T-Mobile ruined my credit rating

Chriswright96

Hello,

I had a T-mobile broadband USB dongle on a monthly rolling contract.

When I tried to cancel the contract, I was unable to contact the cancellation team for 2 weeks. I was trying daily, and was kept on hold for over an hour each time. It was about 3 days into trying to contact them, that I told the general Customer Services team that I just want it cancelled, and told them that I was going to cancel the direct debit, and to just cancel it! They couldn't even offer me a call-back, and insisted that they have no way of communicating with the cancellation team. When I did finally get to the cancellation team, they assured me that it had now been cancelled, but that I owed them the extra months bill. I argued the point that I had been trying to contact them previously, and had it been cancelled then, I would not have to pay the extra months bill. Fortunately, they accepted, and agreed that I do not owe them any money.

It gets a little interesting now ...

A month later I receive a letter from a debt collection agency asking for £27 for T-mobile.
I phoned them up, told them what happened, and they happily agreed that I should not have to pay T-mobile £27, and that they would contact T-mobile to clear the debt.
5 months down the line, I was trying to get Finance for a car, but it was declined. Curious as to why I was rejected, I got my credit report from Equifax, and to my surprise, I found a big red stamp saying '5 payments missed', and my credit score had dropped my at least 50%.
Furious, I called T-mobile cancellation team (Only on hold for 45 minutes this time) and asked them what was going on. They then insisted that I owed them this money even after explaining everything that happened. Even though I did not want to pay the bill, as this would imply that I was in the wrong, I had to because I wanted to get my credit report fixed quickly.
I did finally get my finance for my car, at a slightly higher interest rate. And I have contacted Equifax requesting to get my credit file sorted.

Now I have a few questions about this ...

1. How can mobile phone companies have so much effect on your credit report, especially when it's not really 'Credit' you are paying for a service.
2. Will I be able to get compensated from T-mobile for them ruining my credit history, and causing me to have to pay higher interest rates?
3. Because I payed the outstanding balance, can that be used as an argument that I was in the wrong?
4. Who would win a fight between a 'Cheese and Bacon Panini' and a 'Mexican Taco' (I know it's not to do with this topic, but me and my mate have been arguing about it for some time now).

Any help would be great
Chris

DUTR

The customer gives 30 days cancellation notice, just cancelling the DD is not the way as you have discovered.

gjchester

Chriswright96 wrote: »

Fortunately, they accepted, and agreed that I do not owe them any money.

Did you get anything in writing that gave the actual date of the termination or the fact they were giving you a rebate due to not being able to contact them (letter or email?) Verbal contracts are as valid as written ones but proving it 5 months later is a lot harder when neither side will recall the specific conversation exactly.

I suspect the rebate was a goodwill gesture, but may not have been recorded on the computers, and again proving it would be hard.

Chriswright96 wrote: »

I did finally get my finance for my car, at a slightly higher interest rate. And I have contacted Equifax requesting to get my credit file sorted.

Equifax will not change your record like that, the credit record is simply a matter of your payment history, T-Mobile can request the record is changed but not you.

Chriswright96 wrote: »

1. How can mobile phone companies have so much effect on your credit report, especially when it's not really 'Credit' you are paying for a service.
2. Will I be able to get compensated from T-mobile for them ruining my credit history, and causing me to have to pay higher interest rates?

It all hinges on if you owed money after cancelling. Typically rolling contracts have a 30 day notice period, if you said I want to cancel in 30 days and I'm giving that 30 days notice now then that's usual it, you've given the required notice.
If you said I want to cancel now, then you'll usually have to pay a months rental in leiu of notice.
Can you remember the exact conversation?

If you gave notice then the credit record is probably wrong and you can get TM to correct the record, could you get compensation, maybe but you'd probably have to show it's incompetence on TM's part.

On the other hand if you didn't give notice then you do owe another months notice and the record is right, you owed a fee but never paid it.

Chriswright96 wrote: »

3. Because I payed the outstanding balance, can that be used as an argument that I was in the wrong?

Not really, by paying the outstanding balance you may have acknowledged the debt, as I said your credit history is just a record of payment, you have not paid that debt for 5 months so its an accurate record.

Chriswright96 wrote: »

4. Who would win a fight between a 'Cheese and Bacon Panini' and a 'Mexican Taco' (I know it's not to do with this topic, but me and my mate have been arguing about it for some time now).

Can't help I'm a vegetarian...

Chriswright96

Hello again,

Thanks for the replies,

Unfortunately I did not get anything in writing ... But at the time, I didn't think problems like this would arise. In the future, I'll be sure to get everything in writing ...

I can see that I did do some things wrong, such as cancel the DD, and should have just waited for T-Mobile to cancel it ...

But overall, I still firmly believe that I have been screwed over by T-Mobile, and that they will just throw small-print and company policies at me, even though I believed at the time of cancelling, that everything was sorted.

Vegetarian? That makes an interesting twist ... Who would you bring into the fight?

DrNoGoodnamesleft

‘Phone companies seem pretty keen on punishing you if you leave them. I had a similar problem with O2 several years back, but didn’t discover it until six months after the event when, for the first time in my life, I had a credit card application rejected.

After getting nowhere with ‘customer services’, I wrote to the chief executive and (eventually) got a result.

Chriswright96

Thanks for your input

I'll probably try contact someone high up in T-Mobile to get a result

I've also found someone else on here who has recently posted a similar problem with T-Mobile, so they must know it goes on regularly ...

gjchester

Chriswright96 wrote: »

Thanks for your input

I'll probably try contact someone high up in T-Mobile to get a result

Recent reports here say anyone "high up" will simply reject your post telling you to contact customer services instead.

Guys_Dad

Leaving a network? Always ask for a PAC code and use it. There is no dispute then as to whether or not they actually processed your notice.

Keep a PAYG sim to t/f your old number to if you don't want to keep it.

I know this might not apply with a dongle, but this situation arises too often on here.