Lost phone - huge bill

adm

Hi,
on saturday night/sunday the 24th of june i lost my mobile - i didn't realise untill late on sunday night and so i didn't report it till monday morning (i know i should have reported it immediately but i never suspected what would happen).

Anyway during the 24 or so hours between losing it and reporting it , some nice individual racked up 900 euros worth of calls to eastern europe.

I've been a business customer for years with o2 and have never exceeded 100 euro on a monthly bill , let alone 900 in a day.

I missed the 24 hour deadline by about 3 hours and now o2 are telling me there is nothing they can do and i must pay the entire bill.
This makes me extremely angry since they are essentially making money off a crime and accepting zero culpability in the matter.It seems they have no facility to monitor for unusual activity on a bill pay phone (its a business phone and they could have called any of the names on the account to check) - it also seems as if there is no cap at all on the phone credit.I wonder how they manage to monitor PAYG phones!!

To make matters worse - when the phone was cancelled they never even mentioned the huge number of calls and so it was only now (over a month later) that we realized what happened.

I dont suppose i have a leg to stand on but i was wondering if there was anything at all i can do.It just seems to me like a bit of a scam on behalf of o2 and i'm sickened by the whole affair - i feel like i've been screwed over twice.

mickjohnlong

can you not argue the point that the personyou reported it to did not check the last calls or asked when the last call you made was i thought that was standard when you report your phone lost or stolen

failsafe

mickjohnlong wrote:

can you not argue the point that the personyou reported it to did not check the last calls or asked when the last call you made was i thought that was standard when you report your phone lost or stolen

Mobile phone companies will usually bar phones straight away, and only validate you once you try to unbar them. Billing details also take a short while to come through on systems (online or at the helpdesk) so they may not have seen the extra charges when you were talking to them.

Try write in a letter or something like that (and be polite about it) and you might find that they meet you half way.

Oryx

To be fair on o2, you didnt report the phone missing immediately. If you had, you would have a valid case for not paying. The calls were made on it, and they are owed the money. They cant be expected to monitor the use of *every* bill phone. Im sure usage varies hugely with everybody, unusual activity is so hard to quantify.

As has been suggested, I would plead nicely with them, as a valued customer and see if they will help you on this as a gesture of goodwill.

neacy69

if you have insurance this will usually cover calls made when the phone was stolen.
Its up to you to report to the phone company as soon as the phone is stolen

Paulw

Why would they monitor your calls or usage? After 3 months, there is no cap on usage at all. Normally for the first 3 months they do have a cap on your bills, so that they are not left with you not paying.

As for PAYG - well, if you don't have credit, you can't make calls. Logical really.

You should get a Garda report that your phone was stolen. You can then write to O2, and they should wipe those call costs from your account. They may also track the calls - where they were made from, who they were made to.

Best of luck though.

adm

Paulw wrote:

Why would they monitor your calls or usage? After 3 months, there is no cap on usage at all. Normally for the first 3 months they do have a cap on your bills, so that they are not left with you not paying.

Well it strikes me that it *should* work similarly to credit cards - there's no way a credit card company would insist on me paying - they monitor unusual activity .
To the previous poster - i'd say 900 euros in one day would qualify as unusual , surely?!! from someone whos bill is normally quite low. i suspect they have the technology so its curious that they dont do it.also i wonder hypothetically how high the bill could go before they would notice? unlimited??
Incidently i have an itemized bill with all the numbers called.I wonder would the guards have any luck with that or would they even care?

I will try the letter option and hopefully they may be sympathetic - i was quite dissapointed when speaking on the phone with them.they seemed completely unwilling to budge.
Again its pretty obvious the phone was stolen and that i never made the calls so it strikes me that they are profiting from a crime ,which just seems wrong to me.plus i honestly wasn't aware of the 24 hour rule - dumb i know but there you go.had i been aware of it then i guess i would simply have lied about when it was lost!
I know this is all a bit 'poor me' but i would have hoped that o2 wouldn't simply wash there hands of it.It's a significant amount for me.

