Help! Stepsons mobile bill > £4500

powerful_Rogue

You didnt say how old your step son was, but im guessing he's probably under 18 otherwise would have his own contract.

Seem to be too many people happy to allow their under age children to have mobile phone contracts. You wouldnt just give them a credit card and pin and allow them to use it as they wish.

Children under 18 should only have PAYG unless the person that signed the contract is willing to accept full responsibilty of all costs incurred.

wantmemoney

powerful_Rogue wrote:

Seem to be too many people happy to allow their under age children to have mobile phone contracts. You wouldnt just give them a credit card and pin and allow them to use it as they wish.

Children under 18 should only have PAYG unless the person that signed the contract is willing to accept full responsibilty of all costs incurred.

all very interesting apart from one minor point

most of the reported cases of ridiculously high bills from mystery data charges and stolen phones etc while abroad don't particularly mention it's a problem affecting children.

useless_git_requires_wife

Guys_Dad wrote: »

I do wish your "advice" had some element of fact in it rather than ill-informed armchair warrior opinion.

I don't disagree that the bill is extortionate, but advising the OP to simply not pay is very bad advice and your assertion that nothing worse than a black mark on the credit record is simply incorrect.

See:-
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3566555

http://www.debthelpuk.co.uk/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1242530875
http://www.legalbeagles.info/forums/showthread.php?36137-bryan-carter-solicitors

None of those examples involve Orange.

As I said before, it is very unlikely that anything other than a bad credit rating would be the result of non-payment of the bill in this case. My opinion is not armchair-based.....it's based on considerable experience in the area of debt recovery in this country. The idea that any large amount should be paid just because a big company says so is ridiculous. At what point would you refuse to pay such a bill?......£16,000......£106,000?

If a debt is unreasonable then I would choose not to pay and I would fight back. Only my opinion.

Glad to see that Orange decided to be reasonable in this case.

mynameisdave

grumbler wrote: »

I cannot imagine that bill doesn't give a breakdown for the data used in UK and abroad.

Its a mobile phone company we are taling about, its probably only broken down if you pay the £2 for itemised billing!



The price they are charging is utterly staggering. Don't see how they can justify charging such amounts.

To OP. Can't offer any qualatative help but hope you can get away with the retrospective £175 for 500mb.

grumbler

mynameisdave wrote: »

Its a mobile phone company we are taling about, its probably only broken down if you pay the £2 for itemised billing!

They charge £2 for paper billing, not for itemised.

The price they are charging is utterly staggering. Don't see how they can justify charging such amounts.

They just charge without justifying.

mynameisdave

shockedandstunned wrote: »

o2 do the same as vodafone and apply an international cap outside of the EU.

I would suspect, that in time other companies will end up doing this due to public pressure - but we shall see on that one!

Had a good resolution from Orange though, I don't think that they have been unreasonable. They are applying the databundle. Unfortunately step son has used so much it's in excess of their highest bundle so there is extra for us to pay. Plus there's another £1600 unbilled yet so they are applying another data bundle to next months bill. So total cost to us will be around £600 which is a vast improvement on what would have been nearly £6000 in total.

Didnt realise there were more pages till my last post was quoted. Very good news. Still think they are making a good wedge on it but its a much better result for you!