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Massive mobile phone bill - any similar experiences / advice?

Mountainmum

Hi there - 

Just wondering if anyone has had a similar experience and got a happy ending.

My 18 year old with ASD/MLD used my mobile phone in a relative's house that we were visiting, to go on the Internet. As it was not our house - the phone was not connected to the wi-fi but was using mobile data. I have a monthly 2 gb allowance. I did not know she was using the phone until I saw on my tablet an email flash up in the notification banner saying I had used £80 worth of data. I immediately found her and the phone and switched the data off. By then she had racked up a debt of £92 in just over an hour. She had been watching nursery rhyme cartoons on you tube.

the mobile phone provider (BT) had texted with warnings - which she didn't understand and ignored.

I did explain to BT the next day and was told they would knock off £10 From the bill which is better than nothing. I have set my usage now to a limit of £5 excess to avoid this happening again. 

I know this is my fault but still feel furious at the excessive charge for something that was a genuine error and didn't cost BT anything at all! 

Any views or experience ?

  • my difficulty is - if she doesn't understand about internet charges etc....

    what was you doing allowing her to use the phone/internet anyway?

    However, you could try consumer rights or the local citizen's advice bureau if they can give you information of anything but sadly i think you have to put this down to an expensive learning curve...

    ps you can ask the phone provider to barr any external usage charges too...

  • I forgot to mention, it may be worthwhile emailing the BT Retail CEO. I had an absolute nightmare with BT when I switched my broadband and phone, spent literally hundreds of hours over my time with them, problems even continued after I swiched to another provider.

    I got nowhere with the standard channels of complaint, so emailed the BT Retail CEO (Search google) and things started moving. There is a whole seperate team dealing with complaints to CEO, and all these complaints get prioritised.

    I absolutely hate mobile phones

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  • I would agree that's excessive, not sure there's much you can do about it, and expect many other parents autisic or not have experienced a similar problem.

    It's good you have caught this quickly, just imagine what it would be like finding this over several days when you read your next bill.

    I used to work in telecoms, and have briefly been on the other side. One child had racked up several hundred pounds of charges in a game like community site. A manager over the phone told the customer that her there was a confirmation the user would need to click which showed the charge to click.

    The parent on the end of the phone, shouted to her child asking him if had seen or clicked on any confirmation messages. The child responded with "No", and manager was then in an awkward situation, and waived all the charges.

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