Trouble with mobile broadband bill help!!

[Anonymous]

Hi,
I bought mobile broardband for my daughter approx 8 months ago on a 24 month contract. The first bill came in at over £300!!! as they said she had gone over her limit. They did cancel that bill and since then all has been ok until this month. My daughter phoned me to say she had been disconnected so I called o2 CS to be told she had gone over by £459.00 !! I nearly had heart failure. Still I accepted my responsibilities and made arrangements to pay them under the debt management scheme and was told my credit rating would be affected.. 5 times I was assured the connection would not be re set until the bill was cleared.Last night my daughter called me to say she could connect to the internet. I went round and physically saw that she can. I also saw a message sent the day they disconnected her saying she had gone over her data allowence by £50 so they were disconecting her in order to stop her running up a higher bill. o2 cant give me a reason why she can access the internet I was told by CS that as far as they are concerned she is barred. More worrying is that it is clear from the O2 message that she was disconnected at £50 over yet they are insissting I owe £450 and my credit rating has been affected. Please help me. This whole thing has caused enormous family arguments, my daughter is barely speaking to me and I am not sleeping at the thought of owing this money. Further more as her billing date is the 17th of each month how could she have possibly gone through her limit AND £450 on top in 19 days.I need to sort this and I want to leave o2 as I no longer trust them.

[Anonymous]

Drum...,

no problem; partly my fault in the wording of my earlier post and its phrasing which was interpreted in a way which I had not intended.

If no one is listening then can I suggest emailing the head honcho's office on #### . They should be able to speed up action in terms of bill review.

Fully concur with your comments. In situations such as yours then O2 could appoint a problem manager who takes responsibility and maintains a dialogue with you on progress and resolution. It's the fact that they fail to communicate or don't listen to you that is so frustrating.

I was a very happy business customer for 10 days and the dongle delivered fine and I then decided to close/cancel under "happiness guarantee".Then the billing problems started!!

[jonsie]

To Seraphsailor and drumahurk

I totally agree with you both on the standard of customer service you have received and it is appalling.

However, that was not my point. Other people comment on here that they are speaking to an Indian call centre because of the name and accent of the adviser they have spoken too. That assumption is wrong.

I also speak as I find and I have so far not had any negatives from dealing with O2 staff, even with people of ethnic origin. Having said that, I have never been told that I owe them a ridiculous amount of money.

I do wonder at times why large companies do not realise the stress and trauma of trying to sort out an alleged debt can do irreparable harm to a person's health and well being. A debt of a couple of hundred pounds (and I just use this as an example) means nothing to a company such as O2 but can be the difference to life itself for a customer. The injustice of it all can tip a person over the edge.

In both your cases, O2 are badly at fault and drumahurk in particular, I do hope for a speedy resolution to your problem. The way I understand the new legislation coming in, is that you will not be allowed to be more than £50 over your limit and O2 have failed badly in this.

[Anonymous]

Hi All,
stevyjones :, is the legilation you mention in force now or is it something that is due to come in? They told me they dont do this ever but this is obviously not true as they did disconnect her at £50. I spoke to T-mobile who I have a phone with and they said they do disconnect at £50. Surely its not that difficult.Why oh why didnt I go with them. I have been their customer for over 10 years, had to complain once and they phoned ME with an apology and a full refund with in 24 hours.
Seraphsailor : Thank you for the email address. I will use it as
Will be phoning around 9 and will come back at let you know how I get on.

[Anonymous]

Stevy, if I recall correctly, the legislation is for roaming browsing, not UK.

Drum, if there was a bar on, any usage during that time should be recalculated, although the data system doesn't update in real time so whilst it may have barred her once it realised she had gone to £50, she might have also had charges pending hence the other £400.

She will have gone over her allowance down to her usage so I suspect she is doing something more than a bit of Facebook and general browsing. A bill of that much means she has gone over by around 2295mb (2.24GB) so maybe it might be worth looking at if her allowance is enough for her?