Who should i write or send an email to?
Thanks.

knighted_1

ring one of the numbers the thief rang and tell them that the person that rang them at that given time is on the street dead with no idenification card and could they confirm his identity-then tell them you need 900 euros to post him back to them

Bluetonic

adm wrote:

Well it strikes me that it *should* work similarly to credit cards - there's no way a credit card company would insist on me paying - they monitor unusual activity .
To the previous poster - i'd say 900 euros in one day would qualify as unusual , surely?!! from someone whos bill is normally quite low. i suspect they have the technology so its curious that they dont do it.

The onus is on the credit card company to prove you made the purchase when in dispute so it's in their interest to monitor it. No such onus exists with phone companies. Why would phone companies spend money monitoring accounts? It's extremely rare for a sim to be replicated so any rouge calls in the majority of cases can be put down to phone user incompetence, even still they give a 24 hour window to all for such incompetence.

parsi

Do you feel in any way even partly responsible ? You knew at a certain time that the phone was lost but yet waited until the next day to contact O2. Whilst you may have rights you certainly also have responsibilities to report a loss as soon as you are aware of it.

adm

parsi wrote:

Do you feel in any way even partly responsible ? You knew at a certain time that the phone was lost but yet waited until the next day to contact O2. Whilst you may have rights you certainly also have responsibilities to report a loss as soon as you are aware of it.

Yes certainly i feel responsible for not reporting it - if o2 were to offer to meet me half way and write off say 50% of the bill i would have no complaints but they seem completely indifferent to my problem.
thanks

vms7ply9t6dw4b

adm wrote:

Yes certainly i feel responsible for not reporting it - if o2 were to offer to meet me half way and write off say 50% of the bill i would have no complaints but they seem completely indifferent to my problem.
thanks

Get the account manager to phone and say they will switch to vodafone or meteor unless they write off the bill

mickjohnlong

when i lost my phone and reported it they wew able to tell me all the call that were made within the last hour and i rang them on a sunday what alot of people think that when they are a business customer they have to wait untill a business manager is in to report it which they might on be there on sundays

i would defo consider moving if they dont come to some sort of agreement

just checked the o2 website beside there support numbers it has the line is open 8am to 9pm automated system offers 24 hour service there for the 24 hour rule should not apply as the op could not report it with in 24 hours

jor el

adm wrote:

Well it strikes me that it *should* work similarly to credit cards - there's no way a credit card company would insist on me paying - they monitor unusual activity .

A credit card company will cover you if you report you card lost, but may not cover for what was charged to it before you lost it. They do monitor usage and in some cases contact the customer before they even know that the card is gone. But mobile companies don't monitor your call usage. I'd say there would be uproar if they did start to monitor customers calls. Also, credit card companies can reclaim costs from retailers if they didn't verify the signature or PIN.

To the previous poster - i'd say 900 euros in one day would qualify as unusual , surely?!! from someone whos bill is normally quite low. i suspect they have the technology so its curious that they dont do it.also i wonder hypothetically how high the bill could go before they would notice? unlimited??

But they don't monitor call usage. How much time and resource do you think they would need to invest into monitoring 1.6 million customers calls?

Incidently i have an itemized bill with all the numbers called.I wonder would the guards have any luck with that or would they even care?

There's no law against receiving a call from a stolen phone. I don't see what they could do bar ringing that person and asking them if they wouldn't mind telling them who was on the phone to them the night your phone was lost. The Gardai will probably not be able to do anything either as the receiver did nothing wrong, plus it's in a different jurisdiction.

I will try the letter option and hopefully they may be sympathetic - i was quite dissapointed when speaking on the phone with them.they seemed completely unwilling to budge.

I was talking to a friend of mine today who works in O2 and she was saying that there's nothing they will do, bar possibly offering you €50 off. Not a lot considering it's an €800 bill.

