o2 Internet Calls

MykMallett

A friend of mine has just recieved a shickingly high £200 bill on o2 for using her phone as a modem.

Ironically, the exact same thing happened to me a year or too ago, but despite my warnings, she unfortunately thought the costs were very low. She has only used the internet a few times, but as i explained to her, the charges are for bandwidth and so viewing a photo could easily use up your monthly usage.

Now what i did when i was charged, was completely deny all knowledge. This resulted in many messy cut offs, complaints to head office, complaints to the governing body, until eventually they just gave up and got rid of the charges (totalling £300). Now, despite getting the result that i wanted (taking nearly a year), i dont think that this was the best way to go about it.
So i have advised her that the best thing to do would be to make a chargeback on her card for the bill. Then ring up o2 and say that she doesnt think that the charges are proportionate and that she was under the impression that it was much cheaper. Then ive told he rthat she needs to say she'll be raising a complaint, pay the monthly tariff and ask for the account to be put on hold so that she isnt being cut off.
Then send a letter of complaint to the head office, outlining that she's been with them for a long time and that she was under the impression after speaking to 02 previsously that she was able to surf for much less. Also to say that this will be a deciding factor in her impending renewal considering that she cannot afford this cost. She has since bought a bolt-on that allows her to surf more freely and would they consider dropping the charge as a goodwill gesture.

Now...thanks for reading...is this about right or would you suggest some other course of action?

diamonds

your admitting she knew, & then applied a bolt on, not on your nely will o2 go for it, you DENIED & fought long and hard & EVENTUALLY got somewhere......

MykMallett

erm...no what im saying is that she didnt know it was that expensive. When she rang up about her bill she was sold the bolt on so that it didnt happen again, but before that, she was lead to believe that it would only cost 1p per page.

For o2 to 'go for it' that would imply that she was trying to deceive them in some way.

[Deleted User]

O2 charge £1 per 1mb of data.. i've known that for ages. My phone has always had the ability to track the amount of data i've downloaded.

Pay the bill, its the right thing to do

GordonGS

I assume she has the bolt on for web usage on mobiles....£7.50 for 200mb i think.

Did o2 actually advise her to use it as a modem, doing so is far easier to go over your allowance.

This bolt on is generally not designed to be used as a modem for laptops etc.o2 have other such tarrifs for mobile internet with higher costs and usage limits. Surfing pages on your phone will use far less than surfing full web pages on a laptop.

No idea how you'd go about trying to claim it back without a lot of hassle like you had yourself

MykMallett

Fair enough. I just thought that they might decide as a goodwill gesture to reduce the charge...especially in light of that chap gettin let off £25'000 not long ago

The way i see it is, its ALWAYS worth asking. Its not like these charges really reflect what she was using it for.