Another thing is that o2 have brought out new mobile broadband tariffs, now I'm not sure if they'd allow it but you could always see if they will let you to move to one of them, the overage charge is now only 2.4p per MB on the newer tariffs.

The reason why they don't disconnect is because at the end of the day they give contracts to over 18's and assume that they are capable of keeping an eye on their own usage by checking recent charges on their online account ect. They only monitor and bar high risk accounts such as those with a low credit score ect.

[Anonymous]

Wow I am completely blown away by the arrogance of O2. I was actually told that there was" no point in them carrying out an investigation as their billing system does not make mistakes" !! That statement left me speechless. Still no explanation as to the difference in the message on screen and the bill, just a lot of waffle. Oh and the latest is that someone hacked her wi-fi connection and used her allowance despite being categorically told by Car Phone Warehouse when I bought it that the connection was secure.They have told me to take the dongle to an O2 shop so they can confirm that the message on the 8th said the bill was £50 when they disconnected. Another insult, as obviously I am lying and they are so inept that they cant check the messages they send.When I told them I only intended to pay them the £50 + the £10 monthly fee they told me I am not allowed to do that !
As for the internet still being connected I am completely confused It appears they could do it on the 8th of March but are unable to do it now and insisting my daughter must be accessing it some other way, through their web site was one suggestion , Now forgive me if I sound stupid but dont you have to have an active connection to log on to the O2 web site in the first place?
I have gone beyond angry and now find the whole situation verging on hysterical and slightly surreal. Isn't the customer supposed to be listened to? Obviously not if your an O2 customer.The operative was very polite but completely useless and apparently I could have been told all this waffle on Saturday when I phoned but I was told then that I needed to speak to the debt department and they were closed till Monday.When I phoned the debt department today, surprise , surprise It was the customer service department I needed to speak to.
I dont know where to go from here,Should I wait until the Car phone Warehouse tell them I am not a liar or just go ahead and mail the CEO, or just go straight to otello. Any advise?

[perksie]

I can't help thinking this is always going to be a problem when one person takes out a contract on behalf of another.

The contract holder has no control over the usage at all, and as we know it can be an expensive mistake, but if the airtime has been used it usually has to be paid for.

Note: Mobile Broadband is not wi-fi.

[Anonymous]

Yes you are probably right but my daughter is a young single Mum and needed internet to complete a college course to better herself and get off benefits.Any way none of this excuses O2,s arrogance and inability to explain to me in simple terms how this has happened.Surely Like all companies they have a duty of care to their customers. I feel like all they have done is take advantage. But then maybe thats how they make their money, preying on those who can afford it the least.

[Anonymous]

It's worth nothing that the software on the computer (Connection Manager) is used as an "indication" of what you've used.
It's not always 100% accurate. The O2 website is where you can log onto the Mobile Broadband account and check under "recent charges" to see how much of the monthly GB has been used to date.

Otello, CEO...it won't make any difference. If you're daughter has overused the service then it will have to be paid for. The software on the computer is an indicator but not 100% accurate. I'm sure it says this under the graph were it shows how much you have used.

Back when mobile broadband was first launched the only way to check the useage was via the site. It couldn't be checked easily via the software.
It was just put there to be more convient

[Anonymous]

To be honest I dont have a problem paying it if I owe it, thats fine, what i do object to is being talked down to and treated like an idiot. No one can explain to me what has happened in plain english and the fact that they just dont care enough to protect their customers from these massive charges. I know the chances of winning are virtually nil but I wont be treated like this and dont believe anybody should. I am not a computer nerd (that shrould be obvious seeing as I dont know the difference between mobile broadband and wi-fi !)just a regular person and all this is beyond me but I do know customer service, its my job and what I have experienced with O2 is NOT customer service.

[Anonymous]

At risk of repeating myself, I think the lag in the time it takes for the billing system to update when it comes to data is where the other £400 has come from.

You could always request they send it to the network investigation team and ask them to verify that the data was accessed by your daughters computer and is correct, but in all honesty, I've never known the billing system to be wrong either.

Ignore the hacking statement they made, clearly wrong.