Claiming back phone bill costs from a bank

Zandoni

meer53 wrote: »

Making some assumptions there aren't you ?

If you are referring to the UK comment this was made because overseas call centres have very little power and are not able to use judgement.

mcmeeks

Thank you all for your messages.

I was not able to use my secondary card to pay bills because I had insufficient money in that account. It bailed me out when it happened the first time but couldn't the second time.

I would have used skype if I could but I was in the middle of a town without 3G and needed the cash then and there.

I have submitted the phone bill to the bank and been unsuccessful in getting back any money. My question is, what can I do to get this complaint in front of someone more important and what are my chances of success?

I can assure you that I would not have run up this bill intentionally, I was put on hold on numerous occasions and nobody really knew what was going on, so it took a long time to sort out the issue. Whether or not I should have had to run up a bill of that magnitude is not the issue, or something I am asking advice about. For those of you who are eager to point out that 'oh, you didn't want to do that,' thank you for your input but it is not terribly valuable and if the same thing happened again I would not have been able to do anything differently. That is the very basis of the complaint.

mcmeeks

The point that I am making is that I had absolutely no other choice, unless I was just to crack on without money and the consequence of that would be that I could not pay bills, which is illegal.

Thanks for your input.

baza52

if you were in a town with no 3G connection how did you manage to call them?

unholyangel

mcmeeks wrote: »

Thank you all for your messages.

I was not able to use my secondary card to pay bills because I had insufficient money in that account. It bailed me out when it happened the first time but couldn't the second time.

I would have used skype if I could but I was in the middle of a town without 3G and needed the cash then and there.

I have submitted the phone bill to the bank and been unsuccessful in getting back any money. My question is, what can I do to get this complaint in front of someone more important and what are my chances of success?

I can assure you that I would not have run up this bill intentionally, I was put on hold on numerous occasions and nobody really knew what was going on, so it took a long time to sort out the issue. Whether or not I should have had to run up a bill of that magnitude is not the issue, or something I am asking advice about. For those of you who are eager to point out that 'oh, you didn't want to do that,' thank you for your input but it is not terribly valuable and if the same thing happened again I would not have been able to do anything differently. That is the very basis of the complaint.

I think people (or at least I did) thought you meant a secondary card as in for the same account. For example you and your partner have a joint account with a card each - yours didnt work and theirs did.

One other question, which phone number did you use? A 08/03 number or an 01/02 number?

unholyangel

baza52 wrote: »

if you were in a town with no 3G connection how did you manage to call them?

I imagine because 3g relates to wirelessly connecting to the internet and not for making calls

mcmeeks

Because there was normal phone signal

agrinnall

unholyangel wrote: »

I think people (or at least I did) thought you meant a secondary card as in for the same account. For example you and your partner have a joint account with a card each - yours didnt work and theirs did.

Well I certainly didn't assume this, because a second card on the same account would be useless if access to the account is blocked, what's needed (and I believe is what's happened here) is a card on a different account, preferably at a different bank. And that account really needs to have enough money in it to cover expected needs while away, or the cardholder needs to be able to use online banking to transfer funds into it if required (or do the sensible thing and take a couple of credit cards too so that you're not relying on your own money).

mcmeeks

unholyangel wrote: »

I think people (or at least I did) thought you meant a secondary card as in for the same account. For example you and your partner have a joint account with a card each - yours didnt work and theirs did.

One other question, which phone number did you use? A 08/03 number or an 01/02 number?

Thank you and sorry if that was not clear. It was an international number that was given on the back of the card to ring when abroad, not one of the 08/03 etc. Also, they refused to ring me back.

unholyangel

You could try the financial ombudsman but tbh, I have no clue what your odds of success are.