Woke to find TalkTalk charged me £128 overnight!

dillydilly

Text arrives as I turn my phone on, saying my TalkTalk accounts suspended due to exceeding cap. Check account online to discover a £128 charge ! Turns out my son left his mobile on and an app trickled 1gb of data overnight vs the 600mb allowance. But - there's a £15 cap on the account to avoid this happening I say to the call centre rep ? Ahh no, she says, takes 48hrs to see this, you must pay... Can't be right surely ? This isn't streaming abroad, this is my son in Yorkshire leaving his phone on overnight... If it had been PAYG I'm sure it would have stopped straight away so their 48hr explanation seems weak

I can't be the only person this has happened to, if genuine please be warned that these caps are worthless, and if you have contracts set up for your family it can cost you dear

grumbler

dillydilly wrote: »

....But - there's a £15 cap on the account to avoid this happening...

I have never heard of TalkTalk offering hard caps. 'Soft' credit limits - possibly, but not caps.

Unless you have this 'cap' confirmed in writing, you are at their mercy.

AFAIK, only Tesco offer capping, possibly Three as well.

dillydilly

I suppose that's the issue - has the average consumer ever heard of a 'hard' cap as opposed to a 'soft' one ? these must be industry definitions ? fact is they sent me a text saying the account was suspended, which sounds to be a cap, something I asked for when I signed up as I did not want the risk of waking up to a £128 bill... if I had been on a PAYG deal I'm guessing the data would have stopped immediately I reached my credit limit, so I find it hard to believe their systems cannot stop it immediately at the agreed £15 limit, though given it then goes straight to the profit line I suppose they will only do that when forced, as they had to with overseas bills

If it is indeed correct that this can happen, then why has no-one addressed it as per the overseas issue ? If the principle is right there it should be in teh domestic market - it cannot be right that someone can charge you £128 overnight for just leaving the phone on ?

Alt

grumbler wrote: »

AFAIK, only Tesco offer capping, possibly Three as well.

My O2 plan also has a hard cap. Data access stopped working when I reached my limit and was given options of either buying additional data bundle or wait for allowance to reset on bill day.


Alt

grumbler

dillydilly wrote: »

I suppose that's the issue - has the average consumer ever heard of a 'hard' cap as opposed to a 'soft' one ? these must be industry definitions ?

Well, what exactly were you told and what the T&C say?

fact is they sent me a text saying the account was suspended, which sounds to be a cap,

Doesn't sound to me.

... if I had been on a PAYG deal I'm guessing the data would have stopped immediately I reached my credit limit,

There is no any credit limit for PAYG, and if all contracts worked the same way as PAYG, there would be no point in contracts.

....it cannot be right that someone can charge you £128 overnight for just leaving the phone on ?

They charge for data usage, not for leaving the phone on. The phone can be on, but connected to WiFi or can have mobile data switched off. Some people can deliberately leave it with data on to download something big.
And with correct settings all automatic updates can be allowed via WiFi only.

Alt wrote: »

My O2 plan also has a hard cap. Data access stopped working when I reached my limit

Well, if this happened, this doesn't mean that there is a hard cap that you can rely on.

JJ_Egan

Thats a lot of data for any phone to use unless it was downloading videos .

Alt

grumbler wrote: »

Well, if this happened, this doesn't mean that there is a hard cap that you can rely on.

Did you actually meant it does mean there is a hard cap?


From My O2 app data usage:
"If you use up all your allowance, we'll send a text to let you know. We'll then stop your data access until your data allowance resets on your bill day.
Until it resets you can use wifi or buy a bolt on....."


I would define this as a hard cap else my definition of a cap is incorrect


Alt

redux

It's too late to say it for this case, but for future reference or other readers set the phone to connect automatically to wifi but only ever manually (ask first) to mobile data.

When it will be connected to mobile data, switch off all automatic synchronisations of messaging applications, and set application updates to manual not automatic, then do them manually later in wifi coverage.

This latter point alone is worth a gigabyte or so a month on some phones. I've seen the 3g router log going down by 120 MB in half an hour, and nobody in the house knew their iPad or iPhone was doing anything.

almillar

My 4Gb data on EE stops hard, and directs me to an EE page to buy more.
A cap that takes 48 hrs to kick in is about as useful as delayed airbag!
We need to know people's experience with TalkTalk I guess...

grumbler

Alt wrote: »

Did you actually meant it does mean there is a hard cap?


From My O2 app data usage:
"If you use up all your allowance, we'll send a text to let you know. We'll then stop your data access until your data allowance resets on your bill day.
Until it resets you can use wifi or buy a bolt on....."

This does mean something, although I'd prefer seeing this in some more reliable source than an app.

Alt

grumbler wrote: »

This does mean something, although I'd prefer seeing this in some more reliable source than an app.

Me too hence my intentionally reaching my limit on the last day of my month and confirming that indeed O2 did send me a message and did stop my data until midnight


Alt