Work Phone bill - £2400!!!

nicechap

escapemcp wrote: »

Hi there,

First time poster, long time lurker

My employer provides me with a phone and rather than carrying around 2 phones, I purchased a phone with 2 SIMS slots and used the work SIM in my personal phone. All was well for over a year, until one day I switched over to using work data (which I had done on many other occasions), but forgot to switch back. 2 months later I got an email from the boss, telling me that I had been using my phone extortionately and that there was a £280 bill. I was told to remove the SIM from my phone (which I immediately did). Then the following month there was a £1800 bill for something like 60GB of data! The delay was due to the phone company which my company used taking over a month to bill. Finally there was a £400 bill for 9GB of data, again being usage BEFORE the company had informed me to remove the SIM (talk about a slow billing cycle!)

My company want me to pay this bill (which I am totally unable to do). I had offered £80 a month to cover that first bill (as at the time this is all I thought the bill was), although now obviously things have massively changed. My company want me to get a loan to pay the bill, to which I have politely told them to sod off. They expect me to pay the whole bill, despite me never signing such an extortionate phone contract and that being over ⅛ of my pre-tax salary

Where do I stand on this please? I am planning to leave this company REAL soon, but I don't want to be working only to receive no pay.

Thanks in advance.

escapemcp wrote: »

No, the data was not used abroad.

Some of the data was related to me working (which is why I switched it over in the first place). The phone company is unable to separate the bill as it's all internet.

You need to agree what proportion of the bill you owe - preseumably your own phone contract keeps a tally of how much data you typically use. Then agree a repayment plan - or at least start paying them back with a paper/ email trail.

Alternatively you can wait for them to take it out of your salary and then argue, or wait for them to take you to court & pay their legal costs, or wait until they get a CCJ against you and debt collectors come and seize your goods to be auctioned for a fraction of their worth.

ohreally

Smellyonion wrote: »

Legally, the company cannot make deductions that takes you below minimum wage.

A final wage can be wholly deducted in certain circumstances.

Exodi

Smellyonion wrote: »

I wouldn't pay it. I think that that kind of money for data is overly extortionate. The contract to pay the bill is between your employer and the phone network. You wouldn't have entered into a contract that charges £30 per GB, so why should you be expected to pay for the error?


Legally, the company cannot make deductions that takes you below minimum wage.

Nonsense, if the employee had used the equipment in the way that was agreed, there would have been no charge.

Furthermore your comment regarding the company being unable to make a deduction below NMW is whimsical at best.

A cursory 4 second google search:

https://www.gov.uk/understanding-your-pay/deductions-from-your-pay wrote:

A deduction cannot normally reduce your pay below the National Minimum Wage even if you agree to it, except if the deduction is for:

• tax or National Insurance
• something you’ve done and your contract says you’re liable for it, for example a shortfall in your till if you work in a shop
• repayment of a loan or advance of wages
• repayment of an accidental overpayment of wages
• buying shares or share options in the business
• accommodation provided by your employer
• your own use, for example union subscriptions or pension contributions

TBagpuss

As others have said, you are likelygoing to have to repay this and it's not unreasonable that you should, at ultimately it is your 'fault', in that you made the mistake of using the wrong sim.

I agree with the suggestion that you need to look at your own usual leve lof data usage, and ask your employers to provide copies of the previous bills for your work sim, to work out what proportion of the data was used for personal use and whatfor work use.

If there was something work related which was very data-heavy that month presumably that would be fairly memorable, otherwise siggest that they take the average of the last 3 bills (excluding these with the extra data) and deduct that from the amount they want you to repay.

While I understand that you weren't expecting this debt, it's likely that the employer wasn't expecting it either, and if you pay it off in installments they are, in effect, making you an interest-free loan, which they don't really have any obligation to do.

That said, i think you can ask to pay it off in (say) 2 or three installments rather than a single lump sum, and to negotiate to reduce it to take account of the fact that it was not all personal use.

tehone

Smellyonion wrote: »

I wouldn't pay it. I think that that kind of money for data is overly extortionate. The contract to pay the bill is between your employer and the phone network. You wouldn't have entered into a contract that charges £30 per GB, so why should you be expected to pay for the error?


Legally, the company cannot make deductions that takes you below minimum wage.

Its not in the least bit extortionate, you obviously have no idea have a business contract might be setup, and the different use cases considered for a user.

Whilst its now very common for voice to be effectively unlimited across a company's network of phones, its still the case that data is by and large still determined on a case by case basis, and that outside of bundle the cost is high.

I have a number of users who are on no inclusive data, some on low data, and some on high data - it depends on what I expect them to be using the COMPANY sim/phone for on COMPANY business. As with most places we don't mind a bit of personal use, and I would have overlooked a small amount of personal overspend, but its not up to the company to subsidise external data use for Netflix, etc.

