Tmobile price increase

Lifes_Grand_Plan

I am leaning towards agreeing with Anna above, not forgetting the great help of you other guys ofcourse.

if I get my Pac and use it now, I can't afford to pay off my contract, so surely better to take it to cisas and let them decide?!?!

daveuk1

Anna is quite right. I'm afraid at the moment that it's just rank bad advice to use a PAC code issued without confirmation of penalty-free termination, especially if you are on the pre-Oct terms. You will likely end up with a CCJ and/or ruined credit record if you do this.

FWIW, I'm not surprised by their argument that it was not practical to use March RPI re post-Oct terms - but I'd be stunned if they get away with that argument. It has holes all over it, as has been pointed out by Anna and RandomCurve. If I was post-Oct, I'd be reasonably confident of succeeding with CISAS, providing it's argued correctly.

Lifes_Grand_Plan

@daveuk1 or anyone else...

What is the difference between the pre and post October terms please?

RandomCurve

Lifes Grand Plan.

See post #566 for T&Cs - Version 59 is Post Oct 2012 (1st Nov onwards), and Version 58 is Pre Oct 2012.

Please also see my posts #569-571 and 577. Please do the emails as suggested in post #570

Ash_McCloud

Hello guys, been following this thread with interest. I started a 24 month contract with T-Mobile in September 2011. Recently the phone's been playing up in all manner of ways, not charging, turning itself on and off, generally seemed like it was on it's way out. It was a HTC Wildfire S, and they have crap internal memory so I couldn't get many apps onto it either. (I had an SD Card in it, but not all apps can be moved to the SD Card :mad: )

So I'd phoned T-Mobile and asked them to waive the early upgrade fee, due to their breach of contract. They refused, but did make a note of my intention to cancel on account of what I saw to be a breach of contract without paying the early termination fee.

Anyhow, I went to phones4u, they offered to pay the early termination fee of £70, and I started a new contract. When I phoned T-Mobile to pay them the early termination fee (I phoned from phones4u store!) they offered to waive the early termination fee because I've been such a good customer *rollseyes* but I told them I'd given them the opportunity to do this, and they'd turned me down.

So if anyone fancies getting out of their contract without having to go to war with T-Mobile it might be worth popping down to phones4u, I think it's done at the manager's discretion so don't go in expecting a good result! They paid me £70 in cash, and I phoned and paid off T-Mobile using my debit card, so have a bit of cash in the bank if you can.

And to all those taking on T-Mobile, I wish you the very best of luck. And I sincerely hope to be seeing a good outcome for you all :beer:

anna2007

My latest complaint to Ofcom - I have to say, given the urgency of customers having to give notice by 9 May, if they ignore this one... can't help feeling that each time I post my response, I'm giving EE the heads up, but at the end of the day - THEY ARE WRONG - please don't forget that fact. Sincerely hope you'll all keep fighting... you ALL know who's right on this one - stand up for your rights for once - you have good grounds

Dear xxxxxx,

I have received a further email from EE, this time from the TM Legal Team, stating that they would like to further clarify their position. However, they have instead stated a completely different position in relation to my most recent contract, now claiming that the price increase was based on the RPI rate published on 12 February. Presumably, their Legal Team has now realised that EE are, in fact, in breach of contract for the latest agreements, by claiming to have used the April RPI rate, when the contract terms refer to the RPI rate published before written notice is sent.

This latest position obviously contradicts all previous correspondence from EE, which refers to the RPI rate published on 16 April. Further, in their email of 22 April, the Executive Office Represenative, responding on behalf of Mr Swantee :wave:, made his "final position" very clear, referring to the RPI rate published in April, and stating "Unfortunately our position will remain unchanged on this matter".

Either there has been a complete breakdown in communication between the Executive Office and their Legal Team, or this is yet another blatant attempt by EE to lie their way out of their legal obligations to their customers; I am assuming that the latter is the case and as such, I am quite frankly shocked and appalled that EE is willing to treat its customers with such contempt. The way in which the Executive Office (and their Legal Team) is attempting to deceive customers is highly unethical, completely lacking in transparency, and I would even question the xxxxlity of what the company is attempting to do. I would respectfully request that Ofcom intervenes as a matter of urgency; EE is clearly only acting in its own interest, with a complete disregard of its customers' contractual rights.

