iPhone Reminder for overdue bill?

[JoeH]

For the first time ever, I received an Outlook reminder telling me to "Call back O2." I didn't remember creating this and after some brief investigation I discovered that a reminder had been added to my default iPhone Reminders list. This was synced via iCloud to Outlook.

The subject was "Call back O2", the timestamp was for the current time and the subject was a hyperlink which prompted me to call +44 330 123 9245. My bill is overdue and obviously O2 should be contacting me about this.

In the past, I would receive text messages or voicemails about overdue bills but this was the first time an iPhone Reminder was automatically created.

Did this come from the My O2 app which I have installed on my iPhone? I didn't see any settings which would allow automatic creation of reminders. I also checked my Privacy settings in iOS and nothing is authorised to use my Reminders.

Is this something in the Terms & Conditions for iPhone Pay Monthly customers?

Thanks for any help.

Joe

[jonsie]

I've never heard of this happening before on iPhone or Android. There is nothing at all in the t&c's that would allow this to happen automatically. Definitely nothing in iOS that would produce this. 

[Anonymous]

First I've heard of it but you could call cs & ask

[MI5]

New one on me too.

[Bambino]

Why is your bill overdue? Why aren't you paying by Direct Debit as you're supposed to be, according to the Terms & Conditions of your contract?

[JoeH]

Not entirely sure. I have two phones and I pay one by direct debit and the other (the phone which had the iOS Reminder added to it) is paid manually every 30 days. Perhaps it's an oversight, but it's never caused a problem before.

Billing issues and configuration aside for the moment, I'm interested in how this Reminder got added.

Joe

[jonsie]

No idea mate unless you added it yourself in the distant past. ....

[JoeH]

This is definitely not the case.

I'll give Customer Service a call. I was curious if anyone else had seen this before.

Joe

[jonsie]

I can say for sure that we haven't heard of this before! 

[JoeH]

A phone call was unhelpful. An online chat was more useful.

The advisor stated this is a new way of alerting iPhone users to overdue balances.

Here is a picture of the reminder for those who are curious (I removed the top two reminders for privacy):

The advisor said there was no way for me to request this feature be turned off yet.

I have no problem with texts and voicemails for overdue balances. I do admit, however, I'm a little uneasy about a provider being able to modify my Reminders list without the ability to disable it as I can with other third-party iOS apps.

I will post the entire chat session in a follow-up post since I have the advisor's permission to do so.

Joe