Pay monthly services

[calpsy]

Hi 1st time on here and sorry if its the wrong place .

My sons contract is for £35 per month and has always been this and hasnt really ever been over by £5  .  I gets a call from vodafone telling me hes overusing his phone , some calls are 5 hours ( yeah i know ) , and the bill stands at £1100 .

SURELY they cannot do this ??

Hopefully someone in the know can tell me where to go and what to do .

THANKS in advance .

[Dankitch]

You would be best to get a log of what calls were made and when to make sure the bill is correct, if the bill is correct and this many minutes was used then it's up to you to talk to your Son about it

[Martin]

Hi calpsy

It sounds like the phone has been heavily used as you mention one call is 5 hours long. I would have a look at the usage on the number through "My Account" and this will show how much exactly has been used.

Once the bill is due I would have a conversation with our Collections team on 191 who might be able to help with a payment plan. 

Martin

[calpsy]

Thanks for the replies

Ive checked the statement and we are not disputing the amounts as theres some for 4 5 and 6 hours long . My real question is why did vodafone not alert me before this has happened ?   Not trying to pass the buck but for something that is normally £35 per month to rocket to £1400 ( this is the new total ) to me says something is wrong with vodafone protecting customers .

I cant afford to pay this so looks like a debt collection company will be getting small monthly payments .

[Nabs]

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calpsy wrote:

Thanks for the replies

Ive checked the statement and we are not disputing the amounts as theres some for 4 5 and 6 hours long . My real question is why did vodafone not alert me before this has happened ?   Not trying to pass the buck but for something that is normally £35 per month to rocket to £1400 ( this is the new total ) to me says something is wrong with vodafone protecting customers .

I cant afford to pay this so looks like a debt collection company will be getting small monthly payments .

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Hi Calpsy,

The whole idea of having a contract is that you are never cut off if you use it a lot, No network in the uk (as far as i am aware) will monitor you useage and cut you off when you have reached your allowance. Thats what pay-as-you-go was designed for.

To use your mobile to reach a bill of £1400 he must have been aware that the cost of this would mount up!

Would you not be more annoyed if Vodafone froze your account when you reached say £100 and you were unable to make calls/send messages? i can assure you many customers would!

In short this is not Vodafone's fault or responsibility.

[calpsy]

Did you actually run that through your head before you posted it ? ? ?

Would you not be more annoyed if Vodafone froze your account when you reached say £100 and you were unable to make calls/send messages? i can assure you many customers would .  

REALLY ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

So you actually believe that its better to be ALLOWED to run up a £1400 bill than get cut off and cant make calls after £100 ? ?

Your wanting a response cos no-ones THAT stupid to make a remark like that and NOT be taking the ###### .

[Martin]

Hi calpsy

When bills do run so high, there will always be 2 ways to look at it. 1. Is your view where a bar should be applied at a certain amount 2. No bar so that you can continue to use the phone as its looks like the phone is needed to be used.

I am sure that no company will ever get this nailed on as everyone has different opinions. 

But please let me have a look into this for you. I have just sent you an email if you can reply back to that with the relevant information and we can investigate this.

Thanks

Martin

[SynthFG]

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calpsy wrote:

Did you actually run that through your head before you posted it ? ? ?

Would you not be more annoyed if Vodafone froze your account when you reached say £100 and you were unable to make calls/send messages? i can assure you many customers would .  

REALLY ? ? ? ? ? ? ?

So you actually believe that its better to be ALLOWED to run up a £1400 bill than get cut off and cant make calls after £100 ? ?

Your wanting a response cos no-ones THAT stupid to make a remark like that and NOT be taking the ###### .

 A mobile phone contract is an unlimited credit agreement, you have to be over 18 to take one out and it's safe to assume that you are aware of the costs involved in over using the phone

It's also to be assumed that if you know you are going o go massivly over your contract limits you are sensible enough to look at upgrading your plan to avoid a huge bill

When I was working abroard (many years ago) I'd regularly have random months where my bill rocketed to £300+ and I would have been more than a little ###### off if my phone had suddenly cut off whilst I was wondering round the middle of the arabian desert

As far as I'm aware only tesco offer a contract with a cap,

Must however say £1400 per month is an impressive amount, has your son got himself a thai girlfreind or something

[TimGriff6]

Could you just confirm what happened so that we can see the situation more clearly?

As I understand it:

The unbilled minutes got to over a trigger figure (I would guess at £1000) and someone from Vodafone was assigned to call you.

By the time they did the balance was standing at £1100.

You made your son aware of the problem.

Now the bill is £1400.

So, since being made aware of the problem your son has been able (been allowed by you?) to continue to over use the phone to the tune of £300.

I can't imagine why this would happen so perhaps there is a fault with the phone or the network which means that once started the calls are not being terminated.  Is that possible? 

[euphoric_mess]

On the idea of a call cap, I think I had one as a kid, not because my parents imposed it but because I asked for it. I am sure something could be added to the account. However as a standard then there should not be a cap in place, but maybe a courtesy call.

However maybe the problem is more to do with allowing your child to use the phone in a manner that runs up such a bill. I know I would be in deep trouble had I run up a bill of £100, never mind the one your son seems to of.

However if there has been an error, I assume there has not, then I take those comments back.

The thing is, how do Vodafone know where to put the cap? I bet there could be an angry parent moaning at Vodafone where they to have put a cap and the usage been important, but like I say, good customer service may have seen a courtesy call. 

[calpsy]

Ok bad enough it was £1100 ...... Phoned up 2 days later to be told it was £1450 ! ! ! left it for 2 weeks to find out stuff and phoned up yesterday to see what we could do and the NEW bill is £3200 ! ! ! He hasnt used it since getting the £1100 bill . That was for the last month . So tell me now Vodafone are still right and are morally correct charging me £3200 .

[Lee]

Hi there calpsy,

Thanks for your post about your son's usage and a contract that's in your name. I'm really sorry to hear of this.

I can see Martin emailed you on the 1st of November but we've yet to receive a reply. I've just sent a secondary email to you. If you could reply to that email with the requested details we'll be able to see how the bill has increased.

I've closed your other thread as it's senseless for me to have to post the same message twice.

It's also worth noting that our calls and data can be up to 72 hours in arrears which means that at the time the information given was correct and since the use of the handset had been taken away from your son, that the network has received further call data but we'll be able to clarify this if you can reply to my email.

Cheers,

Lee

[calpsy]

Lee nothings come in my email inbox . checked spam too . nothing .

[Lee]

Hi calpsy,

Sorry, I forgot to advise you; we're having a delay on our outbound emails at the moment and it's under investigation. It'll come through but I can't say exactly when.

Reports seem to be about four hours at the moment.

Cheers,

Lee

[C2]

Spectacular! with a little searching there are precedents to this.. http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/experts/article-1716135/Must-I-pay-my-sons-790-phone-bill.html ;-) good luck!

[calpsy]

Just a quick update for anyone interested .

Had a call some days ago from Vodafone .

They said they would look into the calls etc and to cut a very long story short they have removed ALL the charges , EVERYTHING !

Thank you to James the person who done all the work .