Tmobile price increase

RandomCurve

I also sent his to the media and consumer groups last night (copied in Ofcom, CISAS and Ed Vaizeye). Please feel free to use/amend and also send to the media etc.


Dear Media/Consumer organisations,

I copied you into an email on 10th May which was addressed to Ofcom, I‘m not sure if ofcom copied you into its response, but I shall not waste your time with it as it tells us nothing and dodges every question.

I will be sending Ofcom a follow-up letter tomorrow.

There is definitely something not right with what has been happening with the latest T-Mobile price rise. T-Mobile are definitely in breach of their contract terms, but Ofcom and OFT both appear to be powerless, and CISAS (who are an INDEPENDENT adjudicator appointed by Ofcom) have also been “leant on/bullied” by T-Mobile into rejecting cases from consumers. The following two emails – both from CISAS (but not addressed to me) - demonstrate how CISAS independently accepted cases from consumers, but before the cases were heard TM “leant” on CISAS who have now decided that they cannot accept cases against T-Mobile. If you read the paragraph highlighted in red below from email 2 you will see that basically CISAS (with ofcoms agreement as they are appointed by Ofcom) will not consider if T-Mobile have breached its own T&Cs because if it has that would have been a business decision and CISAS cannot consider business decisions. Now I would have thought that EVERYTHING a company does is a business decision (it can’t, by definition, be anything else), so basically CISAS can look at nothing! As investigative journalists/ consumer champions maybe you could help me in uncovering this hornets’ nest.

Regards


X

CISAS email 1 (My bold and underlining)

Dear X

Thank you for your email.

However, we have had to put this matter on hold as the company have objected to your claim being dealt with by CISAS. The company’s objection has been escalated higher within CISAS and T-Mobile.
We will revert back to you as soon as we have an update.
Kind regards

Jordan Yates
Case Administrator
Telephone: 0207 520 3827

CISAS
International Dispute Resolution Centre
70 Fleet Street
London
EC4Y 1EU


CISAS Email 2 (my bold and underlining)

Further to the acceptance of your application in the above case, the company has objected to your application being dealt with by CISAS. We referred this matter to a CISAS adjudicator who stated the following:

'This case should be withdrawn. The increase in RPI is a business decision which CISAS cannot consider. Further, CISAS cannot consider whether there has been a breach of contract as asserted, as this cannot be reviewed without also examining the price increase. The issues cannot be separated therefore the claim is outside the scope of the scheme.'

Unfortunately we will be unable to help you in this matter as your complaint concerns business decision taken by the company you are complaining about. Business decisions fall outside the scope of our scheme and we have no power to deal with a complaint of this nature.

In light of the above we have no option to withdraw your claim from adjudication.

We suggest you contact your local Citizen's Advice Bureau who may be able to advise you how to pursue your complaint further.

We are sorry we cannot be of further assistance on this occasion.

Chimper

I wonder why some complaints to CISAS are being delayed/objected to. I've just heard that mine's been accepted

RandomCurve

Chimper wrote: »

I wonder why some complaints to CISAS are being delayed/objected to. I've just heard that mine's been accepted

That is good news - lets hope you don't get a second email as per "email 2" in my post above.

Would you mind copying and pasting into the forum the basis of your claim (removing any personal data) so that we can gauge an approach to take? Or would posting be "identifying" in itself?

daveuk1

I must confess to having lost the will to live before reading properly the content of all the posts since my last visit, so excuse me if I've missed anything important, but a couple of clarifications seem in order:

1. "Fair" is no more objective a term than "reasonable". They are both a subjective standard that are supposed to be used objectively. In other words, an excuse for a court to use its discretion to reach the verdict that it desires, or deems fair/reasonable, in the view of an "ordinary person".

2. There is a common and oft-repeated misconception here that clause 7.2.3.3 requires customers to immediate notice of cancellation. It does not. The clause actually requires customers to give notice of immediate cancellation. The subtle but important difference here is that the latter makes some semblance of sense in this situation (where the relevant RPI is not yet known) whereas the former does not. Obviously, you can't give immediate notice, when you receive the price increase notification, if you don't know the relevant RPI but you can give notice to cancel immediately upon finding out the relevant RPI. So, in this case, customers would not have been able to exercise their right, if any such right existed, to give notice of cancellation under 7.2.3.3 until 16 April even though the notice was sent out at the beginning of April. This is clearly a stupid situation but not one that necessarily places T-Mobile in breach of contract.

Chimper

RandomCurve wrote: »

That is good news - lets hope you don't get a second email as per "email 2" in my post above.

Would you mind copying and pasting into the forum the basis of your claim (removing any personal data) so that we can gauge an approach to take? Or would posting be "identifying" in itself?

My claim does include a lot of "personal experience" so probably would be identifiable.

I'll keep a look out for a second email, but if it does arrive then I'll have to ask why the claim was accepted after the adjudicator decided that it was a business decision.

gjchester

RandomCurve wrote: »

My thoughts on SCC were to claim for all payments (not just the increased amount) made since I requested termination. If I win T-M will have to pay them - plus expenses and then can:

1. Continue to take future payments - in which case we have a monthly appointment at the SCC -which will cost T-M as I will need to take time of work (unpaid) and possibly stay in a hotel overnight to attend court; or
2. Can give me a penalty free cancellation.

