Help with bill of £2,300

EdCov

Doesn't a service have to be fit for purpose to be sold, otherwise it is faulty. I would say that anything that allows you to run up such a large bill is not fit for purpose, and therefore like any faulty good you are due for a full refund.

You are in a contract with them and buying a service, that is your line rental, and by allowing such a bill to be run up I would argue the service is faulty.

Also consumer credit, your son has just been loaned £2300 by Vodafone. That appears to be very irresponsible lending. I think that might be a strong case. Your son was buying on credit and therefore I presume would be protected by the Consumer Credit Act 1974. I think lending him that much was clearly irresponsible, causes stress.

I would say you are exploring taking legal action. Say you want advice about how they calculated his credit worthiness, ask what his credit limit. Ask sensible and detailed questions for the preparation of the case.

Tell them they need to speak to their legal department. You do not want to see them in court, but as this is clearly unreasonable and irresponsible you are confident of winning.

According to Trading Standards UNFAIR CONTRACT TERMS ACT 1977 makes unfair trading terms void.

I would go for the approach personally that you do not think anything should be paid, but your son is willing to make a payment as a good will gesture. However if they persist you will be looking at making a claim in the courts against them for damages.

Remind them of the unfair bank charges, and ask for a full refund and a good will gesture. I think you are going to have to start asking for compensation and aim to settle with paying a reasonable amount.

The question is what you describe as reasonable, I would think that certainly anything over £400 is unreasonable without any doubt. I think that at £150 they should have contacted him, and I would want to know why not.


I hope this helps. By the way I am no legal expert, and this is just friendly advice. Don't sue me if it doesn't work!!!!

imagine123

anishluv wrote: »

If you don't mind can I have your son's handset make and model no.? There would be an option in the settings that shows data sent/received. Trust me its fairly believable such an amount of data downloaded without a pinch of idea even.

Nokia N95 I believe

stacey21_2

Edcov, sorry but you are giving the OP false hope with the statements you make in your post.

Mobile phone providers do not have ANY liability to contact customers when their usage is high. As you are credit checked, your credit score is taken into account with regards to the amount of 'credit' you are allowed. So, if your credit score comes back high, they are unlikely to take much notice of your account as you are not considered a risk to them. If someone has a much lower credit score, their account will more than likely have been barred at £150. Of course the OP's son has to pay it back, he used the service so why shouldn't he? The mobile phone was clearly fit for purpose as it accessed the internet readily (as we can tell by the huge bill).

OP, I would suggest that you contact Vodafone. In my work, (o2) if a customer has had one instance of high GPRS use (by 'exploring' the phone and not fully understanding how the charges work) we do usually offer some sort of goodwill and then fully explain all charges again. I would suggest you contact Vodafone, explain that you are sorry but did not realise the sat nav/games/n95 had such easy to access internet and is it possible that as a goodwill you can come to arrangement with the knowledge that all future GPRS usage is paid for fully?

In o2 we used to have a GPRS bar but this started barring handsets so we cannot use this anymore. Maybe Vodafone will have something like this you can apply? If not, delete the settings from the handset for GPRS.

imagine123

payless wrote: »

did he use it as a modem to a PC ?

i would think this would be main usage

imagine123

EdCov wrote: »

I hope this helps. By the way I am no legal expert, and this is just friendly advice. Don't sue me if it doesn't work!!!!

Thanks this sounds very constructive

EdCov

stacey21 wrote: »

Edcov, sorry but you are giving the OP false hope with the statements you make in your post.

Mobile phone providers do not have ANY liability to contact customers when their usage is high. As you are credit checked, your credit score is taken into account with regards to the amount of 'credit' you are allowed. So, if your credit score comes back high, they are unlikely to take much notice of your account as you are not considered a risk to them. If someone has a much lower credit score, their account will more than likely have been barred at £150. Of course the OP's son has to pay it back, he used the service so why shouldn't he? The mobile phone was clearly fit for purpose as it accessed the internet readily (as we can tell by the huge bill).

I agree I would not want to give any false hopes because that is not helpful. The question in the law is about words such as reasonable. A few years ago you would have probably said the same to someone with thousands of pounds of bank charges. People paid them and accepted them.

