Mobile Phone Contract - Price Rise Refunds

Marshall93

RandomCurve wrote: »

Below is the follow-up email to the original email posted at #99. PLEASE DO NOT use this email until it has been at LEAST 7 days, if you do you will jeopardise your chances of claiming compensation for bad customer service.

Don’t for get to change the red text to suit your dates/days/name.
And please tell everyone you know to send the first email if they have had the price rise notification.


The email addresses to use are:

[EMAIL="executive.office@ee.co.uk"]executive.office@ee.co.uk[/EMAIL];
[EMAIL="Olaf.Swantee@ee.co.uk"]Olaf.Swantee@ee.co.uk[/EMAIL]

Dear Mr Swante,

Further to my Email dated XXXX it is now X days since I sent that Email. I find the delay in responding falls way short of the customer service standards that it would be reasonable to expect on a matter that concerns my request for an IMMEDIATE penalty free termination, as per GC 9.6c and out contract.

I have reproduced my original email for you below. If I have not had a FULL response within 7 days (DATE) I will take it that EE are refusing to engage on this matter and that will be deemed to be that we have reached deadlock. I will then immediately proceed to bring a CISAS claim in regards to this matter

Regards



NAME

Original email:

Dear Mr Swantee,

Thank you for your letter of early April informing me of EEs intention to increase the price of my Fixed term Contract.

Please accept this letter as my notice to terminate my contract PENALTY FREE under Ofcom Regulation GC 9.6 as the increase is likely to be of Material Detriment to me. Please also provide me with a PAC so that I can take my number to another network.

Without Prejudice.
The term “likely to be of Material detriment” in the regulatory context can be determined by understanding why the term was introduced into GC 9.6 by OFTEL and retained by Ofcom, and by reference to the source European documentation for GC 9.6 which is the Universal Service Directive (USD) USD 20/(22) for which GC 9.6 is the UK enactment. It is clear that the intention of USD 20/(22) was to give the CONSUMER the choice to cancel their contract during a fixed period for ANY modification that is made which they do not accept as follows:

USD 2002/22/EC
Chapter IV – End User Agreements
Article 20 – Contracts
Paragraph 4

4. Subscribers shall have a right to withdraw from their contracts without penalty upon notice of proposed modifications in the contractual conditions. Subscribers shall be given adequate notice, not shorter than one month, ahead of any such modifications and shall be informed at the same time of their right to withdraw, without penalty, from such contracts, if they do not accept the new conditions.

Further Ofcom GC 9.6 supports the USD implementation as the term "likely to be of material detriment" was introduced because:

"Our intention was to reflect our general duties and principles of good administration and proportionality in particular. We sought, in light of these, not to rule out contract variations altogether. For example, those beneficial to, or having a neutral impact on, a subscriber.” (from Ofcom publication “ Price rises in fixed term contracts - Decision to issue Guidance on General Condition 9.6”, Published in October 2013”

As Ofcom's (and OFTEL before them) reasoning for introducing the term was to protect me - the consumer - from changes which are not to my benefit or at the very least are neutral then a price rise of any kind is clearly neither to by benefit, nor neutral, and are therefore likely to be of Material Detriment.

Without Prejudice
The price rise applied of 2.7% (RPI) is likely to be of material detriment to me as it is a REAL TERMS increase in the cost of my contract. The UK National Statistic for price inflation is the CPI (1.7% for February 2014 – published in March 2014) therefore any increase above this rate under GC 9.6 is likely to be of material detriment to me, as a real terms increase cannot be either to my benefit OR have a neutral impact. By using RPI rather than CPI the increase applied to my account is 58.8% higher than it would otherwise be.

RPI lost its designation as a National statistic in March 2013 as the calculation methodology does not meet with international calculation standards and has been replaced with CPI which is the statistical measure of inflation now used by Government.


Without Prejudice
In the Ofcom publication “ Price rises in fixed term contracts - Decision to issue Guidance on General Condition 9.6”, Published in October 2013. Ofcom defined “Likely to be of Material Detriment as follows:

Paragraph 6.22
“In particular, we consider guidance is needed as to price rises which we are likely to regard as materially detrimental (or likely to be materially detrimental) and invoking the requirements of GC9.6. Such price rises are likely to include any increase to core subscription prices.”

The above definition is to apply to contracts agreed to on or AFTER 23rd January 2014. However as EE updated its’ price variation clause effective 26th March 2014 (2 months after the date to which the definition applied) then this clause of the contract was effectively agreed to and signed up to post 23rd January and therefore as per the Ofcom guidance in regards to GC 9.6 the increase in core subscriptions price is likely to be of material detriment to me.

Without Prejudice
In the Ofcom publication “ Price rises in fixed term contracts - Decision to issue Guidance on General Condition 9.6”, Published in October 2013. Ofcom defined “Likely to be of Material Detriment as follows:

Paragraph 6.22
“In particular, we consider guidance is needed as to price rises which we are likely to regard as materially detrimental (or likely to be materially detrimental) and invoking the requirements of GC9.6. Such price rises are likely to include any increase to core subscription prices.”

