Tesco mobile bill - son racked up huge debt accidentally

[Deleted User]

Get him a pay & go mobile.

Most mobile companies would not have written off any of the charges.

A typical 14 year old would have probably just ignored the warning text aswell at the end of the day they are children who do not really understand the financial implications of over using a mobile phone.

Ask them if you can pay it up they usually let you do this over 6 months.

Dxxx

grumbler

Deleted_User wrote: »

A typical 14 year old would have probably just ignored the warning text aswell

I have to disagree. This depends on the 14 y.o. and ultimately on their parents.

Ask them if you can pay it up they usually let you do this over 6 months.

And this is usually reported correspondingly to the CRA(s).

custardy

grumbler wrote: »

I have to disagree. This depends on the 14 y.o. and ultimately on their parents.

maybe,but then its the parents call and their lookout if the massve bill comes in

gjchester

copa_feela wrote: »

That is their problem, not the service provider's - and Tesco have publicised their capped contracts a great deal, it is not like they are an insider secret.

I didn't say otherwise, but as it's never been a problem they may not have considered the need for it.

wacko911

Tesco apply a 4x your monthly cap to all 30 days contracts (thats why the phone stopped) so if your contract was £10 a month they should have cut you off at £40 but didnt. Instead they allowed your son to rack up a huge bill. I think tesco are at fault as that is how they advertise the contract.

Plus your son is prob watching a lot of !!!!!! videos on the internet, check his internet history on the phone or if its been cleared then he def is.

gjchester

copa_feela wrote: »

And how does that help the OP now?

It doesn't any more than the people who have said the OP needed a capped contract and why had they not done one.

Quite simply they didn't exist when the contract started and was not considered. The OP probablly has capped it now, but theres no need to take them to task for something they may not have had the option of a year ago.

grumbler

copa_feela wrote: »

And how does that help the OP now?

What are you after?! He was in fact defending the OP and merely answered to the rhetoric (=pointless in this context) question asked in the previous post:

thegoodman wrote: »

What I cant understand is Tesco offer PAYG and fix (capped) planes. Sou why go for one which is open plan?

gjchester wrote: »

The OP has said the plans were over a year old, prior toa few months ago only a few tarriffs were capped.

MissKeith

I've had a sudden thought about this, be careful about pushing Tesco too hard to write off more of the bill. There have been accounts on here where the OP has been that forceful that the service provider took all offers off the table and forced them to pay the entire bill. There's no harm in trying and I'm not saying that you are anything as obnoxious as the poster to which I'm referring but it's definitely something to bear in mind, especially as full responsibility to this mess falls on yourself.

grumbler

wacko911 wrote: »

Tesco apply a 4x your monthly cap to all 30 days contracts (thats why the phone stopped) so if your contract was £10 a month they should have cut you off at £40 but didnt. Instead they allowed your son to rack up a huge bill. I think tesco are at fault as that is how they advertise the contract.

Could you post a quote proving this? Normally for uncapped contracts providers reserve the right to cut, not promise to do this. This cap is normally in place to protect the provider, not the customer, unlike for capped contracts.

aquarian3

Well I certainly didn't expect there to be so many replies to my original post and I'd like to answer those of you who took the time to reply, one by one:

Grumbler: yes, my son didn't understand what the text meant, that is what I said. I'm not sure what you didn't understand about that - I admitted that he was admitting to not understanding a message along the lines of 'you are close to your usage'.

I think by asking if he has my credit card I can only assume you are being childish? (we only have debit cards anyway).

At the time we took out the sims (as has already been mentioned by a poster without an attitude & with some intelligence) Tesco didn't offer capped contracts and I didn't know our phones weren't capped until my phone call to Tesco, I assumed £10 per month meant £10 per month and no more.

It was only due to my son being ill in bed for 2 days that he managed to rack up his usage - this to me was unusual behaviour on our account and I'm surprised Tesco highlighted this only by sending a text to the sim in question - had the phone been stolen without our knowing, a bill could've occurred by the thief phoning abroad, how would a text message have helped in this situation? Yet if Tesco had a policy of sending the same message to the account holder, then a stop could've been put on the phone a number of different ways (ie by blocking the phone if stolen or by taking it away if misused).

