£45,000 BT Bill?!

Indiedog10

e have a small business have been with BT over 20 years.  
Secretary renewed mobile phone contract last year. 
Nothing explained about roaming so just ticked a box.
Went on holiday to morrocco.  

We received a tx on both of our phones upon landing in Morocco with the amounts we would to be charged.  But no option to upgrade.

We understood we would have an increased bill as we left roaming on for work.

Our 10 year old son has a sudden death syndrome / ADHD / Autism..
He regulates by watching ‘You Tube’.
We connected him to the hotel WIFi.

On day 6 of our holiday we received a tx stating our useage was particularly high and they were to block the phone.

We rang forward to be told our roaming bill for 5 days was £14,000 .. today they have sent a bill for £45,000.
Apparently when the wifi dropped out it connected to roaming.

Yes a very stupid thing for us to not have taken further interest. We have travelled many times over the years and never had a problem.  They stated our secretary has opted out of roaming costs.
We explained that nobody explained the meaning of this.. it was a tick box.
The person that sold her the deal no longer works there.  We asked they listen into phone calls to see if this was explained .. the exorbitant costs that would be accrued etc but they just keep saying it’s in the small print.
We asked why we didn’t get a message earlier warning us but they said this doesn’t happen.
We understand there would be further added costs but we have taken a last minute cheap deal holiday and now we are looking at a bill for possibly £45,000.
This is a genuine / honest mistake and considering how good a customer we have been over many years we would hope they could have helped us.
We can’t afford this and are terrified they 
Cancel our contract this being our office telephone / computer system as BT as the only people that supply our area.
Can anyone advise us..

powerful_Rogue

Indiedog10 said:

e have a small business have been with BT over 20 years.  
Secretary renewed mobile phone contract last year. 
Nothing explained about roaming so just ticked a box.
Went on holiday to morrocco.  

We received a tx on both of our phones upon landing in Morocco with the amounts we would to be charged.  But no option to upgrade.

We understood we would have an increased bill as we left roaming on for work.

Our 10 year old son has a sudden death syndrome / ADHD / Autism..
He regulates by watching ‘You Tube’.
We connected him to the hotel WIFi.

On day 6 of our holiday we received a tx stating our useage was particularly high and they were to block the phone.

We rang forward to be told our roaming bill for 5 days was £14,000 .. today they have sent a bill for £45,000.
Apparently when the wifi dropped out it connected to roaming.

Yes a very stupid thing for us to not have taken further interest. We have travelled many times over the years and never had a problem.  They stated our secretary has opted out of roaming costs.
We explained that nobody explained the meaning of this.. it was a tick box.
The person that sold her the deal no longer works there.  We asked they listen into phone calls to see if this was explained .. the exorbitant costs that would be accrued etc but they just keep saying it’s in the small print.
We asked why we didn’t get a message earlier warning us but they said this doesn’t happen.
We understand there would be further added costs but we have taken a last minute cheap deal holiday and now we are looking at a bill for possibly £45,000.
This is a genuine / honest mistake and considering how good a customer we have been over many years we would hope they could have helped us.
We can’t afford this and are terrified they 
Cancel our contract this being our office telephone / computer system as BT as the only people that supply our area.
Can anyone advise us..

No consumer rights as this was a business contract. Do you have any business legal cover you can contact?

If it was a tick box saying 'Do you require international roaming?', then I can't see you have much of a complaint if your business ticked no.

molerat

A business contract - you are supposed to be more aware and do due diligence before you sign something, not just randomly tick boxes.  Surely you turned off mobile data on your son's device, if not you were setting yourself up for a fall sooner or later. I thought everyone would be aware after an MSP was in the news for racking up an £11K roaming bill for his son watching football. I can't see you have any way out apart from getting them to agree some sort of backdated data plan.

DullGreyGuy

Why's your son's device on the company plan?

Thankfully our overseas mistake was a three figure number but learnt from that to set a cap on the maximum additional charges that can be added beyond normal limits... set to £5 most the time. That way, no way of racking up anything more than that. 

By "computer system" do you mean internet or something else?

Grumpy_chap

It is a business contract so you are deemed to be knowledgeable.

You did not have roaming included in the contract.
Did you check the roaming costs before travelling?  Even with the personal plans that sometimes include roaming, Morocco would often not be included as a "home from home" country - the included roaming options were often limited to EU / very popular mass-market holiday destinations.  Morocco is neither.

What action did you take after 5-days when notified that the bill was £14k?  
It would seem logical to have switched off roaming at that point but it is clear that you did not as you have accrued a further £30k of consumption before returning home.

I can't see that you have any action other than to pay the bill.  BT may give a "goodwill" discount and / or agree a payment plan.

Is the business Ltd Co or sole trader / partnership?  
Does the phone plan have a personal guarantee to pay if the business cannot?

Bookworm105

so are you going to slip the son's roaming costs through as a business expense or are you going to pay that personally? Does your accountant know about it yet?

as others have said, businesses are assumed to know what they are doing. Ignorance or "honest mistake" is not a reason for backing out of a signed contract