Again its pretty obvious the phone was stolen and that i never made the calls so it strikes me that they are profiting from a crime ,which just seems wrong to me.plus i honestly wasn't aware of the 24 hour rule - dumb i know but there you go.had i been aware of it then i guess i would simply have lied about when it was lost!

It was also obvious to you that it was stolen 12 hours before you reported it. If you couldn't be bothered to do anything then why should they? If you had lied about the time it was lost then they may have seen that some of the calls were made before you say you lost it. That would come back to bite you.

I know this is all a bit 'poor me' but i would have hoped that o2 wouldn't simply wash there hands of it.It's a significant amount for me.

Who should i write or send an email to?
Thanks.

Unless you're a very big customer, spending hundreds a month, then I'd doubt they'll budge. Even if you were, they might meet you half way, but maybe not. They still have to pay for those calls. The only way you could recover the costs is if you have phone insurance. That will cover up to €750 of calls.

I'm actually surprised that they offer cover for 24 hours before you report the phone lost. I would have thought that unless you had insurance then they would make you pay for any calls made in the intervening time.

cast_iron

How about telling them you met the 24 hour rule and therefore you would only be liable for the 1st 3 hours of calls while the phone was stolen?

Let them prove otherwise. While I don't have much sympathy for you, what's 3 hours?

MrPudding

KtK wrote:

They cant be expected to monitor the use of *every* bill phone. Im sure usage varies hugely with everybody, unusual activity is so hard to quantify.

Ah you do realise that they do not need to actually watch the account with a human don't you? Monitoring is very easy. If they did not monitor your call usage how could they bill you?

With my UK o2 phone when my call charges equal my monthly subscription in value, I am sent a text alerting me to the fact. If this had of been in place the OP would not have a €900 bill.

MrP

pepper

adm wrote:

Hi,
on saturday night/sunday the 24th of june i lost my mobile - i didn't realise untill late on sunday night and so i didn't report it till monday morning (i know i should have reported it immediately but i never suspected what would happen).

Welcome to life- there are dicks out there who prawl clubs just to steal phones- u may not have lost ur phone it may have been grabbed outta ur pocket without u knowing

adm wrote:

I missed the 24 hour deadline by about 3 hours and now o2 are telling me there is nothing they can do and i must pay the entire bill.

those bastards thrive on this ****- if they could reduce they 24 hour claim to 12 hours thay would- they know peole who are out the night before stay in bed as long as they can therefore passing the deadline

adm wrote:

This makes me extremely angry since they are essentially making money off a crime and accepting zero culpability in the matter.It seems they have no facility to monitor for unusual activity on a bill pay phone .

i agree they shuld have a limit on billphones for 24 hours (ex only 30euro of calls made per day)

MrPudding

jor el wrote:

A credit card company will cover you if you report you card lost, but may not cover for what was charged to it before you lost it.

Um, surely the charges on the card before you lost it would have been made by yourself? Why would they cancel them?

jor el wrote:

They do monitor usage and in some cases contact the customer before they even know that the card is gone. But mobile companies don't monitor your call usage. I'd say there would be uproar if they did start to monitor customers calls.

Christ. We are not talking about them listening in here. They already monitor the calls for billing purposes, you do realise they don't guess your bill at the end of the month don't you.

jor el wrote:

But they don't monitor call usage. How much time and resource do you think they would need to invest into monitoring 1.6 million customers calls?

Ah, it's called a billing system. I think you will find that every mobile company has one. Further, they spend huge sums of money making it highly available, they would be looking for 99.999% uptime, less than 6 minutes downtime per year.So in the grand scheme of things, the amount of time or resources needed to monitor 1.6 customer is irrelevent as they are already doing it.

jor el wrote:

It was also obvious to you that it was stolen 12 hours before you reported it. If you couldn't be bothered to do anything then why should they? If you had lied about the time it was lost then they may have seen that some of the calls were made before you say you lost it. That would come back to bite you.

