David v Goliath....How do I win against the behemoth that is O2 Broadband?

leftfooter

OK.....here's what happened. My Sister had signed up for Mobile BB with O2 on an 18 month contract @ €20 a month. She currently has 7 months left.

I came home from the States & have been using her USB device whilst here. I was unaware that there was a download limit. The service stopped working last week, and my sister got a phonecall to say that she had went over the limit during 2 different billing periods. She has previously never went over.

For the first period they want to charge her €164, and for the second period the want to charge €393. For the 2nd period I downloaded 23gb more than my limit. The 1st time was over a few days. You can imagine our shock.

What they've offered:

To reduce the bill by a 3rd, if my sister signs up for a new 18 month contract.
They will allow us to pay it spread over a few months.

Otherwise, they will pursue us for the full amount through the courts.

A couple of points that have me fuming:

We never got a phonecall, text message, email or communication of any kind to indicate that there was a problem with the account until we were nearly €600 into them.

We still don't have a physical bill stating what the entire breakdown is, apparently it's in the post.

There mantra on arguing with them is that "You should have read the terms & conditions in detail"

The fact that they allowed it to continue over 2 different billing periods before cutting off the account or contacting us.

What sort of an organisation screws it's customers so royally?

I obviously don't want to pay 1 cent more than I have to these bottom feeders, any ideas to combat such an unscrupulous behemoth?

jor el

leftfooter wrote: »

We never got a phonecall, text message, email or communication of any kind to indicate that there was a problem with the account until we were nearly €600 into them.

They are not obliged to tell you you're going over the cap, any more than you were obliged to know about the cap. It'd be nice, sure, but you see how that works both ways?

leftfooter wrote: »

We still don't have a physical bill stating what the entire breakdown is, apparently it's in the post.

Bills are viewable online.

leftfooter wrote: »

There mantra on arguing with them is that "You should have read the terms & conditions in detail"

Apart from the fact that you (or rather, your sister) should have read and understood the terms and conditions, you don't even need to do this. It's plainly obvious that there is a cap, as it's mentioned in several places on the O2 website, before you buy it. It's also in their FAQ, as well as being in the T&Cs. You don't have to look to far to find it.

leftfooter wrote: »

The fact that they allowed it to continue over 2 different billing periods before cutting off the account or contacting us.

All telecoms services come with a line of credit that you can use. When you start to go excessively into this credit, the company will contact you. This applies to land lines, mobile phones as well as mobile data services.

leftfooter wrote: »

What sort of an organisation screws it's customers so royally?

What sort of person uses a service without knowing what they're doing? Who signs a contract without knowing the limitations? Who gives the product of that contract to someone else without informing them of the limitations?

leftfooter wrote: »

I obviously don't want to pay 1 cent more than I have to these bottom feeders, any ideas to combat such an unscrupulous behemoth?

Calling them unscrupulous bottom feeders is probably not the way to go. The simple fact is you only have yourself to blame, and you should pay your sister the money for the bill you ran up on her. Same as if you used her phone make international calls and ran up a huge bill.

leftfooter

Thanks Jor El, It's nice to know that getting handed a bill for close to 600 euro cuts no mustard with you. I fully admit the mistake was mine, as I'm not used to dealing with download limits. Are you affiliated with O2?

watty

The caps and charging for excess (up to €820 a gigabyte on some packages) and high roaming costs have been well publicised in the Media.

Anyone signing up to any "post pay" service that has not absolutely fixed in concrete charges should read all the T&C and probably print them.


Either renew for 18months and accept discount, or pay in full and cancel.

If you don't need Mobility get a real Broadband service, ideally one that simply throttles your speed if you are over Cap.

Be very suspicious and print out ALL T&C and FUP etc etc of anyone claiming "unlimited" anything. There are no free lunches. Assume some aspect is not "unlimited" or that the service is crippled in some manner, or will be withdrawn, or very congested or company goes bust.

