We’re in a two and eight – over Three

M.R. writes: My daughter has a problem with mobile phone company Three. When she set up her contract, unknown to her, Three entered a wrong name but with her correct address and bank details. Three wrote to the wrongly named person about a problem, but the letter went to my daughter’s address. She visited the Three shop in Nottingham twice and staff were sympathetic but said she did not have an account with Three. YOUR daughter got the worst of both worlds. Three was collecting its charges from her bank account by direct debit and she could use the phone. At the same time Three refused to accept she was the customer and said the phone was registered to a Miss Fatima.

You have told me that when Three accepted there had been a mistake, it cut off the phone number, disrupting your daughter’s work. Worse still, it wrote to Miss Fatima at your daughter’s address, demanding £73 in outstanding charges. It refused to discuss this with your daughter because, of course, she was not Miss Fatima.

Three does not appear to have caused the error in the first place. When I enquired, staff told me your daughter’s account was set up by a dealer. On the same day the business also set up an account for Miss Fatima, but reversed the names and numbers when notifying Three. The bottom line is that Three is cancelling the demand for £73, refunding £41 it had already collected and adding a further £120 to make up for the inconvenience.