Unhelpful Spend Cap System!

[JohnHind]

I wanted to complain about the extremely unhelpful way the Spend Cap system works. Specifically it is incomprehensible in this day and age that the level of the cap cannot be controlled online (or even, as far as I can make out, viewed). The agent who handled this for me was fine within the limits of his empowerment, but with the best will in the world this takes much longer and more effort on both sides than it should. Finally there was an up to 24 hours delay before the limit was removed, which is frankly unacceptable - what if the customer needs to make urgent emergency calls?

In my case I had a bereavement and needed to make some urgent international calls to advise relatives. After the first call the spending limit was reached and I could make no more calls until I had navigated this system and waited 24 hours. It was not even possible to remove or raise the limit for a limited period, so I have to remember to go through the whole procedure again to reset it!

I suggest that a good system would be for a text message after each call going over the cap identifying a simple and quick (but secure) method by which the cost of that call could be disregarded from the spending cap.

[pgn]

All valid points, and sorry for exacerbating your circumstance and loss, @JohnHind.

The Spend Cap is there to prevent you, or your phone if you lose it, from landing you with a huge bill. I know from experience how frustrating it can be to be stuck in a transit airport in the USA, unable to call anyone to tell them you have been unavoidably detained. 

If it was easy to lift via a text from the phone itself, a layer of protection has been immediately stripped from the reason for the Spend Cap in the first place.

All networks have them, some networks are better at letting you self-manage them.

[JohnHind]

I got the limit raised by using the web chat facility and my laptop. Nothing in the identity checks would have been unavailable to anyone with possession of my phone who had got through the device security to the extent of being able to make a call. Had it been done through the app, with a specific biometric check on this particular transaction, it would actually have been a lot more secure (as well as a lot easier and faster). By making it just as hard to reduce the limit as to increase it (and making the current limit opaque and hard to find), it is virtually guaranteed that the user will raise the limit to a very high value first time they get caught by it, negating the entire point. I suspect this is a 'compliance feature' - something the regulator has insisted they do, but they do not really want to, so they make it so difficult and annoying that people do not actually use it!