.