Then people claim that they are unfair and now get them refunded. Letting someone get into 2300 debt in three weeks is not reasonable lending and the charges do not relate to cost. I cannot see how the additional costs to Vodafone of this this could be more than a tenner.

It is not about whether or not the equipment worked it is whether or not the service supplied was fit for purpose, and whatever the contract says it cannot remove your statutory rights, see http://www.tradingstandards.gov.uk/consumers/clegis.cfm . So it is more complex than it is simply in the contract, the contract has to be fair and not violate your statutory rights.

I admit I don't know anyone who has tried this and had it work in practice, but it is based on actual laws that are there to protect the consumer.

However, see for instance

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si1999/19992083.htm

The reason why it is unfair is that they knew how much he was using and he did not. Clearly if he knew he was using 2300 usage then he would not have used it.

See http://www.johnantell.co.uk/SOGASA1982.htm Sale of Goods and Services Act 1982

13 Implied term about care and skill

In a contract for the supply of a service where the supplier is acting in the course of a business, there is an implied term that the supplier will carry out the service with reasonable care and skill.

I would not say that Vodafone behaved with reasonable care and skill. Again part of the issue is did he know he was running up a £2300 bill.

By the way have you tried Otello? www.otello.org.uk I'm not sure it would do any good, but it may do some good. I'm tempted to say Vodafone should really have referred you to Otello since they are members.

It is the fact that we are talking about a £2300 bill, and that is I think indisputably not reasonable (that is probably about two month's of average pay after tax and NI). It is the magnitude of it that makes it different.

If you talk to front line staff you may not get anywhere keep on asking for the manager, make sure you have the persons name, and ask for their managers name, but always be polite the person at the other end is human too.

robt_2

That is a hell of a lot of data for 3 weeks and he was almost certainly using the phone as a modem, which is more than likely banned in his contract.

That amount of data is NOT normal usage, and I would suggest that your son knew was he was doing downloading much.

However, I really do think that you could get the network to write it off. In general, don't networks block your phone automatically if they notice an unusual usage pattern or if you spend over £x (as in £150-200, not £2000!).

stacey21_2

I've already explained the scenario re: credit:

Mobile phone providers do not have ANY liability to contact customers when their usage is high. As you are credit checked, your credit score is taken into account with regards to the amount of 'credit' you are allowed. So, if your credit score comes back high, they are unlikely to take much notice of your account as you are not considered a risk to them. If someone has a much lower credit score, their account will more than likely have been barred at £150.

As far as I'm aware no one is 'banned' from using their sim as a modem, we just explain to our customers it can be very expensive..

stacey21_2

A few years ago you would have probably said the same to someone with thousands of pounds of bank charges. People paid them and accepted them. Bank charges are completely different, they are not a service, people were being charged for nothing..

I admit I don't know anyone who has tried this and had it work in practice, but it is based on actual laws that are there to protect the consumer.


Actual lays where a service has not been delivered that someone has paid for, yes, not for consumers to use a service then back out when they realise how much it is.

The reason why it is unfair is that they knew how much he was using and he did not. Clearly if he knew he was using 2300 usage then he would not have used it.

Vodafone will argue that he has full access to his usage through the automated service (Im sure Vodafone is the only one who has this/calling customer services/internet)

It is the fact that we are talking about a £2300 bill, and that is I think indisputably not reasonable (that is probably about two month's of average pay after tax and NI). It is the magnitude of it that makes it different.

Comparing a bill to wages is irrelevant in this case, I've seen some whoppers of phone bills that I could never ever pay and would never run up. The people, when I say to them, your phone bill is £600 don't bat an eyelid because they can afford it. How are Vodafone supposed to know someone can't afford a phone bill? They are not babysitters and can't watch everyone's phone bill all the time. As I said before, his credit score must have come back extremely high for them to class him as such low risk. This is the avenue I would be taking.

If you talk to front line staff you may not get anywhere keep on asking for the manager, make sure you have the persons name, and ask for their managers name, but always be polite the person at the other end is human too. ;
Agree with this, if your nice to us, we'll be nice to you!

Old_Gold

stacey21 wrote: »

Agree with this, if your nice to us, we'll be nice to you!

This is very difficult these days when most of the time you get a so called customer service person who does not listen to what you say and just quotes from the checklist. There used to be a word called service and a phrase that said the customer is always right. Now most of the time you are wasting your own time trying to complain.