Just warning other potential victims. I have been a loyal O2 customer for years and used their International Favourites until they decided to terminate that deal. I was then transferred to a trial International Bolt on which, for Eastern Europe, should have meant 1ppm landlines and 4ppm mobiles.
I made phone calls in December, I was billed correctly. I made phone calls in January and was hit with a 42£ bill for international calls only. Doing the math I realised that I was being charged roughly 8p per minute instead of the advertised 1p.
I called O2, their rep agreed that it was a mistake, sent a request to review / recalculate the charges, I was supposed to get an answer within 2 days.
I waited for a week, called again. Apparently my bill was reviewed and it was correct. This new rep looked at the figures again, again agreed that I was charged 8 times more, spent some time on the phone, got back to me.
He promised that I will be refunded the 42£ but on the following bill because the current one could not be amended, and asked me to wait for 24 hours before calling my family again to allow the system to register the correct fee.
Today I received the new bill and not only there are no refunds on it but I am still charged 8p a minute for my calls abroad (always the same landline number in EU).
So I called again the billing department and a dizzy lady tried to convince me that there are 10p in a pound and I am charged correctly. I asked her to talk to someone who can do basic math or get a calculator. After a few minutes on hold she got back to me, appologised for the confusion, I was right. It should be 1ppm, I am charged almost 10ppm.
She is going to contact the International department to find out what is happening, another email, it is going to take 48 hours, she would get back to me.
At this point I was quite angry so I called again O2 and this time requested to be put through to the Complaints department. Another lady who listened carefully, checked, confirmed, asked me to bear with her, she would get to the bottom of it and call me back.
She called me back in less than half an hour. The intertrial International bolt on expired on twenty something December. The "new" tarrif since the end of December is 5p per minute for landlines and this is what I have been charged, correctly.
Of course, because nobody warned me about it, I am going to be refunded the surplus international charges to date (except I paid VAT for those 42£ and for the 10£ this month and O2 is not going to refund any of that) but I still have to pay the current bill in full and the adjustment will come on my next bill.
As all this started to sound familar I asked her to put me through to the cancellation department and 5 minutes later I was free of contract (although they still have the cheek to charge me a termination fee for one month on a SIM only contract).
So many things are wrong in the above story that I wouldn't even know where to begin.
First of all there has been and there is no communication whatsoever about a "new" International Bolt on tarrif or cancellation of the old one, in writing, by means of message, email or on their website. Moreover, their own staff has no idea about a change of tarrif.
This sounds very much like O2 pulling a fast one on their customers, by imposing arbitrary tarrifs and giving no explanations whatsoever. "We charge you 5p per minute because we can and we started this new service when we decided to start it. No, we didn't tell you about the change but you used the service and you are good to pay as much as we say you are good to pay because we say so." And this is pretty much it.
The 5p per minute story itself is just a story because my charges amount to roughly 8ppm which, even after adding VAT, are well over this new made up tarrif.
The story ends with O2 losing another customer.
