Mobile phone charge

Elegantstorm

I renewed my 16 old son's mobile phone contract at the end of Oct’13. From t-mobile it went to EE with a new Blackberry Q10 phone. All inclusive mins and txts with a 750 MB data (with a cut-off point after 750 MB allowance was reached) £36/month. That was a reassurance for me of no sudden higher charges. Last night, just short of a month after he got it, my son's phone stopped making calls and customer services informed us there was a charge and payment needed to be made to enable making calls again. The charge was £1321.05. They explained it was a charge by a gaming company (FBBRY - whose online association is with miniclip). whose online games (otherwise free to play- iceage village;minion rush) have charged different amounts for acquiring small packs and boosters within those games. My son was 16 at the time and stated he thought they were free and that it was a virtual charge and not real money. Customer services informed me that there should have been a charge displayed before acquiring those booster packs. Some of the charges are:Opossum Pack - £11.50 - 5 of these packs at a total of £57.50 were charged within 9 minutes in the same day; 6 of the same packs were charged at total of £69 within less than 1.5 hrs; a pack called Truckload at £11.50 were charged four times in 2 consecutive days; a 'bigger boost' pack at the same £11.50 was charged 8 times in the same day (£92) within 2 hr period and there are a variety of smaller charges £7.50, £5, £3.50. £1.50, as well as one of the highest charge of £14 for 'Mountain of T' pack. It looked to me, the gaming company has not put any limit to the charge they were making on my account and have allowed my son to escalate it to £1321.05. At no point have they displayed any notification of the danger of it spiraling out of control. EE Customer services explained that, perhaps due to my good credit rating, the gaming company has not put a cut-off point of the charge until it had reached the above amount. Spoke to my bank who said cancelling my DD would affect my credit rating so may be to chase the gaming Co. T-mob, who were the previous provider, stated i could make an indemnity claim from my bank, then chase this company to waive part, if not the whole charge. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Regards
E

Silk

Considering your experiances with your Son's phone charges last year I would have thought you would have learned that kids and contract phones don't mix

Earthworm

Bear in mind how good 16 year olds are with technology and how clear your phone makes it when buying in-app purchases. It seems a little odd your son thought it was "virtual". The in-app purchases allow you to buy virtual currency within the game (e.g. Coins, Doughnuts etc) so the thought of using virtual British currency to buy virtual in-game currency sounds unrealistic. As previously said he didn't learn his lesson at 15 PAYG would be better for him.

Herongull

This is why you should never ever allow a children or teen to have unsupervised access to a contract phone.

albionrovers

My 2 teenagers do with no problems. Never, ever?

marlot

My friends with teenagers all use Tesco where the monthly charged can be capped.

Buzby

albionrovers wrote: »

My 2 teenagers do with no problems. Never, ever?

Yup.

Even if they are responsible, any loss or misuse by friends is your responsibility. Indeed, the service has no inappropriate content filters (for age) as it is correctly assumed a contract phone is in the hands of a responsible adult.

You are playing with fire!

Elegantstorm

Appreciate all comments and constructive criticism. I have don this already to myself. I am looking for information if there is any argument that can be in my favour in asking to reduce the charge if it is deemed unwaivable. As i mentioned in my post, indemnity claim has been suggested by the previous mob. phone company. Something along those lines. What options I can follow.

Many thanks

tomwakefield

If your son has done this before, and has done it again, it suggests that he doesn't really think about the consequences of his massive overspending since it doesn't affect his wallet (I'm not buying that he didn't realise he was buying things with real money, for the reasons Earthworm has stated).

My advice to reduce the charge (for yourself) is to tell your son he must pay at least some of it. Or alternatively pay all of it, but tell him that that's his birthday and Christmas presents bought until he's 30!

visidigi

I'd love to know how the gaming company knows your credit rating...sounds to me like T-Mob/EE are trying to pass the buck on the fact they maybe should have suspended your account sooner - if the user is billing £36 a month consistently then surely EE should have noticed the pattern, especially with it being a non-roaming charge (where the 'timing' of the charge becomes an excuse...)

p.s. Like the OP asks, can we stick to the question of the problem, not a personal assessment of his parenting skills?

MamaMoo_2

No. There's no "get out clause" or anything. You are responsible for the usage on that phone as the contract is in your name.
I don't buy for a second that your son didn't know what he was doing. For starters, in order to pay for purchases this way, you have to download BB App World, then go into the settings and enter payment information, which your son must have set to "carrier billing".
You also have to confirm each purchase you make.

Aside from that, he's 16 years old and presumably of at least average intelligence?
I have an 11 year old brother who knows that in-app purchases are made using real money.

Also, I'm not sure about BB, but I have Minion Rush on my phone and, well, I'm sure you can spot the warning.



I think your son's playing dumb in the hope you'll roll over and pay, whilst blaming everybody but him.

It's probably about time you either got your son a proper capped contract, or realised he's not trustworthy with credit.