Ombudsman any help?

Earlydoors7171

Please does anyone know about the mobile phone ombudsman? 

I have 6 lines with EE for myself and family. 

It turns out my 16 year old son's line contract is old and has 240 free minutes on it. He assumed it was unlimited - all my other lines are - and ran up a bill of over £1100 in one month calling his girlfriend. 

EE said I have a credit limit of £750. My bill for all 6 lines has never been over £100. They didn't send a warning text message (although their system shows 2 sent, none were received). 

They have over time mentioned that another line was due for upgrade and I upgraded. All lines except my son's have a spend limit of £0 so I don't spend outside my plan. Obviously this was an oversight! If EE had ever offered to upgrade then I would have done. 

They have offered to reduce the bill to £750 but if I do that, I can't go to the ombudsman. I can only go if I pay the £1100+ in full! And ombudsman may rule in their favour as technically the bill was correct as calls were outside the plan. 

Does anyone think the ombudsman would rule in my favour? Or should I just pay the £750?

The man in "resolutions" said it was fair as it balanced my needs with EE's needs. I can't see why they need so much of my money! If the calls were made from my other 5 lines they would have been free! 

Thank you for any advice. 

Neil_Jones

I think the key word here is "assumed".  Which is the crux of the whole problem with regards to the 16 year old.

It is not the provider's responsibility to check that you are on the right package(s) for you.  That is your responsibility.  Especially with a 16 year old who will almost certainly have his phone glued to his hand and in constant use.

I'd pay the £750, then upgrade the account to match the rest.  And with regards to the comment from "resolutions" (whatever what's supposed to mean - do you mean customer/account services?), well it works both ways.  If you'd noticed you hadn't had the notification for the upgrade, then you should have chased it.  But you didn't, so you've gone over your bundle and the calls will have to be paid for, as per your T&Cs.

PHK

I think the ombudsman would likely find in EEs favour  .

They don't seem to have done anything wrong .

You haven't monitored your phone usage and haven't reviewed your tariffs. If you'd logged onto My EE or opened the app, you would have seen his tariff in seconds.  

Also, a bill of £1100 is 25 hours of calls plus the 4 hours included in the tariff .  I think the ombudsman would say a reasonable person would be aware of such usage.

Earlydoors7171

Thank you for your replies. I will pay the £750 then. Obviously as soon as it happened I upgraded my son to unlimited calls and put on a spend cap! Bit late but still. 

I do go on My EE but only to do data gifting. Never occurred to me to check tariff as it's been 4.5 years with no extra charges. I had no idea he had suddenly started making all these calls! Young love! 

james_smitha

In my experience the Ombudsman is a useless piece of excrament.

For example for the whole of the first year every thing with Three Mopbile worked perfectly then just before renew time my incoming calls start mysteriously being blocked. Ombudsman refuses to call me back to experience things for them selves, accepted Three's lie that Oh.... your phone must have strangely by coinsidence developed a fault (my behind).

More recently this 'fault' vanishes when I use an O2 sim card