MSE News: £100 cap announced for mobile phone theft victims

Former_MSE_Paloma

Mobile phone users will be protected from massive bills when their handsets are stolen, the government has announced ...

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'£100 cap announced for mobile phone theft victims'




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gjchester

And who exactly will pay for the shortfall, won't be the company or shareholders losing out overall.

No doubt prices will rise somewhere, so the people who can manage to put a PIN code on a phone / sim and use it will see their bills go up.

KTF

"consumers who often already overpay for contracts that don't suit their needs."

Are the providers now responsible for consumers who are too lazy to check that their plan suits their needs now as well?

Do people really need spoon feeding for everything these days.

mobilejunkie

According to a few people on here who regularly pop up with the same old problems, they do. The cost to the rest of us doesn't matter as long as we protect those who don't bother to protect themselves.

VT82

KTF wrote: »

"consumers who often already overpay for contracts that don't suit their needs."

Are the providers now responsible for consumers who are too lazy to check that their plan suits their needs now as well?

I interpreted that as 'consumers who have an expensive contract, but can't get a signal at home, and hence it doesn't suit their needs', as opposed to 'consumers who have an expensive contract because they can't work out how many minutes they'll need'. I'm obviously a glass half full kinda guy :rotfl:

JimmyTheWig

gjchester wrote: »

And who exactly will pay for the shortfall, won't be the company or shareholders losing out overall.

No doubt prices will rise somewhere, so the people who can manage to put a PIN code on a phone / sim and use it will see their bills go up.

How much does a phonecall actually cost a telecoms company, though? Not much, I'm guessing, so the £100 would probably cover it.
And it's not lost profit, as the phone wouldn't have been used for that amount if it hadn't been stolen.

boatman

It doesn't cost the mobile networks anything, its not a physical product like fuel.. £100 for nothing is money for old rope..

rdpeat

"£100 cap announced for mobile phone theft victims"
And about time too. Almost all mobile phone companies in the UK have been dragging their heels on this for 2 years. You still have to report the theft within 24 hours to be limited to £100 and remember to make sure the phone company keeps the record of your report, which was the crucial problem for the Welsh teacher in Barcelona last year.
I'd like to see optional user-set maximum limits on monthly expenditure as well, a maximum time for providers to repay phone account credit (once the fraudulent bill has been resolved - as applies to other public utilities providers) and credit card style account use monitoring for suspicious activities before I would consider going back to a sim-only or phone contract. The risk is too high.
A pin on your phone alone won't stop the thief from using your sim in another phone. You need a pin on the sim to stop that.
The amount of money you can lose, either from the theft of your phone or hacking of your online phone account, is not dependent on whether you have over-bought on your mobile contract. In any case, people frequently enter into over-generous contracts in order to finance a new phone.
The shortfall - or loss to the phone company - of theft or fraud is only a fraction of the bill to the end customer, and in many cases, e.g. thieves' premium numbers, the phone company will refuse to pay the premium service provider because a fraud has been committed. Yet they continue to charge the victim, knowing that a crime has been committed and thus profiting from that crime themselves. Is it any surprise it's taken them 2 years to get this far?
Take note those to whom it has not happened yet - there is no room for complacency in looking after your phone, online account and in your dealings with mobile phone companies, even with the £100 theft limit and a made-to-measure phone contract.

mobilejunkie

rdpeat wrote: »

A pin on your phone alone won't stop the thief from using your sim in another phone. You need a pin on the sim to stop that.

Take note those to whom it has not happened yet - there is no room for complacency in looking after your phone.

Which is why the first thing I do with every new contract is put a new code on and lock sim. It's not rocket science.

VT82

mobilejunkie wrote: »

Which is why the first thing I do with every new contract is put a new code on and lock sim. It's not rocket science.

Saying that something to do with protecting your mobile phone, that one would only need to do once in a blue moon, is 'not rocket science', does not quite have the same effect coming from someone who is a self-proclaimed 'mobilejunkie'.

mobilejunkie

Maybe people who don't bother with it also don't lock their cars and then complain about everyone else when they get stolen. Or perhaps that's rocket science.