Hi,
I am sorry to bring up an old topic again, but I am afraid this has NOT been easy to prevent, as I have today received a call from Aerial as well. I too was duped into giving my info out, only to find out just moments after hanging up that this was a business contract. After googling this I came across this topic, and several others, which have left me mortified. I do NOT want to have the problems this poor lady has had.
Just to explain my situation,
I got called and was told that as a reward for being a loyal customer I could receive more benefits than I have now for a much discounted price. I too assumed I was speaking to o2 themselves, although to be fair it's possible Aerial was mentioned. I am not native english and I found the accent of the gentleman on the phone hard to understand.
I was asked if this was something I was interested in, and from the sums mentioned (22,85), I would be cheaper off so I said yes. I was then asked to 'confirm' my info. Again because I assumed this was o2, I didn't hesitate to give this info. Looking back now, it should have been suspicious to me that he had trouble with spelling my name, because it should have been right in front of him. But it never crossed my mind.
So then he tells me this is a legally binding spoken contract, but will send me a contract to digitally sign over email. So I assume the contract is not fully in place until I do sign, or else what would the purpose of this contract be? So I say thank you, hang up and wait for this email to arrive.
When it does, I see it comes from Aerial, not o2, and that it is a business contract. So I immediately start googling who these people are, and came across this thread. It scares the hell out of me, so I reject signing this mail and hope that that is enough.
To be safe I call the number that called me back, and I get the same gentleman that I spoke to (who was very nice and polite by the way), who then (after asking his manager) tells me that what I was signing for is not the contract, but rather giving Aerial permission to refund the discount to me. As in o2 would debit the original sum for this contract, and they would then refund the difference back to me. So if I refuse to sign this, I would have to pay the full sum for that contract. I told him I was not explained that before, that he himself did not even know this to tell me, he had to ask his manager after all.
So I said that I do not want to get that discount, I want to cancel. I figured that worst case I would have to pay the 75 cancellation fee, that will teach me to not double check before giving out info right? What does he then tell me? The cancellation fee would be the whole sum I would pay over those 24 months of the contract! This is where I started to get angry, I said: that is not a cancellation fee, that is simply paying for a contract whether I want it or not and whether I will use it or not. In your legal piece that you read out to me, you said I could cancel for a fee, that is misleading information!
I then told him that I have found many people online having this same issue before and that Aerial seems to have a really bad rep, and that I would contact o2 as others have done before me to get this sorted. The manager then allowed to 'cancel' this agreement as if it never happened. Hopefully this is true, but I will keep a close eye on my account and hope it doesn't get debited anyway.
If it's true, then I don't have a problem. If it's not, I would really like to ask Mr. Toby to help me out as he did this lady before me, because I did not break contracts, I did not refuse to pay a fee to cancel, but to make me pay fully for a 24 month contract that I wish to cancel, and having been told specifically that i COULD cancel is outrageous and just can't be legal. I suspect they are aware of this and offered to cancel because of that, even though cancelling a legally binding contract this way is illegal as well.
Regardless, I thought it was important to share here, o2 needs to be aware that this issue with their shady 'business partner' is still not resolved almost 5 months after the complaint of the lady who started this thread. It makes me leery of o2 themselves as well, because they don't seem to care particularly much about who they give our names and numbers to. With the widespread complaints about Aerial they should know by now this is a dodgy partner! Please make the people who are responsible for this partnership aware of this, and avoid having more o2 customers fear over the safety of their contact information!
