The Three Mobile and lost tracker saga

simonmills86 · 13 December 2011 at 12:36AM

Hey guys, first post on here so go easy on me hey.

To cut a long story short, in April this year I was having no ends of trouble with the phone that I had taken out a contract with previously. I'd basically reached the end of my tether with this phone so rang up 3 mobile to cancel it. In the meantime I decided to order a new phone, on 3 mobile and did so online. When I rang to cancel the contract I was offered the choice to cancel the contract and accrue the £300 or so early cancellation penalty (no chance) or take out a new tarriff on a more favourable phone with the cancellation fee reduced and added on to the new contract. (About £10 a month extra)

So now I had two phones arriving and ofcourse decided to send one back. But it looks like what I did is send back the wrong phone to the wrong department. (The online returns dept. looks like it might be a different place to the dept. that deals with over the phone sales)

I didn't realise this until this week (8 months down the line) when I checked my bank statement and noticed £20.00 had gone out of my account this month. This was the amount I would have paid on the contract of the phone I sent back and I had unknowingly been paying it since May (the date of the first bill).

I then rang 3 mobile this week and they verified that I had two accounts with them and they acknowledged that the one account should have been cancelled as it was returned.

I recieved a phone call from them today specifying that they couldn't find the phone and didnt know where it was sent to. They then asked if I had proof of the recorded/special delivery (I cant quite remember which) of when I returned the phone to them. With this being April and my account skills being well, questionable, I no longer have it. I have since moved to Uni so my room at home has undergone a bit of a clean up and almost certaintly the Royal Mail proof of delivery would be long gone by now.

Do I have a leg to stand on?
Do Royal Mail/The Post Office keep records of delivery tracking numbers, and if they do what is the likeliness that they'd be kept for 8 months?

As a student I cannot pay £20 a month for a phone I don't use. I would also like the £160 returned that I have already paid for a phone I don't use.

As I said my accounting skills aren't great, you should always keep proof of purchase/delivery whatever but I argue that anyone would keep a slip of paper for 8 months especially since there had been no reason to suspect the phone hadn't reached its destination.

Now I'm at a bit of a crossroads what to do. Obviously I'm holding out for a refund because to my knowledge the phone was returned safely and to the right place. I can also see that if they simply did not receive the phone for whatever reason, it would be a bit much to ask them to refund me for a phone that I could quite possibly be using myself or have sold on for a hefty profit (i.e. fraud)

Cheers for listening guys. I could really do with this money and any help or advice would be much appreciated.

Si