Ship of Fools: telecommunications companies.

Thread: telecommunications companies. Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :

Long story short.
Phone contracts for teenage daughters, on understanding they take on contracts themselves at 18.
Turns out that's subject to credit check and neither can take contracts on.
Paid for two years til contract expiry date.
Get dramatically overcharged on 4 months amounting to £500 but can't prove its due to faulty equipment.

Gave notice, paid another month, got Pac codes, paid another month... girls have new phones with new providers....
And T mobile/EE have sent me a bill for £448. To cancel the contract..???

I don't know what to do next. [Waterworks]

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I know that contracts in Canada are to be paid fully out by the user if cancelled. They recently capped data overages to $100. I wondering about the faulty equipment angle. Are you sure they weren't using data because they had it turned on all the time, or that the phone set up had synching or auto-turn data on using an app?

That's a lot of money just before Christmas.

Posted by balaam (# 4543) on :

When a minor abuses a phone it is up to the adult whose name is on the contract to pay. If you finish a contract early you still have to pay. Which is why we only got our kids pay as you go. It also teaches them budgeting.

Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :

They aren't minors, they didn't abuse the phone,I did pay, the contract had finished.

Which is why I continued to pay until the 2 year contract was up.

No idea what this new bill is about and no intention of paying it.which is why I'm posting here and not all saints.

They are bastards and need fighting. By coincidence, the phone complaints people CISAS accidentally put 150 dissatisfied customers in touch with each other when they spamed us all recently in some cock up that might,unusually, give us all a break.

Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :

@no prophet,thanks for suggestions. It wasn't data. On 4 occasions, my daughter apparently spent all day and all night phoning people and hanging up immediately, 20, 30 times in a row. One of the nights happened to be her birthday party, and I'm telling you, she wasnt on the phone,she was on the dance floor. In two years, she carefully kept within her limits, except on those four occasions when she apparently lost her mind? Couldn't prove it, and didn't know how biased and useless CISAS is.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
On 4 occasions, my daughter apparently spent all day and all night phoning people and hanging up immediately, 20, 30 times in a row. One of the nights happened to be her birthday party, and I'm telling you, she wasnt on the phone,she was on the dance floor.

Within variables of what she was wearing, where her phone was, and what you mean by "all", could this have been "pocket phoning" where a call is inadvertently made? I've been on the receiving end of a couple of those, often several times in succession.

Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :

Apparently a feature of a smartphone is that is can't happen. But this wasn't a few calls, it was hours of repeated calls to different numbers.

I'd accepted that it couldn't be proven... although we had returned the phone several times as faulty and eventually got a replacement. One of the faults my daughter reported was that the phone was 'randomly calling people'

Posted by the giant cheeseburger (# 10942) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
Apparently a feature of a smartphone is that is can't happen.

That is incorrect, pocket calls easily happen on a smartphone if you don't lock it.

If this is the fourth time it has happened and it continued despite getting a replacement phone (my bet is they couldn't reproduce the problem so gave you a replacement just to get you off their backs), I see no reason for the telco to give you any special treatment. The regulator is inevitably going to find all the logs are in order, that equipment is very reliable and the logs of the calls being made can be easily cross-checked with the logs of other numbers receiving them.

Pay it, and make your daughter pay you back an extra £15 per month to teach her a lesson that at some point she'll need to take ownership of her actions. And get her onto a pre-paid plan ASAP, so that she can build up a history with the provider which can be used in lieu of a credit check if she wants a post-paid plan again in the future.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by the giant cheeseburger:
pocket calls easily happen on a smartphone if you don't lock it.

They can happen pretty easily even if you do lock it. The unlock key or combination just has to be pressed accidentally.

Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :

I guess I don't write very clearly.
I am, after all, writing in hell just to vent and see if anyone else had similar problems or experiences, so they can vent too.
I imagined a conversation that said me too! Bastards! Etc.

Cheeseburger, I don't need parenting advice. I accepted that we couldn't prove it, paid it, my daughter volunteered to pay half and if I ever win against the company I'll give it back to her.

My current issue is that the company have charged me£448 for leaving.

THE CONTRACT HAD EXPIRED IN AUGUST.

this is in addition to the 500 GBP I paid extra in charges.

I don't know what's going on, but I'm effing angry about it.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:
I guess I don't write very clearly.