So what would happen if you were unaware that your phone was lost or stolen or were unable to report it stolen for some reason?

It would be a simple matter for the phone company to send an alert. You have to ask yourself why they don't.

MrP

bushy...

pepper wrote:

Welcome to life- there are dicks out there who prawl clubs just to steal phones- u may not have lost ur phone it may have been grabbed outta ur pocket without u knowing

Yip , i know of one setup where one of the doormen was caught pawing through jackets left in the cloakroom for phones

pepper wrote:

those bastards thrive on this ****- if they could reduce they 24 hour claim to 12 hours thay would- they know peole who are out the night before stay in bed as long as they can therefore passing the deadline

24 hours is fair on everyone, if they gave a week someone would be unhappy eg " i thought my friends had it but when i met them the next week they hadn't etc "

pepper wrote:

i agree they shuld have a limit on billphones for 24 hours (ex only 30euro of calls made per day)

No, should be an option though .

Random

"With my UK o2 phone when my call charges equal my monthly subscription in value, I am sent a text alerting me to the fact. If this had of been in place the OP would not have a €900 bill."

But someone else had the phone, he'd not have got the text? What am I missing?

Bluetonic

MrPudding wrote:

With my UK o2 phone when my call charges equal my monthly subscription in value, I am sent a text alerting me to the fact. If this had of been in place the OP would not have a €900 bill.

Please stay away from the keyboard before you do any more damage :rolleyes:

Bluetonic

pepper wrote:

i agree they shuld have a limit on billphones for 24 hours (ex only 30euro of calls made per day)

Phone Provider: "Hi shareholders, just to let you know we're going to put limits our revenue streams"

Shareholders: "Great idea"

Aside, people need to be more responsible for their own actions. There are plenty of phones out there where you can pin lock access to the functions of the phone whilst still having the phone turned on, thus ensuring a would be thief finds it difficult to use the phone.

Once again people need to be more responsible for their actions, which i would say includes leaving a phone in a position whereby it can be stolen.

MrPudding

ciaranfo wrote:

"With my UK o2 phone when my call charges equal my monthly subscription in value, I am sent a text alerting me to the fact. If this had of been in place the OP would not have a €900 bill."

But someone else had the phone, he'd not have got the text? What am I missing?

The point is, the facility is there to automatically know when an account gets over a certain limit or other figure. It would not be hard for the operators to have actions hanging off these alerts. If the text message is not responded to the account gets blocked.

What I am trying to say is this, if the phone companies want to stop this kind of thing they could and there would be little or no expense in doing it.

MrP

pow wow

A similar thing happened to me in the UK - I misplaced my bill pay SIM card but wasn't sure if I'd actually lost it or just left it in the house somewhere. I called up within 3 or 4 hours to see if it had been used and had been told it hadn't, so rather than report it stolen (would have to have paid for replacement) I let it go thinking it would turn up. Instead a bill for £700 turned up. Long story short the fool I spoke to didn't check in the right screen to see if it had been used and as it had been used before I called and my reason for not cancelling it was him telling me no-one had been using it, the phone company refunded all the calls made after I made them aware. I was liable for about £80 as I recall.

In relation to O2, I am really struggling to think why you think they should meet you on the bill when you're the one who dragged your feet reporting it missing. We all know they have the facility to do X Y Z when it comes to billing but they never market that ability as a benefit and as such you shouldn't expect it. I've never been told my phone usage is monitored and would never expect my provider to do so, hence me ringing up as soon as I noticed it was gone.

Anyhow, a lot of how this will turn out depends on who you speak to at O2. I think you need to emphasise whatever prevented you/dissuaded you from reporting it immediately (for example if their website suggests there wouldn't have been anyone available to handle your call if you had rung in) and stress that as the reason you didn't. I would be reluctant to place the blame at their door on the basis they 'should' have noticed these calls were out of character for you. If your company has a big account with them they might be more receptive to your plight.

