Disputing charges on a bill?

k8eh89

Hi there,

Just looking for a bit of advice please?

I have 2 mobile contracts with t-mobile:
YouFix £26 a month (my personal mobile)
Pay Monthly £35 a month (a contract I took out as a gift for my partners bday in Nov 11)

Basically, my contract is restricted meaning I can't go over my allowance - but this wasn't available with the phone i got my partner so his isn't.

In January we went to the US for my birthday. As most people do now, we wanted to upload pictures to facebook for our family and friends to see - wary of how much this would cost and not understanding the data allowances/charges we went to the store for advice.

I explained what we wanted to use it for and the assistant said 'it costs £7.50 per gb, which should be more than enough for what you need it for - just make sure roamings switched off when you're not using it'

We literally logged in for a couple of minutes a day max and kept the roaming off and the phone in flight mod for the rest of the time.

We came back to a £400 - not quite the additional £7.50 I was expecting!

After much disputing with t-mobile and lots of phonecalls - they said they would reduce the charges to £160. I am still unhappy to pay - I specifically asked for advice because the information t-mobile provided made no sense to me - yes they had info on charges, but I wanted to know how much internet time that gets you and so forth.

Im not disputing the usage, but as I'm sure you would all agree - if you were aware facebook a couple of times a day for a week would cost you £400 you would leave your phone at home.

They've now cut off BOTH my phones, despite me paying the contracts up to date, the charges outside my allowance (excl. roaming) and the £7.50 i was advised.
Can they do this? My youfix contract is fully paid and up to date with nothing to do with the dispute.

I'm not being unreasonable and expecting something for nothing - but I genuinely wouldn't have used it if I didn't have the advice from the store '£7.50 will be more than enough for what you want it for'

Do I have a leg to stand on? I have the assistants name and store.

Many thanks in advance.

spiro

The first question has got to be - which phone has your partner got?
It is quite possible that during those 'couple of minutes' that the phone downloaded updates etc for all of your apps, emails etc etc.
The £7.50 is NOT per Gb (1 million) but Mb (1 thousand). My Samsung Galaxy S2 takes pictures that are about 2Mb each so thats £15.00 per photo. At £7.50 per Mb, £400 equates to 53Mb or about 25 pictures depending on the depending on how high resolution the camera is.

smartphone

As far as I'm aware, networks will generally suspend accounts that go over a certain amount, essentially to prevent the debt building up. It's possible that it's taken a while for your payment to go through, but worth checking with T-Mobile to find out why you've been cut off. It's more than likely that the customer services rep you spoke to is in a different department to that responsible for suspending the service.

And for me the store rep gave bad advice - I would have suggested using WiFi in the hotel which would have been free. But then that wouldn't have made T-Mobile any money (cynical view I know).

thegoodman

Not paying on time will cause other problems such as red mark on the credit file. Harder to get credit latet