What would you expect to happen where you work re excessive mobile phone bill?

[UltimateWednesday]

Staff working from home have obviously relied heavily on their mobile phones and we expected an increase in the bills.

However, one member of staff's internet usage has run up a bill of almost 5 figures! This is clearly not work related.

We'll deal with it through the appropriate code of conduct and discipline policies but would staff where you work be expected to repay the money?

We seem to be in the odd position where if it was a few hundred pounds we would but this huge amount seems an unreasonable (impossible?) demand.

I think you need to find out exactly what the charges are. I don’t think you should jump to the conclusion straightaway that they aren’t for work.

If they have had to use the phone as a hotspot for their laptop at home the data could easily add up to £10,000. Also, some of my colleagues don’t have a webcam on their laptops so have been using their phone for video calls on Teams and Zoom for that reason.

I’ve had over 6 hours of video calls some days. I’ve also had to use the work VPN for long periods to access files which is constantly using data. If you looked at the amount of data used for this it would be the same as someone streaming TV but is completely work-related.

Have employees been told they need to have broadband? My company have been checking how everyone is accessing the internet.

You also need to change your phone contracts to unlimited or have a data cap!

We expect our staff to run expense requests by us before spending on something outside the usual policy. We’d also expect them to shop around for a good deal. In this scenario, if the data was all work related, we would pay and if not full work related we would look to making a split. We would also issue new guidelines or get unlimited phone contracts to avoid the same thing happening again.
We have had an employee run up a massive phone bill for a call abroad when she thought she was covered by the contract - we were relaxed - honest mistake but she insisted on paying.

I'm honestly stunned that you don't have unlimited call and data packages on company phones? It's not expensive!

Likewise surprised that you don't have data limits and that the provider doesn't alert anyone when your usage has gotten insane.

Well, it’s not as much as my husband accidentally ran up a few years ago on our summer holiday to the Far East. That was a shocker when he got back to work three weeks later! thankfully he had a very understanding boss who managed to ‘hide’ it within some other expenses, but not before my husband had a mini-breakdown over the stress of it.

Your company phone plan is rubbish clearly

^^ This. In the days of unlimited data for a few tens of pounds a month, there really is no excuse for running up bills like this.

And why has it gone on so long? Unless you are billed quarterly, this should have been noticed after the first monthly bill, and I'd also be questioning the supplier as to why they didn't flag the unusual usage with you.

Is it data, or is it overseas calls? Have they been chatting for hours to friends or relatives on the other side of the world?

I'd first ask the supplier for a reduction based on the fact that they should have told you months ago about the unusual usage but if they refuse, I'd ask this employee to pay a good chunk of the bill, if it's proved that they've willfully misused the phone, eg calling overseas or streaming on multiple devices.

But also sort your plan out to make sure it's fit for purpose and there's some sensible caps in place, eg £50-100 pp per month or whatever covers your expected work usage but not massively more.

I'm honestly stunned that you don't have unlimited call and data packages on company phones? It's not expensive!

Especially in the current context!

On March 17th when we shut our offices up, we did a quick analysis of the phone and internet situation for all staff, sent the ones in greatest need home with the best equipment to support them (4g box etc), and when a few issues were identified, ordered the equipment needed to make up the lack.

It's not rocket science.

The days of phone companies allowing rampant data usage are kind of old-timey - I wonder if all the people saying this is possible have been following the news? App purchases are a different kettle of fish, but gouging for overuse of data is more or less a problem of the past.

We can claim up to £30 a month on broadband in roles that have to have (I am part of a 24/7 on-call rota, for example.) Work mobiles (and desk landlines, but that isn'the currently relevant,) be used for reasonable personal use, plus all work use. That can include calls home if you're travelling for work. There are clear policies on internet use.

Initially there would be an investigation to drill down into the costs - what, when, etc. Then there would be discussion with the staff member to see why. A first offence might be let go (possibly with some repayment agreement), but repeated offences after a first investigation would count as gross misconduct, and people have been sacked for misuse of work Internet or phones.

Lots of telecoms companies round the world removed data caps for the pandemic, to help businesses.

Does the itemised bill indicate whether it was basic data, roaming, in app purchases or premium rate services?

"Charge to mobile" is the system for buying digital content on your phone contract, this could pile up charges much faster than just data.

Ah, that's a thought, has there been some sort of fraud, not by the user?

Although on the rare occasion I've paid for an app or an in app purchase, it's gone on my credit card, not my phone bill.

Why would she not just connect to her home Wi-Fi when working from home?

Wll not everyone has home wifi, but I find it surprising when they don't, particularly if they're well paid professionals in stable home environments.

I can understand it if money is tight, or someone has moved around a lot, because you usually have to sign up to a contract and you don't always know where you'll be living a year from now, but when money isn't an issue and you're a homeowner, I'd have thought it would be an automatic for nearly everyone, like gas, electric and water.

A colleague of mine also has no wifi, despite being a homeowner and decently paid, and it's causing problems because he doesn't want to WFH and won't do video calls. But in his case, he's one of those people who enjoy being contrary for the sake of it.

Wow! I think you have to investigate how exactly it's come to almost £10K, I'm not sure how you could even spend that much!!

Surely that’s an error?

And if not why did the phone company not flag up unusual usage after month 1.

You need the exact details of the bill breakdown before you speak to the staff member

It could potentially be someone who hasn't connected their phone to the Wi-Fi properly and has been using the mobile data. I've done it myself. It's not necessarily misconduct.

Our internet went down mid call this morning, I rejoined via my own data on my phone on teams for 45 mins and used 1gb of data. Could be as simple as they've not been set up right and are using personal hotspot accidentally (I once had my work data max out when windows did an update whilst I was on hotspot as did my colleague and ran out of data for that month! HR was impressed we managed to use all our data as we have a huge allowance - took us ages to work out how we had managed to do it when no one else had).

@UltimateWednesday yes they were watching Netflix all evening every day while tethering to work phone. We a large company with a data plan for a large amount of data which is cumulative to all (hundreds) of phones we have. Her usage was excessive and tipped over data use to being over the limit and became paid for... which racked up the bill.

We are with Virgin and have had almost no internet since lockdown. If you look on their FB page many have had the same issue and couldn't cancel or change due to the lockdown.

I can see how this could happen using the phone as a hotspot or having to video call using data. I think the key thing is seeing a breakdown of where the extra charges came from. Also there really should have been a cap in place.

My phone only warns me about data usage as I have it set up to do so, it doesn't do it automatically

What happened when the person was told?

I've just seen an article on the bbc about a Dad who let his daughter buy a £5 game and now has a £5k bill - reminded me of this thread. What happened @UltimateWednesday