EE want deposit AFTER sending me a phone

l0uise

I applied for a contract phone with EE about 10 days ago. Free phone, £36 a month for calls etc. I then received an email from them after a couple of days saying my phone was on its way. The phone arrived the next day but I only used it on wifi for the first few days. Saturday I received my first bill through email. It showed a due amount of £286 to be taken on the 24th. After looking at my bill online it appears they want a deposit of £250. Although it doesn't state this on the bill there's nothing else I think it could be as I have since tried to make calls but can't. I am going to phone them but where do I stand with this? I would have said no thanks to the contract if I had been told I would need to pay such a large deposit but they have not mentioned this at all in any emails they have sent. They just sent the phone. I guess I would be prepared to pay a few months in advance but I am not going to pay £250 for them to hold onto for goodness knows how long. Thanks for any help.

carrieparkinson

hiya , dont panic... ring them up and tell them to remove international calling and roaming options from your account. that will remove the £250 charge. you can readd for free in a few months time.

l0uise

Thanks very much, I'll do that. Looking at the EE forums just now this seems to be happening to a few others too.

carrieparkinson

happy to help.

chattychappy

Wow... this reminds me of when Orange first started (1995 I think?). I ordered a phone for my company and then a couple of weeks into usage they demanded a £400 deposit. I phoned them up and they wouldn't budge. Later, when I phoned about something else, an operator said they had a lot of unhappy customers as they were demanding deposits off every limited company. There was some speculation in the media they were using this extra cash flow to expand the network. We only got the deposit back when the contract expired and we threatened to leave.

thatsean

This must be down to the merging of systems, as this has gone on with Tmobile for years.

DUTR

chattychappy wrote: »

Wow... this reminds me of when Orange first started (1995 I think?). I ordered a phone for my company and then a couple of weeks into usage they demanded a £400 deposit. I phoned them up and they wouldn't budge. Later, when I phoned about something else, an operator said they had a lot of unhappy customers as they were demanding deposits off every limited company. There was some speculation in the media they were using this extra cash flow to expand the network. We only got the deposit back when the contract expired and we threatened to leave.

28th April 1994 they started, I was one of the 1st customers, my account number was less than 1100, the deposits came back after 6 months though I recall.

chattychappy

Ah thanks. I originally had a "Rabbit" phone! When they turned it off, they offered me the option of going with their new GSM network (later named Orange) on the same tariff when launched.

In the end one2one (now T-Mobile/EE) launched first so I got that for myself. So it was a while before I got the Orange phone for my company. I've been with T-Mobile personally ever since.Almost 20 years, but I wouldn't call myself loyal.

I recall Rabbit had more base stations than customers. I got mine from Currys when it launched. A few weeks later I returned to buy one for my girlfriend. I asked the bloke how many they'd already sold - he said "we originally had 5 in, we've got 4 left".

d123

thatsean wrote: »

This must be down to the merging of systems, as this has gone on with Tmobile for years.

Didn't happen at T-Mobile "for years", if it is happening now its a fairly recent thing, when i worked there the policy was to advise the dealer of a roaming deposit before connection or remove roaming before activating the account (IIRC the system wouldn't activate without the deposit paid or the removal of the facility).

Sounds a lot more like the way the Orange system used to work.