Till we all have fibre and there is massive backhaul upgrade, real unlimited is fantasy.

Jor el constantly points out that there is poor service, it's not Broadband and there can be massive extra charges. He's no apologist for Mobile. The Mobile companies probably use a pin up of his profile as a dart board. See charter also

I know it's tough and that the Mobile company Advertising is very misleading, but there is no way out. What they say is correct.

Unfortunately Comreg, Dept Of Comms and Wood Stoves and ASAI think their marketing is OK. And it is all spelled out on their website.

jor el

leftfooter wrote: »

Thanks Jor El, It's nice to know that getting handed a bill for close to 600 euro cuts no mustard with you.

I'm no fan of O2, but I also don't believe in criticizing them for something that is the user's own fault. Your sister signed a contract, and agreed to the terms and conditions of that contract. By allowing you to use the service freely, she broke those conditions, and now either you or her must pay. There is no way around the fact that you made the mistake, so why look for it.

smellslikeshoes

leftfooter wrote: »

Thanks Jor El, It's nice to know that getting handed a bill for close to 600 euro cuts no mustard with you. I fully admit the mistake was mine, as I'm not used to dealing with download limits. Are you affiliated with O2?

I love the way in these type of threads if someone doesn't take the side of the user they are automatically accused of being affiliated with O2

It's a pretty crappy situation but O2 are entirely in the right legally here. If I was you I'd try convince them to knock some more off that bill but other than that you've made your bed and now you have to lie in it.

leftfooter

Thanks Watty. So, you reckon there's no dealing with these people?
@ €20 for 10 GB (my plan) my excess bill would come to less than €50, instead they think it's reasonable to charge 10X that amount.
How can these companies get away with such extortionist rates?

jor el

leftfooter wrote: »

@ €20 for 10 GB (my plan) my excess bill would come to less than €50, instead they think it's reasonable to charge 10X that amount.
How can these companies get away with such extortionist rates?

To answer this bit, the price of data within a bundle is heavily discounted. It's very costly to send data across a mobile network, especially when compared to voice and text traffic. However, in order to make the services usable and attractive to customers, they have to give you something reasonable, hence 10GB for €20 is what you get. The charges outside the bundle are in line with what it actually costs the network, and they really don't want you doing this anyway. Excess usage hurts all customers on the network, and causes hassle for the operator.

As a comparison, the cost of the excess data is actually lower than the cost of phone calls made over the mobile network. If you had used the same amount of data on voice traffic, the cost to you would have been thousands of euro, not hundreds.

Jumpy

Erm wasnt there a law passed recently that they could only charge a max of 50 or so euro for going over your cap? Or was that roaming charges.

jor el

It applies to roaming data charges only, not domestic. There probably should be one for domestic charges too, but there isn't yet.

watty

leftfooter wrote: »

Thanks Watty. So, you reckon there's no dealing with these people?
@ €20 for 10 GB (my plan) my excess bill would come to less than €50, instead they think it's reasonable to charge 10X that amount.
How can these companies get away with such extortionist rates?

Actually the data is currently subsidized to siphon customers from other Services, get new customers and on some areas utilise under used resources. It can't last.

You can get a good but not exceptional Voice package for €20 a month. The Caps on Data and costs are such that data costs the operator x100 to x350 more than voice calls.

The data rates of Voice codec are known, so you can calculate how many Mbytes 50 minutes of Voice is. Cost of voice calls leaving network, but inward calls make the operator money. Some voice calls are on network. ALL Data leaves and enters network.

So oddly it could be reasonable to charge excess data at x100 to x400 the base Cap!

O2_Daryll

Leftfooter, let me take a look at this issue for you. Send me a Pm either here or on the O2 Community and we can see if we can sort something out.

There is one thing to note though. If you are not named on your sister's account she will need to contact me instead.

Matt Bauer

3 offer a better service than o2 here. They will cut you off once you have spent an extra €79.01 over your cap, so while that is expensive as well, you won't get surprised by a €600 overage.