Uninsured Phone Stolen...

jayne.doe

I am looking for some advice and would appreciate any offered. Briefly my daughter is away at Uni and has had her phone stolen. She is with T Moblie on their Flexi Net Option. The contract is in my name and i pay the bill each month.

The students who stole it run up in one night ... 480 pounds .... 550 with VAT. Now T Mobile have told her they will not give her any money off because the phone was un-insured. However it was they who blocked it off and not my daughter. What i cant understand is when they saw the usage go sky high why they didnt block it sooner. She has had the phone 12 mths and has NEVER used that amount.

My husband is going to ring them any advice would be appreciated. Please the obvious of always insure your phone goes without saying now...:o I am sick with the worry where she is going to find the money as she is a poverty stricken student, and while we are willing to help out, we cant afford to pay it all. Plus which a life lesson has to be taught my daughter lives in a world where frogs turn into princes at a kiss.......:)

marleyboy

If she knows who it is that stole the phone, what would normally happen in an insurance case would be that the insurance pay the bill and extract it from the person who stole it via the courts. As it is not insured, unfortunatley, someone is going to have to pay the bill, in this case, if she knows who stole it, she would have to take them to a court to get the money back that she has had to pay.

If not knowing the culprit, I would at the very least, get a statement and try and work out whom it was via the numbers they have called. I am pretty sure that the phone company themselves, depending on how long she has had the phone, could see a pattern in the calls she would and wouldnt normally have taken.

As a company though, they are not legally obliged to do this, and in their case, dont care who pays the bill, so long as it gets paid. But morally!.

Dont give up fighting for at least some kind of reimbursement, but be prepared to have to fork out paying for the bill. I think its a crying shame, and my heart goes out to you over it, I hope you manage to find some sort of a solution to this matter, furthermore I hope the perpetrator is caught, charged and publicly humiliated.

robellett

When (if) you get her another, check to see what £calling limits you could put on the account. If it's happened once, the network may be more co-operative.

Otherwise, it's the same as if anyone had used your home telephone or other utility services whilst you were absent. The charges stand.

The mobile companies don't seem to be very good at supporting customers from what I've heard from others in a similar situation. They also don't like to divulge much about how their user-monitoring systems work, as this would help fraudsters work around it.

Good luck! Rob

g33za

this is where having a PIN activated on the handset comes in use. Although not completely full proof it can in some cases save you from excessive call usage.

jayne.doe

Thanks guys found out the calls were to Ghana, yes a foreign student, it seems according to the guy at T Mobile this is a regular occurence. They obviously decided to ring home at 12pm through to 7am at our cost.

T Mobile will do nothing. Our beef withT MObile is at what point / and who decided 480 pounds was enough that it needed to be locked? No-one will tell us? Anyway morally i thought they might have given us a 100 pounds off but no..... My daughter will be on Pay as You Go in future. We have another 6months to go on this contract.... Needless to say we shant be using T Mobile again, although in all honesty i think they would have all been the same.

I obviously will inform Warwick Campus Security of what has happend because i dont think its the first and it certainly wont be the last. Again thankyou so much for all your help.

mroller

you should file a complaint with the police. They might be able to find out who was called.

jayne.doe

thankyou again yet still marvelous suggestions. I intend to call the police absolutely it must have been a foreign student from Ghana. My concern is this dosent seem to be out of the ordinary. So even if they do not catch the thief if they could have a "chat" to the foreign students to let them know what has happend. I do not want to tar everyone with the same brush as this thief, but I would hate another student to go through what my daughter has. I am so angry with whoever did it, my daughter was sobbing on the phone to my husband. It is inconceivable to me how anyone could do this.

SenorGroucho

I think Virgins sim only deal can have a call limit.
IIRC our £10 a month contract is set to £50 (or £100) call limit over the inclusive minutes.

justpaper

jayne.doe - get the family plan on Vodaphone, 5quid a month and u can call 4 numbers anytime of the day for how long u want,.and they 4 numbers can call each other for free aswell,. so only 1 person is paying the 5quid a month,. they could be pay as u go or contract numbers ,..read in to it, on the voda site.

Alfie_E

jayne.doe wrote: »

T Mobile will do nothing. Our beef withT MObile is at what point / and who decided 480 pounds was enough that it needed to be locked? No-one will tell us? Anyway morally i thought they might have given us a 100 pounds off but no.....

This contentious issue goes back a long way. See When your phone thief rings up a huge bill and Justice at last for victim of mobile phone thieves. Unless something has changed since then, we’re still in the position of not knowing whether anyone is legally liable and if so, to what amount.

If you’re someone who doesn’t mind a fight with a company, stand your ground and refuse to pay. They will then put a dirty black mark on your credit file(s), which you’ll then have to force them to remove. You’d be arguing that, as the amount is in dispute, T-Mobile can’t sidestep the need to go to court by abusing your credit files.

Also, any references by T-Mobile to “oh, you didn’t have our insurance” may well be a red herring. Mobile phone insurance very often doesn’t cover charges racked up by unauthorised use.

jayne.doe

I have just had a word with my husband Alfie and i agree with you the contract is in my name and i am willing to get a bad credit rating. We are after half the bill being knocked off but we would accept 100 pounds, just some recognition that my daughter is a victim and not the culprit.

Yes even the VAT man has won on this we are being charged 70 pounds so the bill is 480 adding up to the 550:(