Can you help an 81 year old with his complaint please

[Anonymous]

I am 81 years old and for the last year or so I have funded a mobile phone through O2 for my grand daughter who is 14 years old. As an special christmas surprise I decided to order an iphone 4s for her. I shopped around to check deals and then phoned O2 at the end of November to discuss what they could offer. Having explained what other offers I had considered I was put through to the retentions department. I explained that the phone was for a christmas gift and that the current contract was an unlimited calls deal on a simplicity sim only contract, I further explained that I had taken this contract so that I would not be hit with any ludicrous bills should my grand daughter go over her contractual allowance. The adviser looked at the call history and advised me that a contract with 600 cross network minutes and unlimited O2 to O2 calls would be more than sufficient for our needs, I did question this and for a small additional cost decided to take a contract with 900 cross network minutes as a further precaution. The adviser explained that I should ask my grand daughter to download an O2 app onto her new phone so that she could monitor the use of her new phone once she opened it on christmas day. I duly ordered the phone which was delivered early in December and then sat in wrapping paper under our tree until christmas day.
AT NO POINT WAS I TOLD THAT THE NEW CALL PLAN WOULD COME INTO EFFECT IMMEDIATELY AS I ASSUMED THAT THIS WOULD BE DONE WHEN THE NEW PHONE WAS ACTIVATED. THE ADVISER KNEW THAT THIS WAS A CHRISTMAS GIFT AND WOULD NOT BE USED FOR SOME WEEKS.

On the 15th December my grand daughter called me in a panic. She had received a text from O2 telling her that she was £229 above her tariff charge for the month and as she had been used to an unlimited calls package she couldn’t understand why this was the case. I reassured her that there must be some issue with O2 and that I would call them. I was hugely surprised as again I didn’t know that the new contract had come into force and I couldn’t tell her that I’d ordered her a new phone for christmas. I called O2 Customer Services immediately and spoke to an adviser. The young man I spoke to who was very offhand and didn’t seem to think £229 was much of a problem, he looked at the account and explained that the unlimited O2 to O2 calls part of the call plan had not been added to the plan and that this was the likely reason that there were additional charges. He explained that he would get the O2 to O2 element added to the call plan and would have the bill revised. He said that this may take some 5-7 days. I challenged this as I thought that this was a long time to take to sort things out and I was concerned that the bill could escalate and that if it wasn’t sorted out O2 may try taking this amount from my bank account. I was reassured that it shouldn’t be a problem and the adviser suggested that if I was really concerned that I should cancel my direct debit whilst the problem was resolved!
I was confident that the problem had been dealt with and that my grand daughter could now continue using her phone without running up any further liabilities but sadly a few days later around the 20th December a further text arrives telling her that she is £417 over her tariff, the poor girl was beside herself with worry and I was furious after having spent over half an hour on the phone trying to sort it out and having been reassured that it would be done. I phoned O2 customer services again and spent over an hour on the phone talking things through with an adviser who told me that he couldn’t find any record of the previous call and that the O2 to O2 element of the plan had been added but would not come into effect until the next billing date. With some cajoling he said he would fill in a new form to get the bill revised but he couldn’t give me the information there and then as to how the bill had been arrived at. I was really concerned about the charges but was reassured once more that once the bill was revised all would be well. This adviser promised me that he would sort things out and that I should check my account online in 4/5 days time to make sure all was in order.

Christmas day came and my grand daughter was thrilled with her new phone and after she had opened her gift it reminded me to check the account online which I did on the 28th December. To my absolute horror the bill had escalated to a massive £738 so once again I am on the phone calling O2 customer services to be told that they have indeed revised my bill and applied a credit for some £52 + VAT for O2 to O2 calls charged in error leaving some £690 still to pay! I spent a further 90 minutes explaining what had happened and the adviser was really sympathetic and was obviously struggling with the awkwardness of the case and repeatedly said that this was a real difficult one. The adviser obviously referred the case to a variety of supervisors and eventually had to arrange to phone me back the following day promising me that he would do his best to resolve the matter. I received a call back the following day from the same young man who had now adopted a whole new tone of voice to tell me that following a review of the case the bill stands and O2 consider that I had been sold the new contract correctly and had been given appropriate information to monitor the use of the phone. In a nutshell the whole debacle is apparently entirely my fault.

