I recently signed up to an O2 online off peak 300 tariff. I was previously on a 30-day SIM only contract offering me 1000 text messages and 600 off peak minutes for £20 a month. I ended up not using many of my free minutes at all and only about half of my messages. I was also making the odd call during the day but it was costing me 45p/min. I phoned O2 to give them my notice to cancel and they offered me my current tariff, this included:
Free Nokia 6230i handset
10p/min to O2 mobiles and landlines all times
40/p to other networks peak
12p text messages (if over allowance)
500 free text messages
300 off peak anyone minutes
Free WAP Browsing
1MB Free WAP Download
this tariff should have been £20 a month but they offered it me at £10. I assumed it would cost me £10 a month (as anyone would). I only a month later discovered they had infact just placed £120 credit on my account which I was not told would be the case as I would rather pay £10 a month per month rather than nothing now and a bit more later but I let that go. A really big factor in me joining was the 10p/min O2 mobile and landline peak call prices because for any odd call I had to make it wouldn't cost me as much. The amount of texts and minutes were just right. So I signed up starting February 12th for 12 months. I was also told I could get O2 treats as well. My phone came and I thought great. I then noticed that about a month later I made a call to an O2 mobile during the day for about 20 minutes and it cost me just over £5. I knew there was a mistake and phoned them up and was told "yes it's 10p per minute I will sort it for you". I was seconds later told "oh no it's 30p per minute the guy who sold you the tariff was reading off the old tariff like I just did, the prices have now changed. I will speak to retentions and see if I can get them to put £60 credit on for you to cover the average amount of money you will lose due to this error and get back to you". I was then contacted the next day and told they would rather speak to you about it. I phoned them and they didn't do a thing about it. So I thought I will try and cut down on peak calls because this is still a great tariff. I then discovered I could use my bluetooth dongle to connect my laptop PC to the internet and use my mobile phone as a modem. I went on a few times as a test and it didnt seem to cost me anything so I thought it must be free like WAP is. I downloaded the odd file and that also didn't seem to cost. Then on I got my last bill from 12th March until 12th April and it cost me £153 (£85 of which was GPRS charges). I was obviously not happy. When I checked at exactly 00:00:00 on 3rd March and 5th March I had apparently "downloaded" a file of sizes 28MB and 4MB on those respective dates at those times. These cost me £2.35 per MB (so £57 and £9), something else of which I was not informed when I signed up to my contract. I thought well I don't mind paying for the other GPRS charges and I will learn from this but I am not paying the £66 for these two files that I didn't even download. I emailed O2 and they said I must have because the data is stored on my SIM card of what I downloaded and it is encrypted so I must have. I informed them that I definitely didn't and if I did then why would I contest it? I told them that I was happy to pay the rest of the bill if these charges were removed and didnt they think it was suspicious that they were both downloaded at exactly 00:00:00 on different days without even a second difference? They didnt respond to this. I also told them about the 10p/min thing I was told when I signed up and I wasn't happy about that and all they said was "oh no, it is 30p/min". Well thank you I know that now but they won't do anything about that. I was also told I would have free WAP browsing but I have been charged for WAP usage as well but I am willing to pay the amount for that. It is mainly just these 2 files that I didn't download. O2 have been no help at all. They gave me £5 as a "good will gesture" and an extra £1 credit because of a slight mistake with last month's bill. As such they told me to cancel my direct debit with them because if not it would take £127 out of my bank account on my specified payment date of the 26th of each month (2 weeks after each contract month ends) because it had not accounted for the total £6 credit and then pay the correct amount of £121 through their website. I had a look and thought I would pay everything except the £66 for the 2 files that I have a big dispute with but this is not possible, it only lets me pay the full £127 anyway. So as such I don't want to pay anything yet until the dispute is resolved. I have put in an official bill query on the O2 site but not heard anything back. I refuse to phone them up because customer services is an 0870 number and I am not paying yet more money to not be helped at all and as I am away at University in a house without a landline I am certainly not phoning off my house phone and I am not sure if my allowance of 300 off peak anyone minutes includes customer services. If it does then I will contact them but at the moment I will not. I will email them and ask them about that and if they do include calls to customer services then I will call them. I don't know what to do about paying the bill yet. I certainly wouldn't have even used GPRS and definitely not downloaded anything in the first place had I been made aware of the charges but I didn't download the 28MB and 4MB files anyway.