I would be happy either way!

My understanding (and I suspect Guys Dad as well) is you cannot claim for a future payment that has not yet happened.

You could, as you suggest, do this monthly but you can only claim for the pence difference each time.

Claiming costs is both straightforward and not so in the small claim track. If you really must be in the court (and many cases are decided without anyone representing either side) you can claim reasonable travel and loss of earnings, ( you may be asked to prove such losses to the court), but you can't claim solicitors costs. You may want to check with a local court what would be permitted before starting out on this track.

It's also possible the judge may refuse you costs, or dismiss your case entirely if they think you are being frivolous. Given a claim will cost £25 and up if a judge disallows your costs or dismisses your case you could be further out of pocket than the rise alone.

And yes I appreciate the money not the only issue, just pointing out the course of action you suggest is not without some risk.

RandomCurve

daveuk1 wrote: »

I must confess to having lost the will to live before reading properly the content of all the posts since my last visit, so excuse me if I've missed anything important, but a couple of clarifications seem in order:

1. "Fair" is no more objective a term than "reasonable". They are both a subjective standard that are supposed to be used objectively. In other words, an excuse for a court to use its discretion to reach the verdict that it desires, or deems fair/reasonable, in the view of an "ordinary person".

2. There is a common and oft-repeated misconception here that clause 7.2.3.3 requires customers to immediate notice of cancellation. It does not. The clause actually requires customers to give notice of immediate cancellation. The subtle but important difference here is that the latter makes some semblance of sense in this situation (where the relevant RPI is not yet known) whereas the former does not. Obviously, you can't give immediate notice, when you receive the price increase notification, if you don't know the relevant RPI but you can give notice to cancel immediately upon finding out the relevant RPI. So, in this case, customers would not have been able to exercise their right, if any such right existed, to give notice of cancellation under 7.2.3.3 until 16 April even though the notice was sent out at the beginning of April. This is clearly a stupid situation but not one that necessarily places T-Mobile in breach of contract.

Sage and grounded as ever - thanks.

Would the above situation not put TM into a position where it has not given 30 days notice? And If it does not, then I would have thought that the distinction you made of "notice of immediate termination" further strengthens the argument that whilst the T&Cs may be legally correct they are unintelligible to us ordinary folk and therefore unfair?

daveuk1

RandomCurve wrote: »

Sage and grounded as ever - thanks.

Would the above situation not put TM into a position where it has not given 30 days notice? And If it does not, then I would have thought that the distinction you made of "notice of immediate termination" further strengthens the argument that whilst the T&Cs may be legally correct they are unintelligible to us ordinary folk and therefore unfair?

In my opinion, I'm afraid not, in either case. That you can't exercise cancellation rights until 3 weeks prior to the increase coming into effect doesn't mean they haven't given 30 days' notice.

As to whether it's unfair, my view is that the terms are both fair and intelligible in and of themselves. The confusion arises because TM's actions are confusing in conjunction with those terms. But I don't think that makes them unfair or unintelligible, just a bit confusing. They're obviously at least not completely unintelligible because some people worked out, correctly, that March's RPI figure might be a problem before it was released.

Now, you might say that's a minor and irrelevant distinction or that the consumer bodies should interpret the overall picture in favour of the consumer but it's just my opinion. But asking them to find that T-Mobile's contract terms are unfair is a high bar with significant implications and I think there are, at best, too many holes in the argument for it to succeed.

Guys_Dad

gjchester wrote: »

My understanding (and I suspect Guys Dad as well) is you cannot claim for a future payment that has not yet happened.

This was my point. And I agree going to the SCC monthly for pennies could either be a tactical master stroke or it could be thrown out, as you say.

The alternative is to cancel without penalty, use your PAC code to move to another network and sue for the cancellation fee, once you have paid.

That would stand a better chance of being treated seriously in court.

But cancelling a DD is not to be advised, as I am sure most people would agree with me.

RandomCurve

Guys_Dad wrote: »

This was my point. And I agree going to the SCC monthly for pennies could either be a tactical master stroke or it could be thrown out, as you say.

The alternative is to cancel without penalty, use your PAC code to move to another network and sue for the cancellation fee, once you have paid.

That would stand a better chance of being treated seriously in court.

But cancelling a DD is not to be advised, as I am sure most people would agree with me.

I agree that cancelling a DD is potentially a bad move due to credit history implications. I also agree that paying for the PAC and then taking TM to court is probably the only way this issue is going to get resolved, but that means customers have to pay out the termination upfront, and that is NOT what my contract says.

What in effect is happening is that T&Cs only apply to the customer and not the company, and that in itself is fundamentally unfair. I'm not fighting this because of the money, I'm fighting this to highlight (in my opinion) how corrupt businesses (it is not just EE or the mobile phone companies) have become and how complicit (by design or accident) regulators/government organisations (ofcom, OFT trading standards etc) are in this scandal.

Will it get me anywhere - probably not, but now I have scratched the surface and seen what is, in my opinion a level of corruptness (and I don't use that term lightly) I thought could not exist in the UK, I need to keep digging until I find out just how deep (high?) the corruption goes - Everyone should have a hobby!!!