Good luck anyway, I know how much it hurts you and your wallet when this happens - believe me!

DeepBlue

There seems to be a lot of O2 staff posting on this thread .

Personally I would let them sing for their €900 - I wouldn't even offer to pay half of it.
Also 24 hours is a ridiculously short time in which you have to be certain that the phone is stolen and usually people don't realise about the time limit until after the phone has been stolen. I certainly didn't know about any 24 time limit till I read this thread.

This "it should work like a credit card where they monitor unusual transactions" thing is a red herring.

The fact is that they know that you didn't use it and yet they expect you to cough up for some criminal even though you've been registered with them for years - that's a sh**ty attitude for them to have.
I'm not sure what options you have to fight it as it seems they have you screwed - if you don't pay then they'll probably hold the debt over your head and threaten you with a bad credit history.

Paulw

Yes, mobile companies do spend large amounts on billing systems. The PAYG systems are a lot more intricate than the post paid systems.

PAYG systems have a limit for different criteria - how much credit you can build up, how much debt you can go to (a very small limit usuall), and such.

Post paid systems just add up the costs at the end of the billing cycle. They don't monitor the systems at all normally, because there is no need to.

You are liable for the calls since you didn't report it stolen. It's very unfortunate, but that is the case. Do write to them. They are not always as cold as you think.

Garth

I used to work in a mobile phone shop and OH can you imagine the uproar if people were being cut off halfway through the month for not responding to a text? Dear God.

"I'm a business user, and I could have been dying and I'm supposed to reply to some text??!!! Get me the manager, I'll ....." etc etc etc

Incidentally, the 3 network have a cap on usage and that's the sort of shouting and abuse we used to get as a result.

We used to get people in who would wait a week/month/3months to pop in and ask about their insurance and how do they make a claim?! And then they'd go ballistic, "What is insurance for anyway", etc.

Wouldn't matter if you gave people a year to do it, some would wait longer and then take issue with it.

adm

Garth wrote:

I used to work in a mobile phone shop and OH can you imagine the uproar if people were being cut off halfway through the month for not responding to a text?

How about if you requested a cap? i asked o2 if i could put a cap of 100 euro per month on my bill and they said no.

Incidently have a look at this article - this line caught my eye :
"The operator says that there is a system in place to alert them to unusual call patterns"

This refers to vodaphone in the uk

MrPudding

adm wrote:

How about if you requested a cap? i asked o2 if i could put a cap of 100 euro per month on my bill and they said no.

Incidently have a look at this article - this line caught my eye :
"The operator says that there is a system in place to alert them to unusual call patterns"

This refers to vodaphone in the uk

At the very worst this type of system would be a small add on to what is already in place.

I am all for personal responsibility, in fact I have not commented on whether or not I think o2 should let the op off, but at the same time a little help from the operators would not help.

MrP

Random

Would be nice to be able to limit yours bills each month .. or get clearance if it goes over. But it should be opt-in if anything.

Now good luck getting any of the networks to lose money

Gillo

mickjohnlong wrote:

just checked the o2 website beside there support numbers it has the line is open 8am to 9pm automated system offers 24 hour service there for the 24 hour rule should not apply as the op could not report it with in 24 hours

Just checked the website and it pretty obvious that the Speak Easy customer care is not 24 hours while the bill pay customer care is open 24 hours, heres the link.

Personnally, I'd say you are liable for the bill, but if you can't afford it (by can't afford I mean not have the money to pay it as opposed to not wanting to pay it) you can try coming to an arrangement to pay it over a number of months.

TBH, I don't see the system of limiting calls working at all, even if it was an opt-in service- once someone hits their limit they's simply call their network and ask them to either lift the limit or to remove it altogether. Their are a number of ways to check your balance at any stage during your billing cycle in place already.