To think my elderly DM is being scammed via O2?

Good luck.

O2 used to automatically put a data cap on all their contracts so if the allowance was used up it stopped working unless you bought a bundle. It's used to be £10 for 1gb extra. They sent a text and asked if you wanted to add it sometimes.

I haven't dealt with them for a few years but I doubt that has changed.

I would ask them why the data cap didn't kick in. Although the bill could come from calling abroad. If you are outside the EU it cost about £1.50 a minute. If she didn't pay the first big bill the second bill will have that one included in the total.

It's also highly unlikely they will discuss her account with you unless you have Power of Attorney. They won't break data protection.

Ok, good luck hope you hear something back soon, it must be very worrying for you all.

You don't do it publicly, you send them a message, it's all confidential

Live chat on their website if you’re trying to make contact from overseas.

Please don’t use social media to contact them, if you want to keep your Mums situation or details private.

i work for a similar company and doubt it is a scam; it sounds as PP have said that the bill has been a combination of pay as you go phone calls and data charges, as well as possibly late payment fees/pro rata billing depending on if and when she paid the original bill. i understand what you mean about companies having a duty of care but most companies allow you to set a spend cap in order to avoid specifically these situations. bills are autogenerated and with the volume of users on the network it would be impossible to monitor everyone’s usage which is why they give you the tools to do this yourself.
i would recommend calling on their proper number and explaining that your mother is elderly and vulnerable (i would specifically say that she was not of sound mind during this hospital stay and following period) and see if they will wipe/reduce the charges, although if the above is the case they have no obligation to do so though hopefully they will :)

I'm with O2 but haven't heard of a pay bill tariff, I assume its like a utility bill and there's no limit to the cost. A quick Google suggests these can be as much as £3 per Mb for data so with video class that would quickly mount up. I agree with posters who say set up the online account for her, change the contact now then tackle getting the money back. Does she have enough to pay the £4k?

Can you ask her what plan she's on?

She should have got some information about how much data she has a month.

And how much she's paying for it

Yeah if WiFi is on, she will see the WiFi symbol

As you’re ringing from abroad and having issues with that line not being able to get through, it might be easy to try and talk to someone on social media, I’d use twitter to contact on their official account to see if you can get some clarification or a call back.

Can you switch her to a contract with unlimited data with another provider, if necessary? That would cap the monthly costs if she accidentally isn’t connected to the wifi and doesn’t notice.

O2 are usually good for customer service recently had an issue and found best way to contact was the online live chat through the official O2 website, which you should be able to do on her behalf? Unless you think she can deal with it, because she can call internally direct from her mobile or use the online chat via there too, if she has a genuine O2 account.

I also managed to get an email address to ‘appeal’ my situation, as it was not my initial error. I won’t publish it here, but you can pm me for it if you think that’s needed. It puts your complaint into an official process, rather than just a customer account query.

You could have done, if you’re using data rather than wifi. If your data isn’t covered under a contract, the rate is horrendous.

Posters saying that they always got through to O2 easily.

The difference is that the OP is abroad.

You have to ring a completely different number from abroad.

And you get charged more

Whatever plan she is on get her off it.

Bill pay plans are notorious for letting people run off huge charges.

Get her onto a pre pay plan.

There are pre pay plans where if you pay 30 pounds, you get unlimited data for a month

Oh goodness, what a worry. I've been with o2 a long time and like others spoken to them many times and not had trouble getting through.
I see a kind poster above has provided the correct numbers so definitely give one of them a try. Like you did say, I don't think it's o2 scamming her.
Hope it gets sorted for you.

It depends on what her contract is set up to cover - if it doesn't include mobile data (or only a tiny amount of it) she'll be being charged premium rates as soon as she runs out of her allowance.

You say she doesn’t have an online account but I am pretty sure you can just sign her up for an account using her email/phone number and it’ll load the details of her contract and all of her bills so you can gage where the charges are coming from?

Also if you’re still having no luck via the phone then tweet them explaining they have sent a £4K bill to an OAP who’s been in hospital. Guarantee you’ll get the worlds swiftest response as they won’t want to be seen as publically ignoring that.

I too have never had any issues getting through to o2.
But I did change my opinion of them when I tried to cancel the contract for my mother who has dementia and was no longer able to use a phone. They went on and on and on trying to get me to change to a different contact and didn’t seem to care at all when I was explaining that she didn’t even know what a phone was anymore so I just wanted to cancel. Awful.
Good luck OP. It sounds like your mum is on a very expensive contact. I have loads and loads of data included in mine (and it’s cheap) so it sounds like your mum would be better on a contact that includes a lot of data so if the issue was her not being on WiFi then she still wouldn’t be charged much.

They're a very large company. Bills are automated.

They won't even know this is happening unless someone rings them and tells them.

I used to work for a similar large company (not O2).

We did have a dedicated phone line for elderly and vulnerable customers.

But someone had to ring in and tell us that their parent needed extra help. Otherwise we couldn't know.

Definitely ring in and tell them that she is struggling