' SHOCKING'....Phone Bill after exceeding monthly allowance.! Apology in advance for rant..

[Anonymous]

Hello all...

This is my first posting on the O2 community (also, probably my last!).

I recently received my latest pay monthly phone bill and was horrified to see that I had exceeded my allowance by a factor of 10..! 

After rubbing my eyes, refreshing the page, pinching myself and kicking my dog ( not really! ) I contacted customer services.

Sadly, I felt 'fobbed off' with Company policy .

"...O2...can't possibly monitor all of it's customers....you can always call 202 from your phone to keep tabs on......we can look at a repayment plan to help...."... Blah blah blah...

I understand that service users are responsible for monitoring their usage but it shouldn’t be possible to exceed our monthly allowances by so much with no obligation on our service provider to intervene or shoulder part of the financial burden.

Don't get me wrong I'm not advocating 'Nanny state' regulations, but I believe that there could be some system put in place, similar to the bank and credit card providers, to alert us to unusual or out of character usage on our accounts, why can’t our phone providers offer the same service? 

I shall be contacting Ofcom to inform them of my concerns in the hope that something more can be done to prevent this from happening to others.

Thanks for 'listening'...

[MI5]

Allowances can be tracked in real time in your My O2 either online http://www.o2.co.uk/myo2 or via the app available for Android, iOS, BB and Windows users.

[viridis]

But, how did you go over by a factor of 10x and not think to check.?
Ofcom won't be interested in a users neglect of responsibility.
Sorry, I really am, but they won't.

[Bambino]

You can put a cap on your usage if you go to Tesco Mobile, who also use the O2 network. If you want to stay where you are, you'll just have to monitor your usage yourself, which is easy to do.

[gindygoo]

Come on I'm sorry but how could you not know that you'd used 10x as many minutes as on your monthly bundle?? That's a real feat!

It's your own responsibility to keep track of usage, and as above ofcom just wrong entertain your complaint!

Sorry it's a harsh lesson to learn, but I'll bet you do learn from it.

I'd advocate getting back in touch with cs and negotiating some sort of payment plan if you're unable to pay in one go.

[jonsie]

Just send a blank text to 21202 or use the My O2 app, it's as ridiculously simple and easy as that. You can't blame o2 for your own shortcomings. Surely to overuse your allowance times ten you must have had an idea you were over your allowance. Did you not think to check? Guess it's too easy to shift blame but the customer service response was fully justified and perfectly reasonable. Sometimes we just have to stand up and accept our own failings.

[Anonymous]

Sorry but you know you could monitor your usage as you said, you can't blame o2

you knew full well that you went over your allowances