Court Action Against Tmobile - I need advice

Presido

Buzby wrote: »

There is certainly no fraud here - and if you cannot see how the defender will point to your cavalier attitude and inability to query and seek any explanation for 9 months show a disregard for your finances. As others have noted, you are supposedly the injured party but did nothing to protect your interests by querying bills in a timely manner.

Contract law does not apply to your tariff - which is a separate issue and with different considerations.

If you decide to proceed - and I've no opinion as to whether you have a case - there are some things to consider. Your action, even if it has no merit, will cost you anything up to £100 to instigate. Whilst you will get this back if your claim is upheld, and you remember to ask for costs, you need to factor in your time to go to court which may take multiple days.

The flipside, is your action can be defended, and if you lose you then take the hit for the costs which is £100 you'll not see again. Then you can be sure (as loser) you will be required to pay the defenders (capped) costs at court, this could be up to £200, but be assured they will push for as much the court deems reasonable.

This is not a no-risk strategy. You could of course hope they decide not to defend/ignore your action - this will give you a default judgement, and probably save them more money than defending it. You spin the coin, and see where it falls.

If you are to give example of timely what would that be, please?

grumbler

Presido wrote: »

Thank you.
Please click on the second hyperlink (there are two hyperlinks there) on post#40 and go to page 15 to see the evidence that there was unlimited landline calls in the permanent monthly deal offered me.

After looking, I think that you have sufficient proofs.
I agree with brianposter that the fact that you failed to check the bills is irrelevant. It's the contract after all and T-mobile have to refund at least all the money they overcharged you with.

IMHO the Adjudicator's decision was unjust.

If £180+£250 is less than you were overcharged, personally I would sue T-mobile on principle regardless of the risk of losing more money.

I was given two offers:
1) Full price but on a permanent monthly deal.
2) 50% of the full price in item one but with 12 months deal.

I understand this this has nothing to do with the refund and refers to future of the contract. Personally, I'd vote with my feet regardless of any offers.

P.S. The fact (if you can prove it) that T-mobile originally denied that unlimited landline calls were included at all, proves that they have no idea what is going on in their company and dismisses their later statement that it was a 3-months' offer.

Buzby

Presido wrote: »

If you are to give example of timely what would that be, please?

In the cases I have seen going through court, the judges seemed to have slightly differing views, but were prepared to let it get to 6 months, another 9 but I never saw it more than this. The judge would invariably explain that the customer had an equal duty to check, as without this it could be pushed to 5 years, which (in his view) was unreasonable.

Presido

mobilejunkie wrote: »

It would be open to the judge to decide who's account and evidence is most believable. I've always felt this would be a 50:50 case and all the references to "fraud" might show the plaintiff to misunderstand basic principles and therefore to have misunderstood the original offer. It's quite possible an offer can include an extra allowance for a limited period - I had unlimited data for the first three months on a recent Vodafone contract, for example. Really, it seems to me that the OP hasn't followed basic groundrules for any on-line purchase i.e. printed out the offer they signed up to at the point of sale.

Personally, with only the evidence given I wouldn't take it to court despite the limited costs involved. However, the OP is on a crusade (evidenced by the vast amount of time they've already spent on this before even coming on here with the issue), so they may be willing to gamble.

When I go to court, it has to be a sure thing - and that is only the case when I have a clear and undeniable case (which is why most parties avoid getting that far when I use a LBA).

I was not able to download anything from their website at the time as TM said they were having technical work. Since February 2014 I have also not been able to download my TM bills. If you do please see if you can download your bills say for example December 2013.

But what I did at the time was to use the text message facility to get the details for record purpose. I provided this information to TM when they requested it. I really never wanted to go to court as you must have seen my response on post# 32 after the Adjudicator's decision but TM was not willing to be reasonable.

I am very pleased to read grumbler post #43.

Presido

Buzby wrote: »

In the cases I have seen going through court, the judges seemed to have slightly differing views, but were prepared to let it get to 6 months, another 9 but I never saw it more than this. The judge would invariably explain that the customer had an equal duty to check, as without this it could be pushed to 5 years, which (in his view) was unreasonable.

In my case I made it known to TM effectively four months afterwards and was assured that it would recalculated and refunded.

My understanding at the time was that I would continually be sent advance TEXT MESSAGE of the TOTAL AMOUNT to be taken from my Bank Account. This was only done in the first month (August 2011) of the contract.

mobilejunkie

Presido wrote: »

I was not able to download anything from their website at the time as TM said they were having technical work. Since February 2014 I have also not been able to download my TM bills. If you do please see if you can download your bills say for example December 2013.

But what I did at the time was to use the text message facility to get the details for record purpose. I provided this information to TM when they requested it. I really never wanted to go to court as you must have seen my response on post# 32 after the Adjudicator's decision but TM was not willing to be reasonable.

I am very pleased to read grumbler post #43.

I did see page 15 but had misconstrued exactly what happened.

