Zebedy

I have recently had my pay monthly mobile phone stolen, however I was not aware of the theft for a couple of days as I was away on business and the phone was left in the office. In that period of time the person who stole the phone managed to amass over £2000 worth of international calls despite the phone not having a bill of any more than a few pound a month for over a year.

I have since blocked the phone and reported the matter to the police who are currently investigating. However O2 are holding me responsible for all the calls as I did not report the theft within 24 hours. They simply keep referring me to the small print on my contract (which I have apparently agreed to at some point in the past although the phone is over 6 year old) which states the phone must be reported lost within 24 hours. I find it interesting that even with insurance on the phone this would not cover me as it also states in the small print that it must be within 24 hours.

I have asked them to give me a reasonable response as to how they have no facility in place to mitigate this risk and highlight out of band usage but have yet to provide anything specific in reply to that matter. Nor have they answered the question as to how a single mobile can have so much credit available, much higher than a lot of peoples (including my own) credit cards.

After my 2nd letter to O2 their reply states that it makes no difference if the matter is being investigated by the police as the calls were made prior to me reporting the theft. In the same post also came a letter from a debt collection company demanding I contact them within 2 days of my receiving the letter or legal action will be taken. Not exactly giving me the opportunity to reply to O2!

This is to ensure other customers of 02 aware of the issue and how they simply pass the unlimited liability risk on to their paying customers.

If you have any ideas tho do let me know

billythekid

All phones I have ever had have had a £200 cap on them per month - found this out as I got to the limit once in the US and could not make MO calls. Why dont you try e-mailing the MD of o2, or try e-mailing someone high up like the technology director and ask why they have not got any kind of usage limit that would help prevent this kind of thing.

Chief Constable Gene Hunt

Really....

Section 6 - Your Responsibilities:

(d) to inform O2 Customer Services as soon as possible by telephone (or if you have eCare at mycare@o2mail.co.uk) if the SIM Card or your Mobile Phone is lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed or likely to be used in an unauthorised manner and to co-operate with us in our reasonable security and other checks.

But.....

6.3 If the SIM Card or your Mobile Phone is lost, stolen, damaged or destroyed you will be responsible for any Charges incurred until you have informed us.

So that's that then... unless you have insurance?

Zebedy

I though there was a cap on it of £100 as I am sure I requested this years ago.

However their response is that at no point have they ever included usage limits in any O2 contract. It would appear you are free to run amock once you have the phone!

Zebedy

Insurance also WONT cover you - same conditions apply to that aswell!

Chief Constable Gene Hunt

I beg to differ

If you have purchased the O2 Insure Gold, Silver, Premier, Standard or any other applicable O2 Insure mobile insurance after 14 January 2005 and you make a claim under the policy for theft of the Mobile Phone, which is approved by the insurer or an agent of the insurer, ("the Insurer") we will reimburse you against the cost of unauthorised calls made on the Mobile Phone up to the following limits: Gold policy - up to £2000; Silver policy - up to £1000; Premier policy - up to £3,000; Standard policy - up to £1,000: other applicable O2 Insure policy - up to the amount we notify you in connection with that product. In each case these figures include any taxes and network or service provider charges. In return:

pslewis

My daughter lost her phone on Saturday morning - it's on contract.

She blocked it within a few hours, but - importantly, she had put a PIN Security into it so it couldn't be used anyway.

Quite how £2000 got racked up without the phone being charged up again bewilders me?? Did the theif steal the charger too?

At the end of the day you are responsible for what happens to the phone.

Best you could hope for is a goodwill gesture I'm afraid.

klunker

iTrader: (4)

Surely you did notify them within 24 hours of finding out. If you go on holiday and come home to find your house burgled, are you not insured because it happened three days ago?
I presume that the premises that the phone was stolen from had insurance? Maybe that chould cover costs incurred.
The problem arises when you try to explain to the faceless business models that most large companies have. It may be harder as they seem to have sold that debt on already to some baliffs. I would go and see Citizens advice and get a legal case sorted out.
It also may be beneficial to recruit the help of the local or national press.

