Help! Mobile stolen and used

aremdee

The lady in question had made the point that the provider should have noticed the size of the bill being run up and checked that everything was OK with the customer apparently.
I intend to pay, but we're just daft old fools, relatively new to mobile phones and totally unaware of procedure. Didn't even know we could block our phone.

nellytheelephant

It must be really awful. I'd hate for it to be me. At least you know what to do for future reference, which is something.

Doesn't really help now, but still

lawbunny

Mobile networks can decide to write of the charge for you. If they want to.

If I'm being honest, it's unlikely. Yes, you know the phone was stolen whilst you were abroad, but the network don't. It would be a great money saving tactic for customers if they could go abroad, use the phone, then avoid paying the bill by saying the phone had been stolen, wouldn't it?!?!

Yes, the network would notice that you were incurring a lot of charges, but they can also see that your phone was logged onto a foreign network, and whilst you are abroad your bill will normally be a lot higher. How is the network to know that you are not making business calls? Or someone has fallen ill and you have to call home to insurance cos / family etc? Or maybe you were just homesick and missing your family? The networks will eventually cut your phone off, when you get above the amount they think you are able to pay. But they do (rightfully) assume that customers will phone to report their phone stolen if they think it has been.....

Additionally, roaming charges can take anything up to 3 months to be passed from the foreign network to your uk network so it can be a while before the network even realises that your bill is getting very high!

I think the best you can hope for is that they will let you pay it off in installmements. Good luck!

deano27_2

do they have a high usage policy that should have flagged this high usage?? if so why did it not trigger and a temp bar placed.??

Is this covered by your home insurance policy.

Failing that hopefully they will let you pay in installments as already stated.

People forgot that a mobile is no different than a credit card....it gives would be thieves the chance to spend your money....if you lost you credit card you would quickly no about it and be cancelling it immediately....why doesn't this same mentality happen with mobiles....

agsnu

deano27 wrote: »

do they have a high usage policy that should have flagged this high usage?? if so why did it not trigger and a temp bar placed.??

Typically yes, but due to the way mobile roaming works, your home network may not get billing information about your usage transmitted from the foreign network for a considerable delay - days at a minimum (hey, even some UK networks take days to register your usage, e.g. O2 runs about 48 hours behind, T-Mobile up to 24...), and technically up to 2 months.

The mobile networks will claim that this means that high usage bars cannot be relied on to cap you at any given usage - merely that they are tools used in extreme cases to limit their exposure to risk.

Of course, this is a bit of a crap reason - the reason that it's not possible is due to deficiencies in their system which could be rectified if the impetus was there.

Is this covered by your home insurance policy.

Highly doubtful.

People forgot that a mobile is no different than a credit card....it gives would be thieves the chance to spend your money....if you lost you credit card you would quickly no about it and be cancelling it immediately....why doesn't this same mentality happen with mobiles....

It's very different from credit cards - it's much worse. With credit cards, you are not liable for fraudulent transactions if you have acted with "reasonable care". With mobile phones, you are liable for all transactions.

msun

I think I'll stick with PayG tariff - at least liablility is limited to the amount of credit left on the phone so any loss is "capped" to this and the cost of the phone. Cheers from Mike

aremdee

One more swift comment. My partner contacted the accounts department and in a 'slip of the tongue' (?) the lady on the other end let on that she had a £200 credit limit on her account - unknown to us. How then, did 3 allow the bill to run up over £300 more than their own credit limit, if not to merely make a finacial killing?
Oh, and if anyone thinks that writing to 3 customer services means that they will get a British response because they are tired of speaking to an asian call centre with limited understanding beyond their own training and stock phrases they are mistaken. All telephone responses to our letters are STILL from an Indian call centre. And are NOT happy about being asked to put their answers to our questions in writing, which I think is good Customer services practice.
Any chance they will let us quit our respective contracts 12 months early?

Quentin

The credit limit will not have been breached till long after the calls were made as has already been explained.

They will let you quit early. But you would incur an early termination fee, (equivalent to the line rental you would have paid throughout the contract),so not much point!

nellytheelephant

How early is early?

I think it would have gone over the limit because of the delay in the systems x

deano27_2

agsnu wrote: »

It's very different from credit cards - it's much worse. With credit cards, you are not liable for fraudulent transactions if you have acted with "reasonable care". With mobile phones, you are liable for all transactions.

Quite right, but I was really linking this to the behaviour of people towards mobile phones....if you lost your credit card you would sort it pretty quick, but mobiles it still seems to be an after thought...