To think my elderly DM is being scammed via O2?

Is she on bill pay? Get her on prepay.

My elderly mother is on prepay. So there is no way that she can spend more that 30 pounds a month on phone credit.

I would get your mum off bill pay

I don't know, you'd be surprised. I made a phone call once, no more than an hour, and was charged £30 for it. I rang them, and it was correct. I changed service providers. It really depends if your mum has had her mobile data on and WiFi off for the last 2 months. Is there any family in the UK that can go and have a look at her phone for her?

Every business has a duty of care to vulnerable customers!

Can you login (somehow) to her O2 online account and see what’s going on?

it’s coming back to me that I managed to generate what I considered to be a fairly large bill by sending a few photos via text. Might even have been a foreign number. It was nothing like the bill you’re facing, but enough for me to look at my settings and put an immediate spend cap on my account as it was so easy to do and no warning from O2.

I hope you can speak to someone and get it sorted. Is there anyone that can go round to her house and look at her phone/tablet and make sure it’s set up properly?

If she's housebound, does she have carers or good neighbours? One of them could check it. I'd also look into a diff operator for her.

You can buy esims now so maybe look into that and ask someone to install it for her.

Call 02 again. They should be monitoring huge bills, there's no excuse for them not having spotted this. Don't pay it challenge it all. But get her a new sim before hand so you're still connected.

It does sound like the phone hasn't reconnected to her internet now she's home and that she hasn't got it on a setting where it will do it automatically. I would think perhaps someone has been trying to help her while she was in hospital and has messed up the settings. I have no helpful ideas about how you remedy that beyond someone physically helping her if she doesn't know how to do it herself. Doesn't she have a landline that she could use until it's sorted out? And no, O2 don't have a duty of care. I don't really think that would be possible to administer.

I've just googled the mobile number you're calling. It's not O2

I think the fact you're trying to call a mobile number to speak to O2 is a huge red flag tbh. Where have you got those numbers from?
I think once you talk to them on one of their actual numbers they will be very helpful, and will be able to work out if there is a scam somewhere, but O2 won't have scammed; they're too big for that!

My phone always kicks in to data in hospitals, WiFi doesn't work there unless someone actively puts the nhs wifi password in for me.

It does mostly tend to reconnect to free WiFi in other places and when I'm back home most of the time. But sometimes it doesnt, it stays on data so I have to change it myself. Maybe something like that with your DMS phone.

I would suggest first off, switch her to a contract with unlimited data. She should be able to get one for under £30 per month and if it is that it will stop the cost continuing to get up.

Do you have her itemised bills? What do they say? Is it a data charge or a phone charge. At worst it could be that someone is charging services to her phone, or has cloned her phone and is using it for premium rate services (which are set up to pay the scammer) so you really need to know that urgently. It will be on the bill.

We have been in situations where we have burned through data when we thought our phones had connected to wifi but hadn't. Luckily our phones (EE) are set up to give data warnings and then stop using it when it runs out - its a data cap I believe.
If your Mums phone was on data with no cap then its not impossible for the bills to be so high. It would be nice to think that O2 would notice and do something and/or sort it out when contacted but be aware as you are not the account ho,der even if you eventually get a human they may not speak to you.

Not sure where you got a mobile number from to contact O2, hopefully this one will work. I'll be honest it sounds like your Mum is on a pay as you go package and using data so it is extremely expensive. It's not down to O2 to monitor the account, but you CAN set a spending limit on it yourself.

I thought WhatsApp automatically went through the internet, not your mobile
Only if you are connected to the Internet. Otherwise it will use your data.

Would she know what to look for on the screen to confirm she's connected to the Internet? Can you send her a screenshot of your phone to show her what the WiFi symbol looks like if she doesn't know.

That's a gigantic bill though. I'm not sure sending WhatsApp messages at a rate of 1000 a day should generate a bill that big unless she's sending or receiving a ton of photos and videos.

It'll be under her data settings somewhere.

I can't comment on whether it's a failure on behalf of o2. I have a spend cap on my phone so I can't go over my contracted amount without specifically asking the company to allow it.

Where in the UK is your mum? Perhaps posters here can suggest local help (especially to switch off her data mobile data!)

It sounds like she’s been using data. Which is why the charge is so high

Sounds like her phone didn't automatically reconnect to her WiFi when she went home

WhatsApp works perfectly well over mobile data - has she turned hers off?

Has she been using data rather than through WiFi?