Well, if anything, your mistake was giving too much information. If you hadn't told us the details of WHY you chose to leave the phone company, people wouldn't have responded to those details, and you would have been left with what I understand to be the actual thrust of your rant - that you've left the phone company and they're still charging you money.

Seems quite rantable.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

I know its shutting the stable door after .... but

You don't give teens a contract phone.

You buy them a cheapish handset and give them XX of Pay-as-you-Go credit.

Look at the various PAYG deals available and work out what you think is a reasonable amount for them to have per month.

You buy them (or give them the money to buy) that amount per month - anything over that they fund themselves from their allowance.

For EMERGENCY use you have one basic mobile which you keep with £5 of credit. If daughter is going out and has no credit she is issued with that phone for the evening.

They will learn to control spending. And you can then put them onto a contract after a year or so in the almost certain knowledge they won't run up huge bills.

Posted by Kitten (# 1179) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Taliesin:

My current issue is that the company have charged me£448 for leaving.

THE CONTRACT HAD EXPIRED IN AUGUST.

My son had a similar issue when he was. Student, the company in question informed him that upon expired, the contract is renewed with a new contract unless you specifically inform them before the old contract expires that you will not be renewing, this was O2

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

I have personally received bills from companies we've never dealt with. They are immoral and simply looking for profit (I'm also considering the parking thread in Purg). No, you don't pay and you complain.

I wonder if the phones had viruses. All of them iphones, android, google, windows phones, and no doubt the upcoming ubuntu phones are all virus susceptible. An internet search of 'smart phone virus' will bring up interesting things to read.

Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :

Unbelievable, isn't it?

Organist, will you please stop giving me parenting advice? It really pisses me off. It's not the first time. I've stopped sharing issues on all saints because of it. I'm sure you mean well,

I think you also taught me something about my own less endearing characteristics, which I will presumably thank you for eventually but not right now.
Cheers.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Actually I think you're confusing me with someone else...

But feel free to lash out.

Posted by orfeo (# 13878) on :

quote:
Originally posted by L'organist:
Actually I think you're confusing me with someone else...

But feel free to lash out.

You said what kind of phone to buy a teenager. That's parenting advice. You could at least recognise your own work.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

Orfeo

It was being accused of having done it before - I haven't, I've checked.

OK - this target is taking some shore leave to deal with the remainder of Advent and sundry other things.

Have a good Christmas.

Posted by Taliesin (# 14017) on :

L'organist, you couldn't find it (its? Them? Plural) on the boards because all saints got cleaned up. If you checked your own posts it was probably too far back and since you don't remember it would surely be difficult to search for.

But you're right in that I was spoiling for a fight and hoped you'd give me one, down here in hell, that we wouldn't have in all saints.

But this morning I'm over it so it's probably a good thing you walked away. Have a good Christmas.

Posted by Sioni Sais (# 5713) on :

L'organist, Taliesin

You couldn't find it (its? Them? Plural) on the boards because all saints got cleaned up. If you checked your own posts it was probably too far back and since you don't remember it would surely be difficult to search for.

If it was cleaned up some time in the last five years it will, at worst, be in Oblivion. You could have a go at searching for it there, if you don't have any drying paint that needs watching.

Posted by Twilight (# 2832) on :

Me too! Bastards!

We got a phone bill (regular old landline bill) for dozens of calls to another state where we knew no one. I kept calling the office, telling them we had been sent someone else's bill. Yes, it had our name on it but we hadn't made the calls. No, we were not trying to get out of paying our bill. By the way where was our bill with the calls we actually had made? No, as a matter of fact I didn't "really care" that the person who is supposed to correct this was off sick for weeks. Why was it impossible for someone else to take over her work?

This all went on for months. He actually swore at me over the phone. We finally paid the wrong bill to keep our credit rating clean and switched to another company. Soon after, the bad company went under.

Posted by Mrs Shrew (# 8635) on :

My dad had a situation a little like this some years back, for which reason he refuses to ever have a contract phone again. He got a bill for over £500. We were just lucky that when we demanded call logs to show how it could possibly have been calculated, they showed tens of calls running concurrently (this was long enough ago that the phone could never have managed to do it) so they had to agree to cancel the bill.

Sadly phone providers still seem to be trying to get away with this rubbish. And charging you to leave a 2year contract well after the end of the two years is beyond appalling......

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