Do we owe O2?

Huntlee

Hi,

My daughter has a phone with O2, and has recently had a surprise bill come through in excess of £100 more than normal. When we reviewed the bill we can see the charges are for 4 payments to the PlayStation Network and were made at a time when she is in class in school. These payments put us into an unarranged overdraft.

We don't own a PlayStation, so I'm confident these payments have not been made on our behalf. O2 state the payments were made with 2FA, so were definitely by us.

I have asked my bank to recall the Direct Debit, which they have done.

We have tried reaching out to O2 but cannot get past an AI chatbot to actually discuss this with anyone. All we have had back from them is that we need to contact Sony - again, I can't manage to speak to anyone there directly, only chatbots.

O2 have now put a block on the phone, so my 11 year old daughter was unable to contact us when she finished school today.

We are fortunate that her mobile contract finishes this Friday, so we are going to a SIM only provider on a much better deal.

What I don't understand is where we stand with the payments. Do we have to pay O2 and claim back from Sony as they say, or is that something they should investigate at their end?

Mark_d

If the payments were made with 2FA then O2 are not to blame.  Could someone else have used her phone?  I would consider reporting the police as someone has used your payment method without your authorisation.  Once there is a police report then Sony and O2 will be able to investigate further.

I don't know why your bought an 11 year old a contract phone.  If someone gets hold of her phone they can run up a huge bill for you by calling or texting premium rate numbers.  I use a Lebara SIM myself so even when I'm abroad, I will benefit from the inclusive roaming but I can't incur any charges.

DullGreyGuy

Given its your daughter's phone what does she say about it?

Clearly someone who knows her phone number has added it to an account and it has subsequently been authorised in the app and/or phone so they know also how to unlock her phone. Either she is oversharing with someone or she is complicit in the charge and may not want to own up to it... it can be like DD where you only have to authorise the first payment and it can give them the right to take further payments without additional authorisation. 

The date/time its charged isn't necessarily going to be the date/time the transaction was made, a mobile operator isn't a bank, their systems aren't as sophisticated or instant (its not as if banks are either). Call them, it's free from an O2 phone, and get as much information about the transaction, times and dates if they can see from their system. The speak to your daughter... could be she agreed to the first payment, got caught up in the moment and is now not wanting to admit to you she spent £100 on nothing. 


With O2, and probably others, you can set a spend limit on top of the contractual spend... set it to £0 or whatever amount youre willing to pay for extras, international calls etc and then they cannot offer to buy their prospective boy/girlfriend stuff etc beyond this value.

PHK

This is Pay by Phone, so was probably a payment for/credits for  a Sony game on the phone (which would come under the PSN umbrella)  Basically, it's payment by phone bill through either the Play Store or App Store 

It does require 2FA and a declaration the person is the bill payer.  As contract phones are only for adults it would be deemed as authorised. 

Had the phone been set up as a child phone as part of a family group then the group owner (a parent) would have needed to authorise any spend. 

Clive_Woody

I would have a chat with our daughter about what games she has on her phone and what "extras" she might hvae paid for. I think Sony make phone based games too, which may show up as PS2 payments on a bill. With 2FA this would have needed approval by someone who can unlock the phone I believe. Did she let someone else play games on her phone.

eDicky

Huntlee said:

I have asked my bank to recall the Direct Debit, which they have done.

.....

O2 have now put a block on the phone,

 Unsurprisingly so. Also beware of trashing your credit files by non-payment of bill, instead of resolving the cause and effect of incurred charges.

Hoenir

Huntlee said:

What I don't understand is where we stand with the payments. Do we have to pay O2 and claim back from Sony as they say, or is that something they should investigate at their end?

From O2's perspective there's an outstanding debt to be collected. Simply walking away resolves nothing. In fact creates further issues,