You will be aware that my complaint is now with CISAS, and that my application was accepted on the basis of EE's email of 22 April, confirming its final position. I therefore do not consider this latest change of position to have any relevance to my case; however I would like to comment on the Legal Team's claim that the relevant RPI rate is now the one published on 12 February, of 3.3%.

I do not accept the statement in this latest email that it was not practically possible for them to use the RPI rate of 3.2%, pubished on 19 March, when written notices were sent from 2 April. This gave T-Mobile a clear 8 working days, excluding weekends and the Easter bank holidays, in which to start getting the letters sent out. In comparison, for last year's price increase, T-Mobile used the RPI rate of 3.7%, published by the ONS on 20 March 2012. T-Mobile customers started receiving written notices on 28 March, therefore T-Mobile must have started to send these out on Friday 23 March, only 3 working days after the RPI rate was published. This clearly demonstrates that T-Mobile had a reasonable period of time between 19 March and 2 April 2013, to update the written notice with the most recently published RPI rate of 3.2%. Whilst I appreciate that there may have been changes to T-Mobile's staffing levels since last year's increase, if the price increase notification process was properly managed by EE, I would contend that there is absolutely no justification in implementing the current increase, for using the RPI rate published on 12 February.

Regarding my other contract, where the older terms apply, you will see that the TM Legal Team is maintaining EE's stance that the relevant RPI rate is 3.3%, published on 16 April. As previously stated, I find their claim to be referring to an unpublished RPI rate on 6 April completely ludicrous. EE's claim that the relevant RPI rate is an unpublished one is nonsense, as it makes it impossible for customers to know whether they have a right to cancel, and effectively renders the clause completely meaningless. The intention of the clause is obviously to protect the customer against excessive price rises, and common sense dictates that the RPI rate referred to in the clause must be one that is known to the customer. EE's interpretation of the clause effectively removes that protection, as the customer is left in the position of not knowing whether the increase is above RPI or not. The clause also provides for the contract to be immediately cancelled, therefore as I gave notice to cancel on 6 April (followed up by me in writing, which was received by T-Mobile on 9 April) an RPI rate published on 16 April obviously has no relevance whatsoever to my cancellation.

The TM Legal Team have further stated "We were confident (based on our detailed analysis of RPI figures) that the March figure would be 3.3% and therefore took a small commercial risk to inform our customers of this figure shortly before it was released publicly". In my talks with the Office of National Statistics (ONS), they have confirmed that even the ONS staff involved in compiling the statistics have no knowledge of what the RPI rate will be, until approximately 3 days before publication.

I therefore strongly refute T-Mobile's claim that they have taken "a small commercial risk" in taking what is no more than a 'best guess' at what the RPI rate would be. If the rate had been above 3.3%, T-Mobile could have potentially lost its entire customer base affected by the price increase (around 2 million customers?), and this is therefore an extremely risky business decision for the EE board to have taken. These Directors have a common law duty to the company and its shareholders to exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence in carrying out their duties, and this latest statement raises serious questions regarding whether they are meeting their legal obligations in taking such a risky business decision.

I don't know whether these legal obligations of EE's Directors is an area within the remit of Ofcom's role as regulator, but I feel it would be prudent for the following issues to be raised with the auditors of EE's accounts and properly investigated:

The audited accounts are based on EE being a going concern; it is doubtful that the auditor would have signed off the financial accounts if EE was taking such a risky business decision. As the price rise announcement was made to the media on 1 March, it is reasonable to assume that the auditors would have been aware of the Board's proposed actions.

EE's annual accounts contain a section on risk and how it is managed (for example interest rate risk, foreign currency risk, etc), to assure investors of the good stewardship of the company. However, there is no mention of the significant risk the board was taking in predicting the RPI rate in relation to the price increase.

There is nothing in the auditor's report regarding post balance sheet events, alerting investors to the risk being taken.

As there is a possibility that EE may try a stock market flotation later this year, potential investors need to be made aware of EE's attitude to risk.

The Legal Team also state that they made this best guess of the RPI rate shortly before it was released publicly, when in fact the 3.3% increase was announced by EE on 1 March, some 47 days before the the RPI rate was published on 16 April. If the experts at the ONS do not know what the RPI rate will be until a few days before publication (and I am most certain that the ONS staff's analysis of the data will be far more stringent than any analysis by EE), I do not believe that EE would be in a position to accurately predict the RPI rate so far in advance. I would also question how EE could possibly have all the relevant data to hand in order to make an accurate prediction of the RPI rate? I do not know the workings of the calculation of RPI, but presumably if this covers the period up to 31 March 2013, it would be impossible to have the relevant data available on 1 March when the increase was announced.

