Phone didn't disconnect - getting £20 bill - O2 not helpful

[Anonymous]

I rang my wife for a 30 second call who is also on O2. I thought the call had cleared but it did not and it looks like the call stayed open for 1 hr and 45 mins (I have 50 minutes allowance). I contacted O2 via web chat yesterday as the excess charge (£16.61+20% VAT = £20) had hit my account.

I asked O2 whether they would waive the charge? It was an honest mistake on my behalf and I've never been anywhere near my 50 minute limit since I've had the phone contract (20 months).

In the past I thought O2 was very helpful and would understand. Seems they have changed!

The web chat agent contacted their supervisor who declined the refund as "you need to pay the amount because the call was made from your mobile".

I responded "I understand, but I'm not happy, so to avoid such an occurrence again I'll switch to pay as you go at the end of the contract probably with another provider.", but no luck - although the agent was very sympathetic with me.

Well it will be O2's long term loss...I just saw about O2 switching broadband to Sky so I will probably totally switch away from O2 by July.

Anyone else got any ideas what I can do next (other than just grin and pay the £20)?

[adamtemp64 · Accepted solution]

For all account related queries we recomend on the forums not to use live chat but to call 202 from your handset and speak to someone that may be able to help and not reading from a script.

[MI5]

My Mother did this once and now she turns off her phone after she makes a call. Trouble is she doesn't turn it back on until she wants to make another call so you can never get hold of her

[jonsie]

Definitely call 202, you will probably get through to someone with a little more understanding. As stated, avoid chat like the plague for billing queries.

[Anonymous]

Thanks everyone for the advice - I rang 202 and the O2 guy was very helpful. He couldn't refund the full amount but kindly made a £5 goodwill gesture (which helps).

We did discuss whether I should be moving to a Pay as you Go service anyway at the end of my contract - I rarely make phone calls (hence the probable cause of the problem in the first place!) but mainly use it for texting and data- and it would resolve the problem of calls "not disconnecting".

I'll wait and see what happens with the Sky takeover of O2 Broadband to determine what to do next as the only real reason I stayed with O2 broadband was the 50% discount on broadband (making it £6.25 per month unlimited). If this discount goes, and I've prepaid BT for my line rental until October 2013, then I'll probably "jump ship" with broadband and mobile anyway at the appropriate time - I'll have to wait until April to see what happens with the O2>Sky broadband...

[adamtemp64]

thanks for posting back why has your user name changed ?

[Anonymous]

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@adamtemp64 wrote:

thanks for posting back why has your user name changed ?

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Because I had one userid linked to my phone account and another linked to my broadband account. I thought I should ask a "phone" question with a "phone" forum id - but when I responded I was logged onto the "broadband" account. I'm getting old

[adamtemp64]

No problem Just checking it was still you replying

[Anonymous]

I've always found 02 to be helpful.

I once sent quite a few business cards from my phone and didn't realise they were recognised as mms messages and as I didn't have a tariff with them attached I was charged for them. After speaking to CS and learning whats what they refunded the cost as a goodwill gesture.

[Anonymous]

Just to say farewell to O2 Mobile.

I wanted to increase by data load from 100MB to 500MB per month so looked at all the price options and decided that I could switch to PAYG (to avoid the surprise charges) with another network operator (Three) and end up paying less than I would upgrading my O2 monthly to 500MB so decided to "jump ship" (my voice and text load is very low).

The nice O2 people on chat and in retentions were sorry that I was upset (they would not refund my mistake) and there was nothing they could do to get me to stay.

I've still got to pay the outstanding 3 months on my contract (I'd hoped they'd waive this), but it has definitely left me with a "bad taste" and I'll never want to return to O2 Mobile (same way I feel about Sky!). I'm sure O2 weren't like this before - guess it is a result of Telefonica's financial situation?