Vodafone charged me more than £2000.00 for calls made on stolen phone!!!

goldenbat666

I left the restaurant where I work shifts late night on 29th May, Sunday. As the following Monday was a bank holiday, when I found out that I was without my phone later on in the afternoon, I thought I had left it in the restaurant and as I was due to work the Tuesday evening shift, thought to pick it up there and then as the restaurant was closed on bank holiday anyway.

However, when I got to the restaurant on Tuesday and found that I didn't leave the phone at the restaurant, I concluded that it must have been stolen on Sunday night and so when I got back home from work, called Vodafone to let them know.

All seemed to be fine with Vodafone ordering a replacement sim card, though I did have to pay for a new phone since I didn't have insurance with Vodafone.

But imagine my surprise comes June, when I am hit on the back of my head with a bill that shows £1800.00 upwards bill (plus VAT would put this past £2000.00) for my phone that was stolen!

The itemised bills showed incessant calls made to France, Africa and a few UK numbers (how someone manages to make calls non-stop for that long is lost on me), which was clearly out of the ordinary for someone like me who only ever makes inland calls.

Completely shocked, I called Vodafone and told them surely they don't expect me to pay this ridiculous sum but their only answer was that actually, I do, because the calls were made on the phone that I have a contract on. Whether I made the call or not seemed irrelevant to them. If that is so, I suppose they might even delight in the fact that I have managed to let such a huge sum to accumulate on my account?

Not to mention that this is a huge amount of money in itself, but it's more than a year's subscription fee for all three phones used in my household put together!

I feel that this is unduly unfair since I did not make any calls that resulted in this ridiculously high bill; if banks can restrict a customer's spending based on unusual activity on the account, why can't Vodafone do the same when they see hours long international calls being made one after another?!

And now, because I have not been able to make the payment, Vodafone has cut my service on all three phones for my household; I guess more than 5 years of loyalty to the company doesn't mean anything in the face of a hard cold bill that they can claim on, regardless of whether the customer had any part in spending it. The next thing I can expect would probably be a bailiff coming around to make a collection!

If anyone on this forum's had any similar experience, I would appreciate all and any help and advice you can give.

sevenpounds03

going by the past things i have read on these forums, if you dont report the phone stolen straight away, then you have to pay for any calls made until you do report it.

jayme1

when were these calls made?

if they were made before you called vodafone to tell them that the phone and sim had been lost, then you are fully liable to the amount I'm afraid.

but
if any of these calls were made after you called vodafone to cancel the sim and have them send a new one out then it is quite clear that someone at vodafone has completely messed up and infact not canceled your old/stolen sim.

so to sum any calls before you reported the missing sim you will have to pay for, but for any calls after you reported it vodafone has messed up and it should be fully their fault.

keith1950

Sorry but Vodafone are within their rights, the best you can hope for is to try and get them to reduce the bill as a gesture of goodwill.

Remember that even if they are sympathetic to your plight and waive their part of the bill( if it was out of tariff useage) , when a call is made through another network they have to pay that other network so I would not think they will waive that part of each call.

spiro

Sorry but as others have said VF are within their rights to charge you for all calls made on your phone. That said the person who stole it must have been busy because even phoning outside the EU is only £1.50pm which with your bill means 1440mins or 24hrs of calls.

Were do you keep the phone when at work? Did you have a PIN on the SIM?

NFH

You cannot expect Vodafone to foot the bill for your negligence. However, I believe that Vodafone are entitled only to charge you for their loss, not for their full retail price of the stolen calls. For example, if Vodafone have charged you £1/min for stolen calls to France, the chances are that their costs are <1p/min, and this is all you should have to pay. Similarly, if you accidentally damage something in a shop, you only have to pay the shop's cost price of the item, not the advertised full retail price.

Also, why don't you try phoning some of the numbers yourself (not from a mobile of course!) and ask who the calls were from. There are ways you could phrase the question to get better co-operation. It's possible that the called parties were unaware that the calls were stolen. If you identify a UK resident as the culprit, you could then report this to the police.

gjchester

NFH wrote: »

For example, if Vodafone have charged you £1/min for stolen calls to France, the chances are that their costs are <1p/min, and this is all you should have to pay.

It's just not down to the cost of the call though the cost of the call to the country, the cost of the admin fee's by both networks and foriegn network handling charges all needed to be considered. Given UK mobile termination are 3 to 4p a minute it will be at least that for a foreign network.

NFH wrote: »

Also, why don't you try phoning some of the numbers yourself (not from a mobile of course!) and ask who the calls were from. There are ways you could phrase the question to get better co-operation. It's possible that the called parties were unaware that the calls were stolen. If you identify a UK resident as the culprit, you could then report this to the police.

Great idea, the OP has a bill of thousands and you suggest adding to it to maybe get a name that quite frankly the police will do nothing to track. Mobiles are stolen each day, a name won't help unless the person is caught in the act.

Whever had the phone will have dumped the sim once it stopped working and flogged the phone on. It's gone.

I'm not without sympathy but if the OP has reported it as soon as it was noticed to be gone and used PIN code on the phone and a SIM lock then this would not have happened.

NFH

gjchester wrote: »

It's just not down to the cost of the call though the cost of the call to the country, the cost of the admin fee's by both networks and foriegn network handling charges all needed to be considered. Given UK mobile termination are 3 to 4p a minute it will be at least that for a foreign network.

Yes, all those costs are part of the cost price. The <1p/min cost I quoted assumes calls to fixed lines. You're right that calls to mobiles would be higher, but still a tiny fraction of the £1/min or £1.50/min that Vodafone charges as a retail price.

gjchester wrote: »

Great idea, the OP has a bill of thousands and you suggest adding to it

I did say not to call from a mobile. Therefore, rather than costing £1/min to France, it would cost 1p/min or even be included in many fixed line tariffs. With thousands of pounds at steak, spending a few pence really shouldn't be an issue.

spiro

NFH wrote: »

With thousands of pounds at steak, spending a few pence really shouldn't be an issue.

Try googling a few of the numbers and see if that brings up anything, long shot but you never know.

NFH

spiro wrote: »

Try googling a few of the numbers and see if that brings up anything, long shot but you never know.

That's a very good idea. When Googling a phone number, it's often a good idea to search in the format in which it will appear on a web page, i.e. with spaces in the correct places and in national rather than international format, and put quotes around the whole number so that you search as a phrase. For example, French number +33123456789 should be Googled as "01 23 45 67 89".

Naf

Two avenues you need to pursue: the first is, as pointed out above, when were these calls made. You are liable for any calls made up until you made Vodafone aware the phone was not in your possession. Otherwise people could rack up a huge bill then claim none of it was theirs.
Secondly, mobile phone contracts are a credit agreement and therefore, technically, have a credit limit. Mobile networks are notorious for allowing people to massively exceed these limits (especially in these cases), but because there is a limit they can't really enforce you to pay more because they should have limited it at that point. The BBC show 'Don't Get Done Get Dom' did part of a show on this type of situation, so if you can look those details up somewhere it'd probably be very useful.