As an aside, the very idea that T-Mobile would be referring to the January RPI rate for the later contracts, and the March RPI for the earlier contracts is, in my opinion, absurd. It is important to highlight the fact that the written notice specifically refers to the "current" RPI rate of 3.3%: on 6 April when the written notice was received, neither the January RPI, nor the March RPI, can be considered "current". The 3.3% increase for Orange customers was, of course, made at the same time as the one for T-Mobile customers - further proof that the rate referred to was the one released in February.

Given T-Mobile's claim to have based their price increase on a Government statistic that had yet to be published, the ONS are now aware of this, and their CPI/RPI team is currently investigating the matter.

Finally, I wish to give my view on the Legal Team's apology for refusing to refer cases to CISAS. I note that there is no acknowledgement by EE of the fact that customers have been making valid requests for a deadlock letter, on the grounds of breach of contract, and that these requests have been refused by EE, on the basis that the price increase was a business decision and therefore not within the remit of CISAS. EE have clearly been using the excuse that a business decision is not within the remit of CISAS, whilst blatantly ignoring the fact that customers' requests for deadlock were being made on the grounds of breach of contract terms. I have attached details of emails sent to other T-Mobile customers, as recently as two hours before I received this apology, where the customers have been declined valid requests for a deadlock letter. I am sure that you can appreciate that this apology appears rather insincere, in light of the additional information provided.

The apology also infers that it was EE/T-Mobile's Customers Services staff that made the mistake of refusing valid requests for 'deadlock': from my own experience, and that of the other examples detailed in the attachment (and no doubt countless others), customers are being refused their valid requests to go to deadlock, by EE's Executive Office, on behalf of Mr Swantee. As these refusals have come from the top of the organisation, there is really no excuse for EE's obvious attempts to obstruct the adjudication process, and I would hope that Ofcom intervenes quickly regarding EE's clear breach of your own regulations.

I wish to apologise for the extent of this email and my complaint, but I hope this at least proves how much of my own time I have had to waste on the matter, at the expense of my own personal life and priorities (from a personal perspective, I have 3 young children who are wondering where their Mum has been for the last few weeks - to me personally, there is no financial amount that can recompense that time lost with my children). If T-Mobile were complying with their own terms and conditions, this all could have been resolved in a five minute phone call to T-Mobile's Customer Services, in line with the terms and conditions (clause 7.2.2).

I sincerely hope that, as the regulator of this company, you can raise these issues with EE, with a view to ensuring that customers' cancellation rights are being honoured. Needless to say, these customers have until 9 May to give notice to cancel under the terms of the contract; if Ofcom were to decide that EE have acted in any way inappropriately or dishonestly in their actions relating to cancellation of contracts, the only proper recompense would be for all of these customers to be given the opportunity to cancel their contracts without penalty.

I will forward this email on to the TM Legal Department, and Mr Swantee :wave:, but wish to make it clear that this is for their own information, and I would reiterate that their latest position has no bearing on my own case to CISAS.

I look forward to an update on the action that Ofcom will be taking with regards to the issues I have raised.

Kindest Regards,

anna2007

)

Ash_McCloud wrote: »

Hello guys, been following this thread with interest. I started a 24 month contract with T-Mobile in September 2011. Recently the phone's been playing up in all manner of ways, not charging, turning itself on and off, generally seemed like it was on it's way out. It was a HTC Wildfire S, and they have crap internal memory so I couldn't get many apps onto it either. (I had an SD Card in it, but not all apps can be moved to the SD Card :mad: )

So I'd phoned T-Mobile and asked them to waive the early upgrade fee, due to their breach of contract. They refused, but did make a note of my intention to cancel on account of what I saw to be a breach of contract without paying the early termination fee.

Anyhow, I went to phones4u, they offered to pay the early termination fee of £70, and I started a new contract. When I phoned T-Mobile to pay them the early termination fee (I phoned from phones4u store!) they offered to waive the early termination fee because I've been such a good customer *rollseyes* but I told them I'd given them the opportunity to do this, and they'd turned me down.