There are loads of issues in here I know including the fact that my grand daughter made many more calls on her phone than usual but I feel that I have not had good advice at the outset, that I have been poorly informed and supported during the calls I made to customer services and to be effectively told to just pay the bill is an insult after having made such a repeated effort to get some effective customer service.

At 81 years of age I can really do without the stress of dealing with this never mind the thought of trying to find £700 to pay the bill next month. My grand daughters new phone is now back in it’s box as it will not be used until this matter is resolved.

Any advice, constructive comments or other information which may help me will be gratefully received.

Stewart Walters

[adamtemp64]

If you have a) spoken to customer services and are still not happy b) then escalated to a manger you then c) use the complaints review service details on the contact us page under complaints procedure.

But as soon as an iphone is dispatched the new tariff starts (that happend to me) So the adviser should have made that clear.
Regarding the charges after that you will have to sort that out with o2.
If you use the CRS put it all in chronological order in clear short paragraphs explaining what went wrong and what you would like o2 to do to resolve the issue (they can see when the iphone was first used)
http://bit.ly/sf8aW0 link to complaints proceduer

[jonsie]

Because the phone was sat in the box all September you can't even use the 14 day get out clause. I would follow Adams advice and even mail it recorded delivery to the Complaint Review Service.
You could also try sending a PM to one of the O2 staff on here such as Abs@o2 here http://bit.ly/vhr19i
Hope you get it sorted PDQ but you also need to speak to customer service again otherwise the account is going to go into arrears with all the usual legalities and procedures that accompany it.

[sheepdog]

Although the phone is back in the box, what about the sim card? If the granddaughter still has it, then charges are bound to continue. As you are the legal contract holder, it is your responsibility to deal with that aspect of knowing where the sim card is at all times (which is o2's point). Unfortunately, o2 (nor other networks) will care who is making the calls as you are the one who signed up saying you're paying the bills. It does happen a lot as a number of posters find themselves in a similar situation with partners or friends who they no longer are associated with.
I am however, surprised at you being told to cancel the direct debit when they all know (and often stated here) that all that does is cause even further problems let alone the beginnings of a CCJ. Extremely bad advice by CS there as you would then have to pay the amount by card way before the DD date. BTW, if it does come to paying it you are free to sell the iphone which will cover the outstanding amount.
Though you do have to question that an increase of around £300 in 7 days (20-28th) is all calls and not something else like data usage or premium texts?

[Anonymous]

The sim card is back in the box also. If I end up paying the £700 I will still not be able to sell the phone as the contract is for 24 months and yes it was all calls.

[jonsie]

The phone is now yours whether you choose to use it or not so you are able to sell it if necessary. However you would still continue to pay for your contract.
It's all a bit of a mess isn't it. I would still go down the complaints route whilst you are trying to find that mobile number. They do take up to 7 working days to respond so I would get the process started straight away.
There may be something of assistance here but you really need someone at O2 to take ownership of your complaint and get it resolved to every ones satisfaction.
Thats why I would PM abs@o2 to see if he can help.

[sheepdog]

Just to add to Steve's post, if you do try to terminate the contract now you would be liable to pay the remaining months x current tariff in one lump sum.
BTW, I'm still curious about the calls part to get that expensive. As you changed tariffs, what was the billing date and pro-rata payments (will be on the bill) stated? There may be some problem over that which would have resulted in charges, though it should be small.
Leading onto my next query as to what the allowance was at that point in time as using normal calls would have used up the allowance: http://shop.o2.co.uk/tariffSmallPrint#incMCPM before charges being applied.
Also - and as a point to remember - has one of the numbers that was called, migrated to another network from o2 without the granddaughter knowing? If so then the o2-o2 calls isn't going to help in the future!