Crazy phone bill 2400.00

[Anonymous]

Well basiclly, I lost my phone abroad

No insurance, reported it to the police but they didnt want to know.

I kept ringing it hoping for the person to return it for a reward but didnt.

The phone was locked off after the 3rd day of calls by o2 themselves.

This is a copy of a letter i have sent to mr dunstone director of carphone warehouse..

I am wholly dissatisfied with the complete lack of Customer Service and (non-existent) duty of care that I have received over recent weeks from 02 Carphone Warehouse. I feel as someone of 02 Carphone Warehouse senior members of staff that you should be made aware of the details that have caused this sorry situation to come about.

Myself, my family and close friends have been loyal customers of O2 Carphone Warehouse for many years and it would seem that this counts for nothing in your eyes.

On the 6th June, I had my mobile phone stolen while in Malaga.

Despite several calls to Customer Services, I have been told in no uncertain terms that 02 Carphone Warehouse intends to hold me liable for the entire bill of over £2400.

I should like to know why your security measures are ludicrously paper thin. Can I ask what your anti-fraud software was doing at the time that my bill escalated to over £2400, in a foreign country, in a matter of hours when my average monthly bill over the past seven years has been in the region of £60?


In addition, I should like information regarding the credit limit on my accountas it appeared to be at £200, at which stage, with use of anti fraud software this should of kicked in instantly.

At no time was I made aware that your anti-fraud measures are so lacklustre as to leave me as your customer, to whom you have a duty of care, exposed to such a high degree. Had I been informed of this I would certainly have reconsidered my position.

I consider your lax security on the network absolutely atrocious. Reasonable care, I might point out, is a two-way street. Surely you have both a duty to your consumers and a contractual arrangement with implied terms to mitigate your losses?

I, a mere amateur, with just a with a quick internet search, was able to find this information about anti-fraud software for mobile phones which establishes a normal calling pattern as a baseline - Fair Isaac’s RoamEx Roamer Data Exchange Network is recognized as the world’s leading roaming solution for detecting fraud, improving revenue assurances, reducing bad debt and increasing revenues.

RoamEx manages your roaming data processing, formatting and routing to and from roaming partners in near real-time. Visibility of roaming activity is immediate, so fraud is eliminated right when it's discovered. Even better: RoamEx can leverage value-added applications to power third-party applications, such as prepaid services, fraud profilers, churn management systems and more.

Are 02 Carphone Warehouse, one of the biggest mobile providers in the world, seriously maintaining that they do not have such a system in place? How extraordinary...

Considering the actual cost to O2 Carphone warehouse, (not profit) of the phone calls made by the thief, I feel that O2 Carphone warehouse is exploiting me through the loophole of its lack of anti-fraud software. It would seem in your interest for it not to be working/activated as you could make a tidy sum from those whose phones are stolen simply by charging the customer at your crazy rates.

Regarding your rates, (and I am yet to receive the itemised bill from O2 Carphone warehouse, though have requested one twice so far and am therefore ignorant so far of how exactly the bill was run up)

What is totally unfair regarding the use of my phone abroad, is that the calls made were clearly fraudulent and you admit having no adequate method of controlling or restricting the handset use. As you pay the Belgian network a standard rate for calls made on my phone, (in bulk) then mark up the rate to add to your profit margin - not in itself an unreasonable scenario in ordinary, non-fraudulent circumstances - there is a deal of flexibility for you to realise your appalling shortcomings and act accordingly by waiving this bill.

Weighing up my financial situation compared to O2 Carphone warehouse incomethe sum of £2400 would be an absolute micro-drop in the ocean, yet to me this is a phenomenal amount of money.

O2 Carphone warehouse seems to have utterly absolved itself of any Corporate Social Responsibility and duty of care to me as a customer in this matter which I feel is utterly shameful.
Much is made on your website of O2 Carphone warehouse recognising its responsibility to communicate fairly with customers at all times.

O2 Carphone warehouse values its long-term reputation with customers and believes that it should always act to earn their trust and loyalty. Several issues are key to maintaining the trust of our customers. Underpinning this is the need for our communications with customers and potential customers always to be clear, transparent and fair.

May I draw your attention to a detail in your code of ethics regarding integrity which the Board of Directors of O2 Carphone warehouse has adopted and is applicable to all its Relevant Officers - part of which is to promote honest and ethical conduct, including the ethical handling of actual or apparent conflicts of interest; and require prompt internal reporting of breaches of, and accountability for adherence to, the Code.

