£36.667 charged for a whatsapp call

[Dhananjaya]

I was charged £36.667 extra for a call I made through 'Whatsapp' on my phone. They charged me as if I made an IDD call through my phone. I thought Whatsapp calls only goes through internet connection/ data usage. Could someone explain, please?

[MI5]

@Dhananjaya 

You need to check your whatsapp settings as it is possible to use the mobile network for making calls.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/account-and-profile/about-sending-messages-on-whatsapp/?lang=en

[Dhananjaya]

Thank you for the response. I was at home connected on my home wifi, and I do have a record on my WhatsApp having made that call. I do make WhatsApp calls to overseas daily, but this is the first instance of this happened. My Whatsapp settings, I haven't authorised to charge me on my connection.

[MI5]

The charges would need to be discussed with O2 @Dhananjaya 

Contact numbers here Guide: Coronavirus Community Help and Support 

[Dhananjaya]

Thanks again for your prompt response. I did call them on 202 from my mobile. Their explanation was ‘whatever on the bill as a customer, I am legally obliged to pay’.  Yesterday I paid £92.26 after my bank declined to pay this direct debit as this was out of character of my usual monthly bill. I told O2 that I had settled this bill yesterday and I was looking for an explanation of how £36.667 appears for a single call as this was a Whatsapp call and I do not want this to happen again. I did not get an answer to that. She kept explaining my legal obligations of paying out whatever appears on the bill. Then she offed me a Bolt On for IDD calls for the future. I declined and asked to set a spend cap of £5 on my account. So in future, such unforeseen and unexpected expenses hopefully will not appear on my statement.  Not very happy.

[MI5]

@O2Ellie @Anonymous 

Can you provide more help than CS please?

[Anonymous]

@MI5 Thanks for the tag. @Dhananjaya will private message you regarding the issues.

Thanks

O2Simon

[Dhananjaya]

Thank you for the private message and I am happy to provide with any details you need from me to look into my concern. I am not asking for the 36.66 pounds but please figure it out how a WhatsApp call was charged as an IDD call made from the mobile line. If this happened to me, it could happen to anybody else on O2 all over again. That would not look nice on a major UK mobile services provider in the business. I have capped my expences now with O2 so, hopefully, I will not see any more nasty surprises in future.