Bear in mind when on office property you are using our wifi network for data not the mobile network, and that reduces the amount of mobile data I allocate to a user.

For the OP, it is a bit harsh, but yes you owe the money (probably all, as I would assume you have some inclusive data if you were required to use it). You might be able to ask your work if they can ask the mobile company to backbill you as if you were no a different tariff / prepaid data bundle - a good account manager should be able to find some way of reducing the overall bill. Then agree a reasonable repayment plan with your employer

Smellyonion

tehone wrote: »

Its not in the least bit extortionate, you obviously have no idea have a business contract might be setup, and the different use cases considered for a user.

Whilst its now very common for voice to be effectively unlimited across a company's network of phones, its still the case that data is by and large still determined on a case by case basis, and that outside of bundle the cost is high.

I have a number of users who are on no inclusive data, some on low data, and some on high data - it depends on what I expect them to be using the COMPANY sim/phone for on COMPANY business. As with most places we don't mind a bit of personal use, and I would have overlooked a small amount of personal overspend, but its not up to the company to subsidise external data use for Netflix, etc.

Bear in mind when on office property you are using our wifi network for data not the mobile network, and that reduces the amount of mobile data I allocate to a user.

For the OP, it is a bit harsh, but yes you owe the money (probably all, as I would assume you have some inclusive data if you were required to use it). You might be able to ask your work if they can ask the mobile company to backbill you as if you were no a different tariff / prepaid data bundle - a good account manager should be able to find some way of reducing the overall bill. Then agree a reasonable repayment plan with your employer

I don't care if you understand business phone contracts, I still wouldn't pay it and I doubt it would be enforceable.

Setting up a contract like that without having data switched off (at the account) level is negligence.

Was the employee given an indication of the extent of the cost of data? I could set up a contract which is £10,000 per Gb then charge the employee £250,000.

The cost of the data is so grossly extortionate and out of line with market prices, I wouldn't pay it.

Gavin83

Smellyonion wrote: »

I don't care if you understand business phone contracts, I still wouldn't pay it and I doubt it would be enforceable.

Setting up a contract like that without having data switched off (at the account) level is negligence.

Was the employee given an indication of the extent of the cost of data? I could set up a contract which is £10,000 per Gb then charge the employee £250,000.

The cost of the data is so grossly extortionate and out of line with market prices, I wouldn't pay it.

Which is of course your choice. However it would almost certainly result in you going to court and losing with the added costs of this. Most sensible people wouldn't take this route of course.

To be honest 60GB in a month seems like a ridiculous amount of data to use, I'd be curious what the OP was doing with it.

Exodi

Smellyonion wrote: »

I still wouldn't pay it and I doubt it would be enforceable.


Setting up a contract like that without having data switched off (at the account) level is negligence.


Was the employee given an indication of the extent of the cost of data? I could set up a contract which is £10,000 per Gb then charge the employee £250,000.


The cost of the data is so grossly extortionate.

I wouldn't usually debate opinions such as yours but I feel such delusion may prove dangerous to the OP.

I'd be interested to know, in the presence of a contract, why you think it would not be enforceable?

I'd also like to confirm what you are talking about with regards to having 'data switched off at account level' - it's pretty obvious data is needed for work purposes.

We must remind ourselves that there would not have been charges if the SIM had been used as agreed. We're also not talking about accidentally opening Facebook on work data, we're talking about 80 freaking gigabytes. That's about the amount of data I've used on my personal phone in the last 4 years and I'm always on my phone (though I connect to WiFi at home...). The OP will have likely been streaming films off mobile data for a few weeks.

If your sole point of contention is the extortionate cost of data - I've compared against GiffGaff (the network I'm on) and from https://www.giffgaff.com/pricing non-contract data is priced at 5p per MB. OP has used around 80,000MB of data which equates to roughly £4,000 (should count himself lucky he's not with GiffGaff).

I'd certainly say it's not extortionate, and again, this detracts from the point that he shouldn't be using his work SIM for personal use anyway!!

Exodi

Gavin83 wrote: »

To be honest 60GB in a month seems like a ridiculous amount of data to use, I'd be curious what the OP was doing with it.

I'd just like to add to this point.

It's more than 60gb - from the OP 60gb equates to around £1800 of the bill. Realistically it is around 80gb.

To the less tech-savvy on this forum 80 gigabyte is an unfathomable amount of data to use in a month unless he was literally streaming Netflix for a few hours a day, everyday for the whole month on mobile data.

Carrot007

Smellyonion wrote: »

Setting up a contract like that without having data switched off (at the account) level is negligence.

Op said they used some data usage for work.


So it was as required.


Sounds like OP should not have got a dual sim phone if it was too complex for them.