check your mobile phone bills, unneccessary charges

jack111

I like most of you donot check my mobile phone bills in detailed but when I did I was shocked at what I found.

I am with T-Mobile on a flex 35 price plan which allows me £180 worth of calls per month which are cross network and to local and national landlines. I hardly get to using my allowance nowhere close.

Since my bills were getting more expensive [from the usual £40 to £65 ] for no reason, I decided to take a look casually.

I found to my disbelief that though the bill itself stated that I had still £112 of my allowance left it had charged me for
1] Calls to T-mobile phones
2] Calls to landlines
apparently these were outside my allowance. These are normal landline and mobile numbers.

Puzzled i called t mobile and they have agreed to refund me the money but will not look back at my bills to see if this is a recurring theme. And as it was a sunday the accounts department is closed. And they will not call me back.

Apparently T-mobile is an Inbound Company which does not follow up such serious customer issues with their clients. So I will have to call back again tomorrow.

The operator did define it to me:
Inbound company = does not make calls to customers, Customers call them.
Outbound company = company calls customers.
I was most grateful for the education always keen to learn.

So if other who read this check your suspicious mobile phone bills carefully you might be in for a surprise. After all even if they were to sneak through a £1 charge per client they still would be making millions of pounds.

debsy42

Thanks for the heads up, have just checked my bill and found I've been charged for calls that should be free as part of my call plan.

I phoned them up, got through to an indian call centre who told me that the calls made outside my allowance weren't free as I'd used up my "daily allowance". When I queried this as I should have £90 a month to use and wanted to know what my daily allowance was, he told me that I don't have a daily allowance, totally contradiciting what he had just said grrrrrrrrr

I asked to be put through to a manager, he said he would transfer me *mumble mumble" and then I got a message to say the billing dept was closed and then cut me off.

Just going to ring them back now and see if I can get any sense :mad:

alnsv1000s

I have 6 Business lines and Itemised billing is Free and does not come out of your allowance.

Recently I noticed that IB has been coming out of my allowance even though it says on the bill it is free.

Called them and they said it was an error and I will get credited on my next bill.

I now wonder how many other errors are occuring to non suspecting people.

Send an email listing your mobile number, name and address and details the problems to cust.rel@t-mobile.co.uk

The directors office should call you back within a couple of days.

Mention you want them to go back through previous bills and crediting back for overcharged calls.

lawbunny

Hey Jack111,

Sorry to hear about your problems with T-Mobile. So long as the calls were to actual uk mobile numbers and landlines (ie not voicemail / international numbers / access numbers etc) then they should have been included in your allowance - if they were not this would most likely be a computer error (unless it was due to part charges etc if you upgraded mid way through a month, but obviously I cannot tell this as I cannot see your bill).

The agent you spoke to is correct in that Billing is closed on a Sunday (unfortunately I work Sundays, believe me when I say I understand the inconvenience of this), but the agent themselves should have been able to sort this out for you with a simple credit (and if they really were that incapable, there is actually a process for agents to follow to arrange for Billing to call you back on the monday). Additionally, I can only apologise that they did not look through your last few bills for you, it would only have taken a matter of minutes. Sounds like you got unlucky with the agents you spoke to, I hope you have better luck tomorrow!

jack111

thanks for the reply.
yes i did upgrade in the middle of month maybe that was the problem. had about £10 refunded so far.
also my previous contract had voicemails included in my allowance now all of a sudden that is not happening. apparently i am on a new contract. I went with t mobile purely because the sales chap allowed me to keep the benefits of my old contract .
I have written a letter waiting to see what happens.

lawbunny

Hey,

If you upgraded midway through your month then as you are effectively starting a new contract your allowance gets stopped then started again, meaning it gets rationed out between your old contract and the new one. Basically, this means that if you are on a flext 35 and renew halfway through, your allowance gets split in half, so even if you dont spend a full £90 worth of allowance the second half of the month (so it shows that there was some unused on your bill), if you used more than £90 worth in the first half of the month then you will be charged for the extra which you use. It sucks, I know, but at least you might now understand what has happened. I'm not sure why the csa you spoke to couldn't tell you this, or just put a credit on your account, but at least now you can be reassured it's not a recurring problem.

Email [EMAIL="cust.rel@t-mobile.co.uk"]cust.rel@t-mobile.co.uk[/EMAIL] if you want a speedy answer.

jack111

I had already emailed them on the email but thanks anyway.
First I got a substantial amount refunded.
I am no longer being charged for voicemail as it was in my original price plan. The only reason i went with the 18 month contract was because i was told i could keep my original price plan benefits but somehow when I got my new phone things changed and I was being charged even for my voicemail.
But glad it is sorted speedily so good on T-mobile.