O2 Refresh - Termination Charge

[Anonymous]

Anyone have any experience with this?

I wanted to move from O2 to Three - (for the unlimited data and free data romaing abroad).

I was told that if I paid off the handset part of my bill (£260) then I'd be free to leave whenever with no other cancellation fee.

So I opened a Three account, paid off the remaning handset amount of £260 and requested my PAC from O2. All goes well, number ported over.

I was expecting a final bill of about £5 - but today I recieve the E-mail:

'Your O2 bill for 01/04/15 is now ready. You can look at your bill here...

...In total, your bill for this month comes to £249.14. We'll request this amount from your chosen account on, or just after, the date in your bill.'

£247 of which is an early termination charge...

Phoned up straight away and the guy on the phone said he'd filled in a form and my bill would be recalculated in 4 working days. Then he told me to cancel my direct debit.

Now obviously I don't want £249.14 taken out of my account on the 15th - but I also don't want them to try and take the money, it get rejected because I've cancelled the DD - and then a black mark to be placed on my credit record...

Why on earth should it take 4 working days - in this day and age?

Anyone have any experience with this? It must have happened to other people. What's the best way to proceed?

[jonsie]

Your bill will be adjusted and presumably the delay is because it has to be transferred to join the back office work queue. Just keep checking in My O2 and make sure the bill is recalculated and pay it off as soon as possible.

There have been a number of errors reported on the community by refresh customers paying off the handset and being billed for the remainder of the airtime but normally resolved satisfactorily.

[Anonymous]

I often wonder why things take days in this day and age - you press a button and computers do the update there and then.

[Anonymous]

My plan is to leave the direct debit in place and keep checking - then if the amount hasn't changed by, say, the 8th of April - to cancel it to stop them taking the £250. If it changes before then, leave it to allow them to take the correct amount - £5ish.

[Anonymous]

You just know where this one is heading don't you!

[viridis]

I'm off down the bookies now,

[jonsie]

You people have no faith

[Anonymous]

I have no faith either - my prediction is something bizarre and technically impossible. The amount will change to a fiver tomorrow, but they'll still take £250. Then I'll have a world of pain getting the money back.

My guess is that the credit reporting is automatic, and I also expect it's one part of the system that works without fault every time, as soon as it gets rejected it'll flag up - and I really don't want any marks on my record, I'm going to be trying to get a mortgage later this year.