After my father died recently I checked my mother’s direct debits with her. I discovered that Three mobile has been taking £37.02 a month by direct debit since November 2008 for a Nokia phone. My mother, who is 89 years old, says she thought she had called up to cancel this “years ago”.
I contacted Three who said there is no record of my mother having phoned to cancel the contract, therefore it was in no way going to offer recompense for these payments. This is despite the fact that the phone has not been used at all for many years. My mother has now been with Orange for three years, and before that was with O2. I believe that over £3,000 has been paid to Three for a phone that it could see was not used. Three says that it can only check back one year but acknowledges that the phone has not been used during this time.
I have argued that the company has some moral if not legal responsibility to notify my mother that this money was still being taken from her account. Three disagrees and by way of compensation has offered to refund three payments only — £111.06.
My mother took out this contract for a phone for my father, when she was 82, she is visually impaired and was therefore unable to find any documentation to show me when I was with her. Three’s latest advertising says “For years mobile companies have been exploiting their customers. But not any more . . . We’ve taken a pledge: when stuff sucks, make it right.”
Paul Tandy, via email
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Paul has called Three several times, and the company has failed to call him back as promised.
He believes it should refund his mother at least £2,221, the amount that she has paid since the contract expired in May 2010.
After contact from Troubleshooter Three has agreed to this. A spokesman says: “After checking the account’s history, it was clear the customer hadn’t used their contract in some time. As a gesture of goodwill we have agreed to refund the charges from when the phone was last used.”
Three has no record of Paul’s mother cancelling her contract, which is why direct debits continued to be taken. The company says that if customers do want to cancel deals, they would as a general rule advise that they cancel their direct debits with their bank as well as the contract with the provider directly, for peace of mind. Don’t just cancel your direct debit, though, as you will end up with a debt collection agency at your door, as the following reader found.
Vodafone confusion
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In 2013, on behalf of my son, I took out a 24-month contract with Vodafone. In May this year he told me that he was getting repeated texts from Vodafone telling him he was then entitled to an upgrade. We took this to mean that the contract was due for renewal. But given the poor mobile coverage he had received with Vodafone he wanted to change supplier. In any event we went to Carphone Warehouse and were offered a very competitive deal from O2.
At the shop we phoned Vodafone for a PAC number, which we were given. At no point during this call do I recollect being advised that I was terminating the contract early. If I had been I would have waited to change supplier. I am unemployed at the moment and not in a position to waste money by paying unnecessary early termination fees.
The first I realised that I had terminated the contract early was when I received an email in June saying that I owed £68.55. Having received the email, I pulled out the original contract and saw that I had taken it out in July 2013, and it would end in July 2015.
I immediately contacted Vodafone on live chat and was told that if I had not been told about the cancellation charges, then Vodafone would help me with the fee.
But when I later spoke to customer services I was told that Vodafone does not record calls, that I would definitely have been told about the charges and that therefore I had no choice but to pay.
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He was so rude I decided to cancel my direct debit and see what happened.
I have now received a letter from a debt collection agency looking to recover the sum of £83.63.
I have probably spent over four hours of my time trying to get this matter resolved to no avail with Vodafone. This does not reflect well on Vodafone or inspire the “trust” which it claims is “fundamental to everything we do”.
Adrian Lumley-Smith
Adrian says his position throughout is that if it can be demonstrated that he was warned about the termination charges during the call in May then he would concede the point and make the payment. If he was not then he would argue that Vodafone was at fault and that the charges should be waived as a result.
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Don’t be fooled by the offer of an “upgrade”. First, because “upgrades” are generally no better, even sometimes worse value, than your existing contract — even though the use of the word would suggest you are about to be sent the latest iPhone model as a thanks for being a loyal, prompt-paying customer.
Second, they are offered before your contract expires to hook you into another 24-month deal before you have the freedom to shop around the other networks’ offers.
On Vodafone, for example, you can upgrade at least 30 days before the end of your plan — or 60 days early if you’re on a Red plan.
You would have thought Adrian would have been alerted to this by Vodafone when he was sent his PAC, although it is under no obligation because his paperwork makes it clear when the contract officially expires.
A spokesman for Vodafone says: “When a customer decides to leave us before the end of their minimum term agreement with us there is likely to be an early termination fee payable. This decreases the nearer you are to the end of your agreement.
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“When they contact us to close their account, we should advise them what the termination fee is, if there is one. We accept that we failed to do this in Mr Lumley-Smith’s case.
“We’re sorry this happened and we will waive the early termination fee on this occasion.”