Large O2 Bill am I jiggered

impecunious

ritac1 wrote: »

I dont understand, what is the point of a £30 cap if they dont apply it?

Is there a different rule when abroad?

I had my daughters o2 account capped at £20 and when it reached that amount the sim card would be blocked.

I would have thought o2 have some explaining to do here.

I absolutely agree!! This is not your fault and neither is it your daughters. O2 have a website devoted to protect our children who use mobile phones. It basically says that they, as well as parents, have a responsibility in keeping children safe, including over spending.

http://protectourchildren.o2.co.uk/

I would quote this back at them and, if they still do nothing, tell them that you believe this is a story of public interest and will ringng up the press to ask if they will aid your cause. You sound a very sensible parent and you have obviously given it some previous thought, therefore you have fulfilled at least some of your obligations by enforcing a price cap. What more could you have done? When you phoned them to put the cap on, did they warn you that this doesn't work under certain circumstances? Of course not. I would happily pay the £30, but not a penny more, and also contact their complaints department - they have the authority to make widespread changes, whereas they cust rep will be very limited to what they can do.

http://service.o2.co.uk/IQ/SRVS/CGI-BIN/WEBCGI.EXE/,/?St=577,E=0000000001591291993,K=4747,Sxi=9,Case=obj(13668)

eljmayes

Quentin wrote: »

The problem is they don't get updated quickly when foreign networks get involved.

It's likely that in Spain the network is Telefonica- the company who owns O2, so really there is no excuse on there part. If you feel like O2 haven't acted in a proper manner in respect to the £30 cap- I would ring 0845 3300684 which is their consumer relations.

kekebash

Hi There

This is a really interesting story and I'd love to see how it pans out. I'm a journalism student and I'd be happy to write something with the hope of it being picked up by the press. Also give consideration to approaching Watchdog as I think they might be interested in picking this up!

espresso

kekebash wrote: »

Hi There

This is a really interesting story and I'd love to see how it pans out. I'm a journalism student and I'd be happy to write something with the hope of it being picked up by the press. Also give consideration to approaching Watchdog as I think they might be interested in picking this up!

Why? The customer has used the phone excessively in a foreign country! Call costs are clearly displayed on the O2 website here, so the high bill is simply due to ignorance, nothing more.

Surely people know that it costs more to make and receive calls in a foreign country! As already pointed out, they could have arranged for incoming calls to be free while in Spain, so it's a case of lessen learnt hopefully.

MercilessKiller

While studying forensics at University we learnt about the process of call charging from abroad.

Though telefonic own O2 it makes no difference. The 2 company's operating UK and Spain telephone network retrospectively contact each other like any other network abroad....

In a weird way a lot of the charges are due to borrowing Telefonica's line for your calls rather than the actual calls themselves. I'm no way defending O2 here don't get me wrong, but due to O2 being billed by Telefonica for line usage which takes time itself this could be why the £30 cap wasn't enforced, beccause at the time O2 didn't know it was that... etc..

I dont think there'd be a big watchdog situation about this...

out of interest did you research roaming charges first? Before I go away i'd always look into things like this to ensure that I dont get charged lots!

Quentin

eljmayes wrote: »

It's likely that in Spain the network is Telefonica- the company who owns O2, so really there is no excuse on there part.

No - there is no excuse on the part of a customer as the contract clearly states:

The Customer acknowledges that roaming calls may take longer to be billed than other types of calls.

There is no possibility that going on the offensive will get them to help out.

This situation is down to the customer, not o2.

chipbeck

Quentin wrote: »

No - there is no excuse fon the part of a customer as the contract clearly states:



There is no possibility that going on the offensive will get them to help out.

This situation is down to the customer, not o2.

I appreciate your points quentin and I have thanked you in this thread.

I must just leave you with one thought though, I think my girls are very luck to have me as a dad, if you get my drift.

Quentin

You're right!

(Though don't all Dads feel that way?) (I'd blame that boyfriend!!)

*************************************

I'd try the goodwill approach to o2, rather than going on the offensive - whatever the rights and wrongs, it wasn't them that ran up the bill.

patwa_2

This situation highlights a number of valid points:

1. You didn't say if your daughter knew or did not know about increased charges whilst abroad. A lot of people suspect higher charges to MAKE calls which is reasonable enough, but a large majority (especially those new to mobiles or who don't travel much) don't realise you're also charged to MAKE calls. In these cases there is no reason why they should worry about receiving calls abroad, as they wouldn't know they were being charged.

2. If the boyfriend knew she would be charged for his calls to her in Spain, well, that's real caring that is, not.

3. It's a fact of how the networks operate that there is a lag in calls being recorded that are made overseas. In this case, it's just damned unlucky that your daughter was only away for a week, but that she received so many inbound calls in that time. By the time O2 had the data, she was back in the UK and the cap exceeded. They're not going to not bill you because you did incur the charges, they did their job by applying the cap as soon as they could.

4. All of the networks do provide information on roaming and tariffs abroad, but this is usually either on their website or in the small print booklets which come with the phone and that are hard to read. One step in the right direction would be to send an info text about roaming to the customer when they join, also to point out the fact that travelling abroad will incur you costs for both receiving and making calls either over the phone when the order is placed or with a much more high profile flyer or something with the phone.

You can of course cancel the contract, but this is going to cost you an even bigger lump sum and probably won't actually make any positive difference to you in the long run. Does your daughter need the phone because she lives away from home (uni, etc) or is it just an emergency phone. If the latter you could always get her a pay-as-you-go SIM. If not, then just ask O2 to block international roaming. As long as the phone is unlocked, she'll still be able to use it abroad, but will need a different (cheaper) SIM.

As for paying off charges, if you can pay off the line rental part of the contract as normal, they are likely to be able to do a deal for you regarding paying off the bill in installments. Going through to cancellations may help here, they're desperate to keep customers so will probably offer you something with a financial package thrown in.

H.

System

I think the point that is being missed with recieving calls is that they are setup by O2 in the UK and forwarded to Spain. So their shouldn't be any billing delay with those calls, hence they SHOULD be covered by your £30 limit.

Calls made there would have to be billed by the Spanish network and sent on to O2 , but I would suspect that they exchange billing information in 24hours or less given the amount of traffic that UK roamers generate. When they got this information, it too would take her to the limit.

What they do with that billing data, is another question...

I would suggest you politely ask them to bill as My Europe, and if it works get daughter & b/f to pay for their calls.