£28000 mobile phone bill

[saveforthat]

Ds 19 had his contract phone cut off. When he went into o2 shop to investigate, turns out he opted out of roaming cap when on holiday in tunisia. Also forgot to change his address so they couldnt contact him. Found out yesterday and and I was in shock. Now feel sick, how is this actually possible, we were only there for a week. Going to try to see citizens advice tomorrow but does anyone have any expeeience of this?

more ofcom

consumers.ofcom.org.uk/phone/mobile-phones/mobiles-abroad/using-your-smartphone-or-tablet-abroad/

There should be some time taken for education & reflection

Most modern mobile phones, tablets, pcs, sat navs have more capabilities than the spaceship that landed on the moon in the 1960s !

When a person signs a contract for a phone, pc, tv package. xbox. wii etc that person is solely responsible for the bill, this includes all the add on features eg pay per play games, data roaming, adult content etc

Just because you can do something in UK, it does not mean that it is the same price abroad !

That includes if your phone is stolen

If your son goes on holiday again, why dont you suggest that he joins the local library - free books, audio books (not free if you return them late)

Surely the hotel had a tv ?

Did the hotel have evening entertainment ?

Bar to meet people for a chat ?

Gosh what a shock! Nasty lesson to learn. It really does seem wrong that you can be allowed to run up a bill that high in a week. It does seem to be the not clued up teenagers that run up these bills (i guess they're more used to all inclusive compared to us older ones!).

I'm long haul cabin crew. When you get to a foreign country you get a text telling you charges. It's a good reminder to turn roaming/mobile services off. I forgot in Singapore the other week and got another text to say they had noticed I was using data services (I wasn't but emails were arriving and they are data, so you can rack up some expense without doing a thing) and that they'd text me again when it got to £15. I quickly turned it off! Another colleague got charged a few hundred when he wasn't aware he'd used it. He had forgotten to turn his phone off on the journey and as he passed over a new country he got new emails that were charged for. By the time we'd got to Cape Town he'd passed over several European and then African countries.. It soon mounts up. You have to be so careful.

Any update op?

Think that he needs to know all of the possible consequences of an IVA and of Bankruptcy.

Really feel for you OP. This must have come as a huge shock and you must be reeling.

Yikes.

That is scary stuff.

TBH I don't really understand about data. It took me ages to figure out why our home phone/internet bill was going up - when we first got online in this house we were barely using the internet but gradually the YouTube/catch up TV/app downloads etc crept in and because I'd not paid for unlimited broadband, of course we were getting charged. I just hadn't put two and two together.

I am very glad we all have PAYG on our mobiles now (giffgaff) - no surprises.

I'm guessing it wasn't Disney he was downloading iyswim.

I don't think most posters are harsh. You might not understand data charges but a 19yo is expected to. They are the technology generation. And isn't bankruptcy record gone after 5 years? It won't affect him for life? Hopefully this is a useful lesson he has learned.

FWIW MIL did this but at home in NZ. She got a smartphone but somehow managed to get over thousands of dollars on phone bills in the first month. She can't even use the Internet and doesn't know what it is. She borrowed the phone to some kids supposedly.

Id love an update OP.

You might not understand data charges but a 19yo is expected to

I don't think a 19year old should be expected to know the charges abroad. I have a 19 year old and a 17 year old and they only know because I have drummed into them not to use roaming abroad. 19 year olds are not that money savvy even if they are tech savvy. It is all a learning experience for them.

The 17 yr old has a zero cap on her phone anyway, but the 19yr old has his own contract. He got caught out by virgin when he first got the contract because there was a problem with his account, they text him and asked him to ring a number. What he didn't realise was this number was chargeable and when his bill came there wasn't enough to cover it because of the call. .

I think a 19 year old is plently old enough to know that downloading abroad is VERY expensive!

But i also think that mobile companies should not be allowed to charge more that XX amounts, (maybe double the normal monthly charge? so if my monthly bill is normally 40, then i am blocked if my charges go over 80 - or an agreed amount, or agree your own amount)

28k is beyond extortionate! Bad O2!!!

I recently got charged £4,800 for a week using my phone in USA. That was just data roaming charges, not downloading anything. My provider sent me a total of 43 texts during that week, telling me that I was racking up a small fortune in charges. Those texts would stop when I reached £495 each day and I would receive a text telling me it was stopping for the day, but that the charges were still racking up. I knew I had opted into the £5 a day to use my phone in the States the same as I would in the UK. I called my provider several times whilst out there, but they were hopeless, with some people telling me the bill was correct, and others denying they were sending me those texts. Thankfully my problem got resolved just over a month after I returned from my trip, with the provider refunding me the over-charge and £200 compensation (compensation was originally 0, then it went up to £20, then £50, and after much persuasion after explaining I wanted a deadlock letter so that I could take it to the Ombudsman, we agreed on £200 as fair). Although I'm with a different provider than the OP, surely O2 would have sent a similar amount of warning texts? At one point I received a text to say that there was an unusual amount of activity on my phone, and they promptly disconnected me (when I really needed it on holiday)!. We all learn lessons in life, but £28,000 is extortionate. If he is a first time offender with O2, then they should be able to reason and make a sensible decision on this.

I'm sure the OPs son knows about data roaming, he just made a stupid mistake and forgot to turn it off. I can understand how it might have happened.

Lunalelle I guess you are implying that he must have been downloading porn. What a weird thing to have crossed you mind

I thought so too Coffee. Talk about tarring 50% of the population with the one brush.

OP, any updates?

There is an interesting news article in the BBC website on mobile phone companies agreeing cap bills when phones get stolen. ARTICLE HERE. Obviously a different situation to the OPs.

I was in a cruise and each morning I would switch my phone on and either pay three £5 for the day's unlimited surfing or have the feel at home free data allowance in Italy. However, one day we were in a non EU country and it cost me £11.20 just to turn my phone on and off to see the three message. I contacted them when I got home and they refunded me the money.
Hopefully O2 will let him off or at least reduce it by a lot.

I think people are being a bit harsh. I'm nearly 50 and wouldn't imagine in a million years that you could possibly accrue a bill of £28,000 in no matter which country watching a few films on a phone, it is extortionate.

There are 2 sort of mobile phones

1
Simple, cheap ones that only make & receive phone calls, voice mails, texts, photos, pay as you go
No internet access
You could run up big bills via adult pay services eg chat, photos
You could run up big bills phoning or texting in other countries or phoning eg 0845 numbers

2
Smart phones that are more expensive
Pay as you go or monthly contract
Services include
Make & receive phone calls, voice mails, texts, photos, videos
Games
Internet access (data services)
Maps
Add on apps eg facebook, Youtube, Netflix, Twitter etc
Adult pay services eg chat, photos, videos
GPS
Voice recording
Camera, video
Internet banking
Instant messaging
Email
Basically, a mini computer
Phone company should explain their charges clearly >see their website for full details

Your phone > your bill

I think some phone companies offer a set maximum spend amount per month > monthly spend cap (a bit like banks informing their customers when they are over drawn) to their customers

Is there any update ?

How much does the phone company expect to be paid ?

Unfortunately in this case the OP's son removed the data cap, downloaded via data roaming as the hotel wi-fi was intermittent, and it is possible that as Tunisia is outside the EU O2 may not have immediately received information that the costs were racking up, if O2 did get this information instantaneously surely they would have cut the phone off?