Presumably August 11 was in the first nine months prior to them implementing the unlimited allowance and promising to recalculate the previously charged calls? Although I also presume you haven't got proof of that promise, the fact that they did subsequently provide the allowance and the text proof that it was in the contract from the start should be sufficient to win the case.

Assuming these presumptions are correct, I agree with Grumbler; I would sue. However, I would definitely STOP bandying around accusations of fraud and make sure you present the case effectively. There are things which will be used against you (not checking bills and letting it go on for a long time before raising the question, the adjudicator's decision), but with a sensible and reasonable response to these issues I do not believe they should defeat your case.

Given how much time and effort you've already put in, I think I would now sue. Give them one last LBA (and don't keep following this one up should they ignore it) and then proceed to making a legal claim. The costs of so doing are not huge in vew of the principle, the time already invested and the likelihood of success. There are no gurarantees, of course - but I think you do have a stronger case than I first thought. I will also admit that I'm not prepared to spend hours reading through it all and I think you need to make a succinct summary without the defamatory language.

Presido

grumbler wrote: »

After looking, I think that you have sufficient proofs.
I agree with brianposter that the fact that you failed to check the bills is irrelevant. It's the contract after all and T-mobile have to refund at least all the money they overcharged you with.

IMHO the Adjudicator's decision was unjust.

If £180+£250 is less than you were overcharged, personally I would sue T-mobile on principle regardless of the risk of losing more money.
I understand this this has nothing to do with the refund and refers to future of the contract. Personally, I'd vote with my feet regardless of any offers.

P.S. The fact (if you can prove it) that T-mobile originally denied that unlimited landline calls were included at all, proves that they have no idea what is going on in their company and dismisses their later statement that it was a 3-months' offer.

In response to the highlighted above I wish to kindly refer you to the following and please do let me know your suggestion:

If you click the hyperlink "submission to the Adjudicator" browse down to page 6 and page 11 you would see Tmobile responses on the issue. The relevant part of pages 6 and pages 11 are:

On page 6: "You were advised on 21 November that your bills are correct and there were no notes to suggest an unlimited Landline Booster should have been added to your account in 2011. However, this Booster was added in June 2012."

On page 11: "As advised during our call, there is no evidence that you were offered unlimited free calls to 01, 02 and 03 numbers"

Furthermore the following relevant extract was from Tmobile's Defence of my Claim to the Adjudicator:

"The Respondent acknowledges the attached documents and screen shots attached to the Claimant’s CISAS application regarding the Unlimited Landline Booster. However, as can be seen from the Bills, there was no Landline Booster applied to the Claimant’s account. It is unclear when this was requested by the Claimant as there is no record of it on the account and furthermore, why it was not applied to the Account. Nonetheless, the Respondent as the Claimant was issued with monthly bills each month, he would have been aware that there was a discrepancy, however, there are no records indicating that the Claimant contacted the Respondent to query and/or dispute this until May 2012. The Respondent submits that the Claimant could have mitigated his loss by contacting the Respondent sooner than May 2012 regarding the same."

Presido

I would need generous ideas as to drafting my case to the Court. I intend to make my application by post and NOT online so that I would need to fill in the Claim Form and the Particulars of Claim.

I would appreciate any relevant "template" to adapt and use to complete the Claim Form and Particulars of Claim so that my case is understood from the outset by the Court.

Anoneemoose

I know you have posted the screen shots of your account with the unlimited landline booster on there however, is it possible that this particular booster was a left over from your previous contract? I saw this happen before when I worked for Orange.

Not that I am saying you're wrong or mistaken but that could be how they see it and that is why it wasn't noted on your new contract.

Also, if the booster was a 'hangover' from your previous contract, don't know where you stand from a legal point point of view.

Presido

Anoneemoose wrote: »

I know you have posted the screen shots of your account with the unlimited landline booster on there however, is it possible that this particular booster was a left over from your previous contract? I saw this happen before when I worked for Orange.

Not that I am saying you're wrong or mistaken but that could be how they see it and that is why it wasn't noted on your new contract.

Also, if the booster was a 'hangover' from your previous contract, don't know where you stand from a legal point point of view.

I provided full details on my case on the hyperlink above. If you browse downward to pages 26-29 of the linked document you would see the basis of the previous contract. There was no Unlimited Landline Calls in the previous contract.

I accepted the new permanent one month rolling contract on 24 August 2011 and the application appeared made to the account on 25 August 2011 at 00:01 hours. So I made a screen short of it to show the adjustment.

The old contract was supposed to expire on 26 August 2011. So on 27 August 2011 when the new cycle ought to begin I took another screen shot to demonstrate the allowance included in the deal.

I was not able to download the first few months bill on the TM website at the time with my account details as they said they were resolving a technical problem. I was however reassured with the message received on my phone that I had a fantastic permanent deal comparable to the extremely old "1-2-1" tariff of unlimited calls.