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Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
My boyfriend just got his o2 contract phone cut off mid-month, due to an £850 bill. They didn't even call him up to tell him his bill was looking a big iffy, they just cut it off, and he had to go into town to o2 to find out why. Now, his usual bill is around £40-60, but this month is £850 because of those idiotic text messages where they send you them and charge you to receive them - they get your number through auto-generators, so you have no option other than to open the damn things. They're charging him £1.27 a time, and sent him 650 odd, most of which he didn't even receive to start with :blink: he never even signed up to anything to receive these messages, and they appeared on the screen as no number, no reply, and no "to opt out of this.." message. So he just deleted them when they turned up, on average, one a day or so.
O2 just gave him the two numbers which the messages came from (5 digit ones like 84424) and told him to pay the bill or call the watchdog people for texts, there was nothing that o2 could help with.
Has anybody else had this happen?
O2 just gave him the two numbers which the messages came from (5 digit ones like 84424) and told him to pay the bill or call the watchdog people for texts, there was nothing that o2 could help with.
Has anybody else had this happen?
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Comments
These pay to receive SMS message are a menace, think I've had one or two from SMS.AC when I joined them many years ago - But I certainly wouldn't pay O2 a penny
I signed up to some website to send SMS cheaply from the web and sent out an SMS to like 20 people I was meeting for an event - instead the company sent out the same message like 250 times instead of once to 20 people - got charged for it but complained in an email to them and got a refund.
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/mobile/company/subscriptions/
There's also a link on there to complain.
Essentially people using these services MUST make it clear what is being offered with a service, MUST have you to sign up, MUST make the costs clear when someone signs up, MUST pass on information on how to stop the service.
So looks like any company signing someone up without permission and not telling you how to stop the service is criminal, and is breaking consumer protection rules. So try to contact Ofcom and probably your local trading standards office about making a legal complaint.
Ideally o2 should be prepared to sort out an agreement on making repayments realistic whilst you take legal action to recover the money from the criminals responsible.
I wish o2 were more helpful.. it's not like it's an odd 50 quid or something. They've basically just done the equivilant of telling us to f'off rather than offering us any decent advice. What a great first set of bill payments for us living on our own!! What Andy has done is cancelled the direct debit to o2, so they don't try and take the money anyway (not that there's that much in the account though) and has told them that he will pay them for the line rental and line rental only until the problem is sorted - which sucks considering his phone has been cut off anyway, so he is renting no line at all, but oh well.. So far haven't heard back from them.
So if he hasn't signed up for anything, and there is no message telling him he's paying and can unsubscribe, or even reply to the message, it's illegal then?
I wouldn't suggest making any offer of payment, and I'd tell o2 to remit the bill as it is fraudulent. If they don't reconnect the phone, go after them for breach of contract.
They'll all pretend that they can't do nothing when they can, but it's because most of the monkeys in the call centres (no offence to Bri) simply can't be fucking arsed. After all, o2 get a huge slice of the pie, so why should they give a toss?
I used to work for O2, and I never heard of anyone recieving £850 worth of texts without doing something to warrant it first.
Just waiting to hear back from trading standards now and apparently there is another company called ICSTIS which can help us too - they're the premius sms regulator company who can fine the companies who send illegal spam texts, so fingers crossed :nervous: I really hope it doesn't get all nasty and messy
With the whole premium sms thing, seems to me there should be something where a confirmation text should be sent other the service has to stop - the amount of times I've suddenly started getting texts I've supposedly signed up for is a joke - and just shows the perils of having to put your mobile number online.
Anyone else get the annoying "Change your contract to us" welsh people calling up a few months before the end of your contract with o2/orange/etc. ? God knows where they got my number and the information from. Think I'm gonna throw all these phones in the bin! :thumb: gonna get me a carrier pidgeon hehehe
No. The only ones I've get about my contract are the ones from Carphone Warehouse telling me that I'm due for an upgrade and to call a number. (which I never do - I just get my parents to take me down there and sort it out that way)
I've never ad a problem with them.
I have come across it several times in my line of work, and its one of the hardest things to challenge because the mobile phone provider count the cash and pass the buck.
o2 are making money from fraud, you should remind them of that and then do them for breach of contract.
They have to show that you wilfully purchased a service that they are billing for, it's not up to you to show that you didn't.