Thank you for taking the time to read my essay lol.
Any help or advice is much appreciated.
Gareth.
Free Nokia 6230i handset
10p/min to O2 mobiles and landlines all times
40/p to other networks peak
12p text messages (if over allowance)
500 free text messages
300 off peak anyone minutes
Free WAP Browsing
1MB Free WAP Download
this tariff should have been £20 a month but they offered it me at £10. I assumed it would cost me £10 a month (as anyone would). I only a month later discovered they had infact just placed £120 credit on my account which I was not told would be the case as I would rather pay £10 a month per month rather than nothing now and a bit more later but I let that go. A really big factor in me joining was the 10p/min O2 mobile and landline peak call prices because for any odd call I had to make it wouldn't cost me as much. The amount of texts and minutes were just right. So I signed up starting February 12th for 12 months. I was also told I could get O2 treats as well. My phone came and I thought great. I then noticed that about a month later I made a call to an O2 mobile during the day for about 20 minutes and it cost me just over £5. I knew there was a mistake and phoned them up and was told "yes it's 10p per minute I will sort it for you". I was seconds later told "oh no it's 30p per minute the guy who sold you the tariff was reading off the old tariff like I just did, the prices have now changed. I will speak to retentions and see if I can get them to put £60 credit on for you to cover the average amount of money you will lose due to this error and get back to you". I was then contacted the next day and told they would rather speak to you about it. I phoned them and they didn't do a thing about it. So I thought I will try and cut down on peak calls because this is still a great tariff. I then discovered I could use my bluetooth dongle to connect my laptop PC to the internet and use my mobile phone as a modem. I went on a few times as a test and it didnt seem to cost me anything so I thought it must be free like WAP is. I downloaded the odd file and that also didn't seem to cost. Then on I got my last bill from 12th March until 12th April and it cost me £153 (£85 of which was GPRS charges). I was obviously not happy. When I checked at exactly 00:00:00 on 3rd March and 5th March I had apparently "downloaded" a file of sizes 28MB and 4MB on those respective dates at those times. These cost me £2.35 per MB (so £57 and £9), something else of which I was not informed when I signed up to my contract. I thought well I don't mind paying for the other GPRS charges and I will learn from this but I am not paying the £66 for these two files that I didn't even download. I emailed O2 and they said I must have because the data is stored on my SIM card of what I downloaded and it is encrypted so I must have. I informed them that I definitely didn't and if I did then why would I contest it? I told them that I was happy to pay the rest of the bill if these charges were removed and didnt they think it was suspicious that they were both downloaded at exactly 00:00:00 on different days without even a second difference? They didnt respond to this. I also told them about the 10p/min thing I was told when I signed up and I wasn't happy about that and all they said was "oh no, it is 30p/min". Well thank you I know that now but they won't do anything about that. I was also told I would have free WAP browsing but I have been charged for WAP usage as well but I am willing to pay the amount for that. It is mainly just these 2 files that I didn't download. O2 have been no help at all. They gave me £5 as a "good will gesture" and an extra £1 credit because of a slight mistake with last month's bill. As such they told me to cancel my direct debit with them because if not it would take £127 out of my bank account on my specified payment date of the 26th of each month (2 weeks after each contract month ends) because it had not accounted for the total £6 credit and then pay the correct amount of £121 through their website. I had a look and thought I would pay everything except the £66 for the 2 files that I have a big dispute with but this is not possible, it only lets me pay the full £127 anyway. So as such I don't want to pay anything yet until the dispute is resolved. I have put in an official bill query on the O2 site but not heard anything back. I refuse to phone them up because customer services is an 0870 number and I am not paying yet more money to not be helped at all and as I am away at University in a house without a landline I am certainly not phoning off my house phone and I am not sure if my allowance of 300 off peak anyone minutes includes customer services. If it does then I will contact them but at the moment I will not. I will email them and ask them about that and if they do include calls to customer services then I will call them. I don't know what to do about paying the bill yet. I certainly wouldn't have even used GPRS and definitely not downloaded anything in the first place had I been made aware of the charges but I didn't download the 28MB and 4MB files anyway.
Thank you for taking the time to read my essay lol.
Any help or advice is much appreciated.
Gareth.