So if anyone fancies getting out of their contract without having to go to war with T-Mobile it might be worth popping down to phones4u, I think it's done at the manager's discretion so don't go in expecting a good result! They paid me £70 in cash, and I phoned and paid off T-Mobile using my debit card, so have a bit of cash in the bank if you can.

And to all those taking on T-Mobile, I wish you the very best of luck. And I sincerely hope to be seeing a good outcome for you all :beer:

The ultimate outcome for TM (hopefully) is that customers are going to leave them in droves - that's payback in itself I suppose:) As long as you stick to it - I feel strongly enough about it, I said today, if it was a choice between EE/TM/Orange for free, or another provider (or NO provider), I'll take the other option every time. And I'm a girl of my word...

RandomCurve

Anna2007 - what a brilliant letter - absolutely first class. :T

We have 20,000 21,425 (another thousand added just TODAY), customers watching this forum and there are many posts on here that clearly show that several people have invested a lot of time in challenging T-Mobiles ridiculous statements, contacting the regulators, widening the debate to ONS and trying to get some media interested. All of you 20,000 need to support the hard work that has gone into this as it will benefit you ALL. Post #577 shows you haw you can WIN this case EVEN IF YOU LOSE!!! and post #571 shows POST Oct 2012 customers how to defeat T-Mobile ALL FREE OF CHARGE!!! It takes time and effort to research these things, but thanks to others efforts you don't need to spend those hours researching - the LEAST YOU CAN DO is send ONE EMAIL (cost to you ZERO) with a multiple Distribution as per post #570 - Do it now and show your support. (And thanks to those that already have, but we need MORE)

Just look at Anna2007 post again:

"I wish to apologise for the extent of this email and my complaint, but I hope this at least proves how much of my own time I have had to waste on the matter, at the expense of my own personal life and priorities (from a personal perspective, I have 3 young children who are wondering where their Mum has been for the last few weeks - to me personally, there is no financial amount that can recompense that time lost with my children). "

Come on guys show some support.

Netwizard

I got the 3.3% letter as well, but binned it. I'm on a £6 a month contract until December, which if i have worked it out right means an increase of 19p a month or £1.52 until the end of my contract.

I think i can afford them since I had 12 months free use out of them last year! I'll just cancel my contract come renewal.

shedder101

RandomCurve wrote: »

Distribution List:
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[EMAIL="home@guardian.co.uk"]home@guardian.co.uk[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="which@which.co.uk"]which@which.co.uk[/EMAIL]
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[EMAIL="eevenrandomcurve@gmail.com"]eevenrandomcurve@gmail.com[/EMAIL]
[EMAIL="Watchdog@bbc.co.uk"]Watchdog@bbc.co.uk[/EMAIL]

Title: Retraction email

Dear sir,

You published an article on or around 1st March reporting that Orange and TMobile (EE) were increasing the monthly price on supposedly fixed contracts by 3.3%. You stated in that article that customers had no choice but to either pay the increased charge OR to pay a cancellation fee to cancel the contract. Subsequent events now mean that that story if FACTUALLY INCORRECT as TMobile customers whose contracts started on or after 1st November CAN I believe terminate their contract WITHOUT PENALTY due to a mis timing on the part of TMobile.

As thousands of TMobile customers may not be taking advantage of their right to cancel without penalty due to your article I think it is vital that you IMMEDIATELY (before 9 May as this is the last day customer can cancel) publish either a correction or an updated story in order to not have misled your readers into not exercising their contractual rights.

In addition customers on contracts starting before the 1st November 2012 MAY also be able to exit their contracts without penalty due to some procedural irregularities, whilst I do not believe it correct to state that these customers CAN exit without penalty, they should be made aware of the potential possibility in order that they can request termination for TMobile using the wrong RPI rate, thus protecting their termination rights should TMOBILE subsequently prove to be in Breach.

I understand you have received a similar email to the above from [EMAIL="EEvenrandomcurve@gmail.com"]EEvenrandomcurve@gmail.com[/EMAIL] with contact details should your reporters need to discuss details or require evidence that has come direct from the EE Executive office.
You should also be aware that two internet reporting sites have started to break this story:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2264454/tmobile-allegedly-breaches-its-cancellation-policy
and
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04..._price_change/

Regards

all sent

got any more you need doing