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Slugger: THANK YOU, for being one of the only people on here to be nice about my situation and your absolutely right in saying that if someone isn't going to be helpful in their reply, perhaps they should just read it and move on!

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MissKeith: As I've already told Grumbler (an apt name by the way), I didn't know the sim's weren't capped and had I been told they weren't would have made sure at least his was.

I also didn't know that he didn't understand fully the implications of what wifi and 3g meant (one is free and one isn't) and thought that he did. Unfortunately, when dealing with teenagers one can say something again and again but fail to make oneself clear, add to the mix aspergers and you have a teenager who can sometimes take days for something to sink in!

Trust me - my husband has aspergers and even he was annoyed and couldn't understand how our son didn't get that wifi indoors was free and should be used at all times, with 3g being used outdoors as it's not free. As you didn't have anything helpful to say, perhaps you should heed Sluggers advice?

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Guys Dad: Thank you for your suggestion of getting a capped contract for my son, I will be changing this over today to a 12 month contract which I know is capped!

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Gabbyevs: It's a little harsh to say that I gave 'someone a phone who isn't capable of understanding things', he understands a lot of things thank you. The wording 'unlimited usage' was unfortunately taken literally - which is common with aspergers.

As for your comment on someone getting 'irrated by phone calls' as I said to the nice Tesco man, I would much prefer a warning phone call to the 'account holder' than a big bill because I was unaware my son was watching youtube in bed whilst ill and not using our wifi. Maybe you would get irrated by a phone call, but then faced with a bill of over £200 how irrated would you really be?

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Custardy: Well you certainly read my post wrong then didn't you - because if you had I was merely asking for advice on the current situation, not for Tesco to 'take my parental responsibilities' which I'm frankly astounded you came to that very wrong conclusion!

You also missed my bit about "I thanked the man over and over again for wiping part of the bill off because I know he didn't have to" and I wonder if you have shares in Tesco for your ridiculous comment that "I owe it to them".

It's people like you that give these forums a bad name, people post on here for HELP, because the majority offer good helpful advice, but it's the like of people like you who can't read very well and get the wrong end of the stick that you then use to beat folk with. Maybe you should also take Sluggers advice?

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Thegoodman: I'm really not sure why you commented at all? The only thing I can say is; I didn't know our sim's weren't capped and at the time we weren't offered capped sim's.

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Gjchester: Phew - someone with intellegence THANK YOU for being the only person to read that our sim's are over a year old and therefore weren't capped! Had I known back then that they weren't capped I would have definitely put something in place for the sim given to my son.

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Dolly Rocker: I'm not going down the P&G route but thank you for your comment anyway I'm going for a fixed 12 month 'capped' sim instead. I shall ask Tesco if they'll let me pay it over a time period because that's all we can really afford right now, so thank you again

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Wacko911: Your post was the most interesting, - where did you see this 4x monthly cap information? The only thing about your reply that I found offensive was that my son was 'prob watching !!!!!!'. My son is addicted to an online game called League of Legends and to get his 'fix' he was watching youtube video's to do with the game because he was stuck in bed!

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The upshot is that some of you have clearly been of help and for your comments and suggestions I sincerely THANK YOU, but it does saddern me that there are some people who have nothing better to do with their time than to leave a nasty or unhelpful comment on a forum that is there to 'help' people in their time of need.

The fact that we can't afford to pay a massive bill & that this was clearly a one off and had never been done before in over a year having these sims means nothing to those who have been negative, some of you have acted as though the money is owed to you or that you are being wronged in some way - Tesco is a massive company that by putting a simple procedure in place could have helped us out by alerting the account holder! I really don't think this is asking them to take away my parental responsibilities! Especially as I have said my son was in the wrong!

It's negative nasty people that make those in need think twice about posting and asking for help on forums like this and it's a shame there's no rule that 'if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all' in other words; read it, don't post and move on!