Plan.com and unreasonably high out of allowance data charges - Advice needed

6100253

Hey all, not sure the right approach here. My mum has a SIM with Plan.com with a 2GB allowance for £26.99 per month (aware this is shockingly poor value to begin with).

I found out today that she had a recent bill that she had to pay to protect her credit and retain her services of over £1000 (£1027). The reason for the charge turned out to be due to excess data charges outside of the plan allowances totalling 15GB of excess data use. 

Looking through the terms it appears within their pricing pages they charge a flat rate of 6.25p per MB of usage above allowance, and seemingly have nothing in place to prevent spiralling costs against a very uncompetitive and archaic rate.

I am looking to formalise a complaint in to Plan.com on the basis the charges are extortionate and in relation to the costs actually faced for the usage by Plan.com they are disproportionate to those they have passed onto my mum, with the intention of taking it to Ombudsmen if necessary.

I just wanted to see whether anyone had a view on the best approach to do this or had experience in similar situations?

Voyager2002

Before making a formal complaint, ask them to waive or reduce the charge as a gesture of goodwill towards a vulnerable customer.

born_again

Are they not a business provider rather than a consumer one?

6100253

born_again said:

Are they not a business provider rather than a consumer one?

They are yes. My mum runs a small business and has the SIM on a business plan. I was going to research it as I'm not sure the difference in rules/regs around Sole Trader/Business accounts in relation to their complaints procedures.

She was at home and had the WiFi not dropped out it would have all went through Internet but evidently it has been intermittently swapping between WiFi and 4G.

DullGreyGuy

Voyager2002 said:

Before making a formal complaint, ask them to waive or reduce the charge as a gesture of goodwill towards a vulnerable customer.

How is she a vulnerable customer @Voyager2002 or are you suggesting they lie and falsely claim they are?

It's a business contract as the OP's mother runs a business for which this is the phone, not even sure if vulnerable customer guidelines etc apply to B2B contracts. 

6100253

DullGreyGuy said:

Voyager2002 said:

Before making a formal complaint, ask them to waive or reduce the charge as a gesture of goodwill towards a vulnerable customer.

How is she a vulnerable customer @Voyager2002 or are you suggesting they lie and falsely claim they are?

It's a business contract as the OP's mother runs a business for which this is the phone, not even sure if vulnerable customer guidelines etc apply to B2B contracts. 

I'd argue they are not vulnerable in fairness, they have however put my mum into a situation she is now financially vulnerable as a result and she has kept it to herself so I am hoping to appeal on the basis although charges are in line with their published pence per MB, that the cumulative total vs the resulting data used is unnecessarily high and as a one off hoping they would be willing to apply a level of good will here. Especially given the actual market value of 15GB of data.

I certainly do not plan on faking a vulnerability on behalf of my mum.

6100253

Specifically using the fact they offer 12GB additional data as an add-on for £30.00 which had my mum realised the WiFi connection wasn't working as expected would have purchased.

6100253

Sorry for the volume of posts here too - I am currently exploring the online account. There are no controls available on the plan to protect my mum from this reoccurring which kinda terrifies me I'm not gonna lie.

onomatopoeia99

1. Whatever the issue is that is causing the wifi to "drop out", fix that as a priority.

2. Get the phone sim from a different provider if she really uses 15GB of data for her business every month.

 (doing what?)

3. disable mobile data on the phone so she can only use data on wifi. That will stop it hapenning again by accident and there's no need to do anything in the SIM account.

6100253

onomatopoeia99 said:

1. Whatever the issue is that is causing the wifi to "drop out", fix that as a priority.

2. Get the phone sim from a different provider if she really uses 15GB of data for her business every month.

 (doing what?)

3. disable mobile data on the phone so she can only use data on wifi. That will stop it hapenning again by accident and there's no need to do anything in the SIM account.

Point 1 - I'm on it, their WiFi extender isn't working as expected which led to this.

Point 2. Once her contract has elapsed I will be, this isn't simply a business use device with her business being very small she uses the SIM as her personal and work number, so she does transfer data by uploading information from her tablet.15GB is not exactly a significant amount of data for a lot of users IMO and you can often get this allowance on a SIM for £10-20 per month (this isn't 2015). This company originally cold called her and persuaded her to swap from O2 on a personal plan many years ago.

Point 3. I have now ensured this is the case, she obviously needs some Internet access out of home but knows how to switch this around.

Niko85

Exact same thing happened to me. My wifi must have switched off at some point, and halfway through the  month, it started exceeding the monthly data allowance. I ended up with a mobile phone bill of £672, compared to the usual £28 bill. All this for exceeding by 8.3 GIG, my usual 30 GIG monthly allowance.

Yes they did send a notification, which I hadn’t noticed at the time. and No I did not have a spending cap in place. (I have obviously added a spending cap now.)

They also said had I purchased a bolt on in time for the extra data, it only would have costed me an extra £20, on top of my usual £28.  

My question is, how can they charge such disproportionately for the same amount of data whether you buy something in advance, or spend unknowingly? it works out something like 30x more for the same amount of data. How unethical is this? and how can they get away legally with such unfair, disproportionate prices??

It is such an easy mistake for a wifi to turn off especially on the short cut screen of any iphone. Surely it must be happening to so many customers. 

How are these disproportionate charges not regulated?