Abdabz

I used to work for said company.
The change in billing system or a change of business process may have changed things, but daily and monthly limits were in place from 1995 - 2005... Not sure what's changed.
The daily limit worked on a high useage alert process... Massive amounts like £1000 in a day would be flagged and a security check call made if it was out of character to validate the calls with the user and increase monthly call limits if credit worthy enough.
Monthly limits were based on tariff, average spend and good payers... These could be increased / decreased... if you hit the lower limit you would receive a text to advise and if you ignored it and hit the upper you would be barred...

As these services were not "value added" O2 would be under no obligation to forewarn before removing them...

Looks like contractually you are pooped and I will be more wary in future about my call spend patterns it the above procedures no longer exist

Flaps

iTrader: (1)

I'd have thought the credit limit would have been below £2000. That takes the mick a bit! When I was at t-mobile the highest I saw was £250.

Zebedy

Well I dont have the insurance anyway but the point is it only covers you if theft reported within 24 hrs of it happening, not

Work insurance wont cover it as its a bank and excess is a few hundred thousand.

Buggers are well covering themselves with this single bludy line in the contract - guess you have to be physcic to know phones stolen when you dont have it.

Now what press to contact as I am gonna make sure everyone in country is aware how bluddy dangerous mobile phones are...

Non +Plus Member

It doesn't say 24 hours in the contract, where are you getting this from?

Zebedy

Sorry, it just says you are responsible until you inform them

It was looking at some insurance policies that I picked up on the 24 hour thing as someone originally said I should have had insurance until I pointed this out.

Fantom

Who could you call to rack up £2000's worth? Who would have that much to say? Do they have special numbers to call where they somehow get some of the money from them or something?
Also, if your phone was stolen from your office surely your employers have failed to offer a secure location for your belongings? Are there signs up saying that items are left at owners risk?
Was your company burgled? if not, who could have had access to your desk?

Izzy

Just my 2p worth but I'd stand by "unfair terms & coditions" of the contract & if they (O2) want the money, let them try to sue you. If you can document & show that A) the illicit calls were different in terms of i destination, ii frequency & iii duration to those normally made ligitimately by you & B) that you were personally at a different location (ie hotel etc) to that from where the calls were made (O2 will have to show the Cell Site used by the phone to make the call) then you should be able to easily convince any Court that it was not you making the calls & therefore you are not responsible for the cost.

The only sticking point could be your responsibility to the phone itself. O2 might claim that the costs incured originated from your negligence towards its safe keeping. YOu will have to convince them / the Court that you acted "reasonably" in realising the theft & informing O2.

azza77

i don't understand how 02 can say they don't impose credit limits on contracts as i have just received a letter increseing mine to 160

HOWY

No consolation in this case but suggest you use pay as you go in future and set a pin number

finalzero

O2 are full of ****. I have had nothing but problems with them, been a loyal customer for years however when there is a problem they couldn't care less.

In my case, I switched to pay a few years ago to keep a cap on my phone expenditure. As I am on pay as you go, I have to top up the phone at various stages with credit so I can make calls and send/receive emails on my phone.

For no apparent reason they barred my phone one day, leaving my high and dry resulting in 1.5 weeks worth of potential business being lost. I was never informed prior to the barring and then when I finally managed to speak to someone in the UK I was informed they couldn't tell me why the phone was barred.

After threatening them that I would contact the Consumer Watchdog and their HQ I finally received a call stating my credit card which I had used for over a year to do top ups had been flagged for fraud.

Complete numpties, I finally got my phone switched back on however to this day I never got an answer as to why they failed to contact me before barring my phone and then subsequently not advising me they had done so (I only found out it was barred when a client called my land line asking why my phone was switched off).

Don't let them off the hook for this one, keep at it, eventually they will listen.

Dazza01

I don't understand how anyone goes away on business and DOESN'T take the phone with them ?