Advice needed with O2 fraud resolution/dispute

dokdave

Hi,

First time poster, in much need of some advice for how to proceed with a frustrating situation involving O2 and my mother.

tldr: mother scammed; O2 customer services took a long time to resolve and misled us; we ported away; O2 now trying to charge us for fraudulent charges.

I'll try to summarise a lengthy process below, happy to provide more information if needed:

1) Mother and partner had mobile phones with O2 as a result of Virgin Media contract. They were out of contract with O2, both numbers on a single account.

2) On September 1st, my mother fell victim to a scam call which succeeded in taking control of her O2 account, adding 2 new e-sims to it, forwarding her numbers and adding two new 24 month contracts.

3) When we realised this (September 3rd), we called up O2 customer services. At this point, their phones weren't working due to the number redirect. O2 raised a fraud ticket and advised her to go to an O2 shop to get new sims.

4) O2 shop were unable to help.

5) Over the next three weeks, we spoke to O2 CS on about 6 occasions. During this time, the phones on the account were still not working. On each call, we were assured that each fraud ticket had been resolved and that the phones should be working. On each call, they raised a new fraud ticket, as each CS rep was unable to provide further help. We were told that the fraud team would contact us by phone, but they never did.

6) Around September 18th, she received a letter advising that the fraud had been resolved and she shouldn't worry, as she would not be liable for charges incurred by the fraudsters.

7) Around this time, we became frustrated by the O2 service and their inability to get the phones working (essential for elderly people to remain contactable). This, combined with the terrible customer service and misleading information, left is very unhappy with O2. We requested PAC codes to port away. We were informed these could not be issued without working phones.

8) When the phones finally started working again (around September 20th), we requested PAC codes. We were told that there was an early termination fee of £900 per line from the contracts added by the fraudsters. The CS rep assured us that my mother would not be charged this, as her actual account was out of contract. I was explicit in getting the CS rep to confirm this (I think I even claimed that an £1800 bill might cause my mother to drop dead on the spot). The CS rep assured us that we wouldn't be charged.

9) On September 23rd, we ported away. A final bill for £23 was received, which we paid. A further £24 compensation cheque was received from O2 following their investigation of a complaint we submitted about the process.

...

10) On 29th October, a letter was received by my mother telling her she owed £1800 and if she didn't pay, it would be forwarded to collections.

11) Thinking this would be an easy one to resolve, I called up CS again and reached the highest point of escalation. The CS rep I spoke to said that she was very sorry, but that my mother was liable for the early termination fee and the only recourse was to raise a dispute with the ombudsman. She said that we had ported away before the "fraud ticket" was resolved, so the fraudulent contracts were still in force, so we were liable. I asked her to check the notes and confirm that we were advised that we wouldn't be liable if we ported. She confirmed this was the case. She admitted that O2 were "partly responsible" for misleading us. But she was utterly unable or unwilling to remove the charge.

I'm completely unsure how to proceed with this (other than the Ombudsman dispute). I feel incredibly frustrated that we tried to resolve a bad situation properly but now my mother is being punished for it, and I feel incredibly angry that O2 are putting my elderly mother through this.

I'm racking my brains trying to figure out where I went wrong in dealing with them, and I'm deeply worried that my mother is going to end up having to deal with collections or getting a black mark against her name.

Does anyone have any advice on how to proceed? Or has anyone been through a similar process?

Any help or advice, GREATLY appreciated.