I mentioned at the outset of my letter, my hitherto loyalty to O2 Carphone warehouse and the fact that several of my friends and family are also loyal customers. We will have absolutely no compunction in leaving you at the earliest opportunity should this situation not be resolved in a reasonable and fair manner - I am happy to provide you with a long list (20+) of those people and their mobile telephone numbers who support me wholeheartedly in my pursuance of fairness in treatment from you.

I’m sure it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that their collective monthly bills, totted up, would come to more than £2400 in no time.

But i have to say the Mail on Sunday will be interviewing me about this very matter in the coming days and asked me to notified OTELO and OFCOM of the upsetting course of events that has happened, and they have asked me to keep them informed of the progress I make in encouraging you to come to a reasonable and fair shift in focus, on what is, for me, a most distressing situation - as if I haven’t been through enough already...

I feel duty bound to tell you that due to the seriousness of the matter, there is a very real possibility of litigation; as a result I request that I be furnished with a correspondence address to forward to my solicitor to enable the negotiations to proceed.

I look forward to receiving your detailed reply.

PS: Like above i've asked for a copy of a bill FOUR TIMES and received nothing. Everytime this bill is not paid its EFFECTING MY CREDIT HISTORY.
NO BILL= NO PAYMENT
NO PAYMENT= EFFECTING MY CREDIT FILE

From someone who chairs the prices trust i expect you take this matter seriously

Yours sincerely

[adamtemp64]

I am sorry to hear your problem but this has been discussed before.

But for the future. It is your responsability for your phones safety and calls made.
When you get a replacement phone and contract from which ever network you chose I would firstly enable the sim pin on your new sim and any sort of password protection your handset offeres.

That way if the thief takes you phone whilst switched off the sim cannot be used if the phone is on and say the phone has password lock after x set x to a short time then when the thief tries to use it should have locked.

I have my iphone set up with sim pin and password lock after 1 min and I have insurance for the phone. With sim pin they cannot even use another handset.

Again sorry but I hope the above will help in the future.

for t&c see here point 6 http://www.o2.co.uk/assets/O2HybridNav/ ... _JAN09.pdf

[Anonymous]

I truly wish you luck, that is a huge bill. Unfortunately it is your responsibility until you report your phone stolen to o2 themselves, not just the police,which you didn't do, you waited for o2 to cut the phone off. Maybe a middle ground can be found between you and cpw? Or would your travel insurance cover you if you can't reach an agreement?

[Anonymous]

I understand that it's a huge bill and just adds to the initial upset of having lost a phone abroad. You haven't helped yourself though by waiting so long to have the phone barred and not having it insured. It's not just o2 that take this stance, but all the UK networks.
The networks basically take the stance/have created their terms and conditions so that the customer should be looking after their phone and should get it blocked asap if lost/stolen, that the customer has the option to insure themselves against loss/theft and if a customer opts to take extra time to have a bar applied/have an uninsured handset then it's at their own risk.
The calls made on the phone up until point of barring are the responsibility of the customer because the network have no way of checking who made them, how do they know if it was a theif calling somebody or a customer trying to pull a fast one by saying "phone was stolen, I didn't call those numbers, I don't want to pay".
Although there is anti fraud/debt measures in place it is still possible to run up a high bill, it can take up to 12 hours for calls made in the UK to appear on o2's system, once you go abroad it can take days or in some cases weeks for the calling data to be sent through from the foreign network meaning by the time it reaches o2/the UK network a theif has had plenty of time to run up a bill.
Anyway, I think your best bet is to see if you can have some of the bill reduced as goodwill but don't call up demanding/expecting it to happen, there will be a process in place and part of it may be to not offer a refund as once you do it for one customer it basically opens the floodgates, you may be lucky to get a goodwill gesture to try and help lower what you need to pay.
Finally, the whole going to the newspapers / threatening to get friends and family to leave thing is very over the top. So you'll all leave o2, ok, and go to vodafone/t-mobile/orange/3 who would all have wiped the bill off straight away? Emm...no, they all have the same basic policy when it comes to this sort of thing. There's no way I'd have myself in a paper with this story because I know most people will point out the 3 day delay in getting it blocked and think I was mad.

Good luck

[Anonymous]

You have my sympathies, but I do agree with all of the commenters above... unfortunately it's your responsibility to report the phone lost / stolen. And as it can take days for roaming calls to be charged to your account, much as it would make sense that there would be some advance fraud detection on the account, O2's ability to do anything like this is limited by the fact that the network your phone was roaming on had not passed the details of the usage to O2.

Good luck, would be interested to hear what the outcome is.