Billing.

[Anonymous]

I hate this new method of billing in separate chunks for airtime and device. It's pointless and costly. Due to a bad crossover of funds, money didn't come into my account on time by a day so my direct debit bounced - not the issue; what I'm peeved about is that I'll now get charged twice for what is actually the same bill from my bank as it's classed as 2 items that have bounced. Then when I tried to pay today (the next day!), it had to be done as two separate payments. What possible benefit is this to me as a customer? In my previous contract with 02 it was still technically billed as airtime and device, but came out of my bank in one payment. For the life of me I can't fathom the point of being billed as 3 items (2 devices, 1 airtime). It's 2015, we should be able to consolidate billing not make it more needlessly complex to suit the accounting team at Telefonica!!!
Apologies if this is an old topic, I'm just cross as it's the first time it's really mattered.
Rant over.

[jonsie]

So easy, pay off the credit agreement for the device and you can simply start over with the latest and greatest device.

[Anonymous]

I didn't say refresh was a bad idea, nor that I didn't understand how it worked, nor that I didn't understand when I signed up for it. I just don't accept it needs to be billed as 2 separate payments out of my account.

[viridis]

Because one is a service agreement and one is a consumer credit agreement.
They cannot be treated as one due to the different legalities between them.

[MI5]

or to put it another way, it's a loan payment that goes somewhere completely different to the airtime payment.

[jonsie]

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@MI5 wrote:
or to put it another way, it's a loan payment that goes somewhere completely different to the airtime payment.

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Therefore making complete sense to have separate direct debits.