And whilst Ofcom have announced that this will only apply to contracts entered into on or after 23rd January all Ofcom have actually done is clarify a definition. They have not changed the words of GC 9.6. As they have only clarified a definition then the definition must apply to all contracts as it cannot be a legally correct position that two contracts subject to the same regulation with exactly the same wording (GC 9.6) can have two different meanings.

I look forward to receiving my PAC (penalty free) with immediate effect. Should EE not consider this to be an appropriate action then please clearly articulate why this is not the case with reference to each of the points above. Any response which fails to address the specific points above would not be acceptable to me and will be used as evidence of EE’s lack of duty of care and poor customer service in any subsequent CISAS claim.

Hi RC!
Day SEVEN and I have just had a reply to my first email to them before I could send them the above quoted email. Here is what they said. I understand other people have had the same reply?

[FONT=&quot]"Thank you for your email,[/FONT] [FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I understand that you have experienced issues with the service received and would like to raise these concerns. To enable to me fully investigate these matters please provide your Mobile or account number. Once this information is received, you will be assigned a case manager who will contact you directly. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]EE Executive Office"[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Based on this, would it be right to just co-operate with them now or is there a specific course of action to ge the best result?[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot][/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Thank you so much for your help!
[/FONT]

Marshall93

Same here!
It seems as though they knew to at least reply within the 7 days so as not to make the issue worse but, is it just a trap they are lulling us into?

BananaPilot

As it is seven days since I sent my first email (thanks to RC for his template) I have sent the second template.

I added a quick paragraph about the fact they are increasing my contract above RPI. My contract is for £31 a month. They are increasing the charge by 2.7% of a £36 contract and then applying the £5 discount I have. I was not told at the time of taking out the contract that this is what they had done, just that for £31 I can get x mins, texts, and data.

"Inaddition I note that when I entered into my contract with EE it was for amonthly contract of £31.00. The proposed 95 pence increase of my contract represents a 3.1% increase, this is above the 2.7% increase in RPI. Thisfurther demonstrates that the increase is of material detriment to me."

dentralp

No email response - I have received a generic letter telling me there are price rises though


Moving to step 2

Martinmal1

Just sent my 1st letter for 2 accounts one only taken out on the 13th Jan

Will see how it goes

RandomCurve

ulaggy wrote: »

Hiya RandomCurve, just a quick question.

"as per GC 9.6c and out contract"

Should that read "of our contract" or "and our contract"? Just wanted to clarify if that was a typo. Don't want to give them any excuse to worm their way out of anything!

Edit:

I have had an email back from the Executive Office - for a minute I thought the follow up email had done the trick but then I remembered that that was still in drafts whilst I awaited clarification about the above sentence.

The response is as follows:

Thank you for your email,



I understand that you have experienced issues with the service received and would like to raise these concerns. To enable to me fully investigate these matters please provide your Mobile or account number. Once this information is received, you will be assigned a case manager who will contact you directly.



EE Executive Office

--

I've replied with simply "Hi There,
My mobile phone number is xxxxxxx.

Yours,

Xxxxxxx"

Thank you for highlighting the typo - it should say ouR not ouT.

Regarding the response you have had just reply with the original email and include your phone number, you wil thn need to wait 7 days again before reponding with the follow-up email.

RandomCurve

Marshall93 wrote: »

Hi RC!
Day SEVEN and I have just had a reply to my first email to them before I could send them the above quoted email. Here is what they said. I understand other people have had the same reply?

[FONT=&quot]"Thank you for your email,[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]I understand that you have experienced issues with the service received and would like to raise these concerns. To enable to me fully investigate these matters please provide your Mobile or account number. Once this information is received, you will be assigned a case manager who will contact you directly. [/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]EE Executive Office"[/FONT]


[FONT=&quot]Based on this, would it be right to just co-operate with them now or is there a specific course of action to ge the best result?[/FONT]


[FONT=&quot]Thank you so much for your help! [/FONT]

See post above

RandomCurve

There is ANOTHER reason why you can cancel your conttract penalty free if you are on T-Mobile PRE 30th October 2012 contract. In 2013 T-mobile messed up the timing of the price rise, and they managed to avoid a total wipe out by claiing that they had used the MArch RPI published in April. What this means is that as they are now using the FEBRUARY annual RPI, they are double counting last March figure and they shoudl have used 2.5% (as March - 1 year later) RPI has just ben published. Inother words they have just applieda 12 month inflation rate to an 11 month period!!! - Very naughty - Does anybody remember OFCOM and what it is supposed to do??????

I'll incorporste this argument into the response letters once EE repond to teh first "attack".

muse213

Anyone who got a reply from ee today and have given them their account number/phone number, can you let me know when they reply? Just want to see what they say

margarino

Thank you so much for posting this RC. Have just sent the email. Will post updates once I've heard back. Hopefully won't get that time wasting tactic of asking for mobile/account number as I put both numbers in both the body of the email and the subject line