Bt Bill for £5000

btbill

I commenced a new contract for a mobile phone with BT in December 2009. I had a new phone, HTC. When I received my first bill it was for over £200. I called BT who said I should go on an unlimited data usage package. The following month I received a bill exceeding £500. I again called BT and was told that there had been an error and that despite paying for the unlimited usage (£5/month) I had not been switched to it. Both amounts were refunded. The following month my bill was a respectable £35.00. Approximately 3 weeks later I received a call to say that my phone charges were exceeding £4000 because I had exceeded the data use. That month I received a bill for over £5000. I discussed with BT and they suggested that there may be a fault with the device itself. I called HTC who said that amount of usage (5,000,000kb) was impossible to get through in that period of time. I should stress that the only web use was the odd access to BBC news and sports pages (in the uk). I have been through all of BTs complaints procedures and to the Ombudsman who has told me that BT have offered a 50% reduction. I clearly don't want to pay it (my average bills since remain are in the region of £35). I have never received any evidence of how that amount of usage was used. What can I do now?

TimBear

5,000,000KB is onyl 4.77GB so it's not impossible although highly unlikely that you'd use so much, particularly if you say you're hardly using it.

Perhaps turn off all data options on your phone, and see what happens with the bill then? If you know for CERTAIN you haven't used ANY data and you still get a bill it's obviously a problem with BT's system.

Check there are no apps running in the background and that you shut them down fully when you no longer need them.

Crazy_Jamie

If BT have suggested to you that there may be a fault with the phone, why are they still pursuing you for the money?

DUTR

Crazy_Jamie wrote: »

If BT have suggested to you that there may be a fault with the phone, why are they still pursuing you for the money?

because they bill for the airtime used?

btbill

Perhaps turn off all data options on your phone, and see what happens with the bill then? If you know for CERTAIN you haven't used ANY data and you still get a bill it's obviously a problem with BT's system.

Check there are no apps running in the background and that you shut them down fully when you no longer need them.[/QUOTE]

All bills subsequent to this one were less than £40.

TimBear

That's not to say that there isn't a problem with their system though.

daleski75

Surely if the phone downloaded that much data in the background it would be very hot to the touch and the battery would die in no time at all?

Hope you get it sorted too.

DUTR

TimBear wrote: »

That's not to say that there isn't a problem with their system though.

That is true, however I strongly believe the OP is not using the handset to it's most efficient, I have posted in the past about a colleague that got a text from O2, suggesting he curb his data usage somewhat, he was already up to 11gb, yep 11gb, he too had a HTC, he had been using tvcatchup , but even after use, the device was using data, when we looked at the counter, it was incrementing there and then, autosync is a big culprit, however some have just gotta have the latest facebook and twitter updates etc.

btbill

This was early 2010. I didn't use (still don't) twitter/facebook. Never downloaded any tv programmes/videos onto phone. Just occasionally caught up with sport news on BBC webpages (not channel).I checked everything on phone and could not find a cause for usage.

DUTR

btbill wrote: »

This was early 2010. I didn't use (still don't) twitter/facebook. Never downloaded any tv programmes/videos onto phone. Just occasionally caught up with sport news on BBC webpages (not channel).I checked everything on phone and could not find a cause for usage.

And the settings on your phone are?.....
mine are background data ON
autosync OFF
roaming data OFF

JJ_Egan

daleski75 wrote: »

Surely if the phone downloaded that much data in the background it would be very hot to the touch and the battery would die in no time at all?

Hope you get it sorted too.

No as it downloads slowly .

Not saying its not a BT problem but 99>99% of users who post same sort of thread are simply downloading the data often in the background .
If its Android a lot of apps update frequently sync can take a lot of data .

As DATA is turned on as opposed to off until required its not hard to run up big bills .


jje