Talk’s not cheap during the time of the COVID pandemic

Are mobile providers profiteering from people working at home?

SINCE the beginning of this lockdown period there’s been a lot of talk about the joys of working from home.

Too much talk, it seems, for the mobile networks which have taken some of us to the cleaners for using our mobile phones to carry on our work from home.

My last day in The Corkman office before the lockdown was on March 12, the day the Taoiseach told us that we were entering a new phase of our engagement with this virus. He asked those of us who could work from home to do so.

Lucky as I am to be in a job where my employers facilitated this, I didn’t realise that when I made my first work related call the following day, Friday March 13, that I, like countless others no doubt, would be walking into a trap waiting to be sprung by the providers of mobile phone services.

Weeks of working from home, calling people to enquire about possible stories, and suddenly, the week before last, I got a text message from my provider telling me I had reached 90% of my credit limit of €75. I had a vague recollection of setting a €75 limit when I signed up to the contract for the phone nearly two years ago.

That was on the Thursday. I received another text message the following Monday to tell me that I had reached my limit and I should contact ‘Customer Care’ - now, that’s a euphemism if ever I heard it.

I called the number and eventually got through via the usual merry go round to a number which gave me my balance – a little more than the agreed €75 limit at €76.80. I thought that would be the end of it – an understandable – given the circumstances – overspend and that was it, paid.

But within three days I had another text from Three – at 9.41pm on Thursday and again I was on alert that I was at 90% of my limit. Within the same minute I had another text which told me I had reached my limit and, again, I should contact customer care. It was too late to call customer care – it wouldn’t open until the morning.

I tried logging into my online account but the password I thought I had didn’t work and then when I tried changing my password the system wouldn’t let me.

So, next morning I managed to change my password and gain access to my account. It wasn’t a case that my money hadn’t reached the account, which was my initial suspicion. It was actually that I now owed an entirely different amount - €93.

How could this be? When I had called on Monday, the total I owed was €76.80 so how could it reach another €93 within three days?

I called the same number I called on Monday but this time I opted to try and get through to a customer care representative rather than the automated option.

“There’s approximately 30 minutes waiting time,” an automated voice intoned. I put the phone on speaker, turned down the volume and continued work until a real person spoke.

Somebody spoke eventually and I gave my identifying details and was about to give an account of my situation but the line went dead.

So, after a few well aimed prayers uttered under my breath – I am working from home, remember – I rang the number again and went through the rigmarole of waiting until someone answered the phone. I gave my details and made my complaint about being cut off. Needless to say, the person on the other end of the phone didn’t know anything about the cutting off.

In the ensuing conversation I was told the €76.80 I paid on Monday wasn’t the total owed, merely the amount of credit available to me which, if I paid it, would allow me to make calls again. Now this hadn’t been explained to me the previous Monday, far from it. Apparently the total bill was in the order of €170, which included €30 or so in VAT.

In those kind of situations there’s little that can be said

– the company represented by the person on the other side of the phone already had a hand in my pocket for the €93. The only ‘consolation, I was told, was that the money wouldn’t be taken from my account until the next billing date, in around two weeks time.

I did remind the customer care operator that the statement in the text message to me that they would ‘cut off services’ until the bill was paid ran counter to the provider’s public pledge that no-one would be cut off during the COVID-19 emergency, but it seemed to make no difference to them.

Luckily, I now have another phone, provided by my employer, on which I will make work related calls from home.

There are plenty of other ways I can be contacted if someone needs to get in touch. And I will deal with my provider when my current contract expires.

This salutary tale about the perils of working from home is not a patch on the tales of business people and workers who’ve lost their livelihoods due to the pandemic.

But don’t let anybody tell you that talk is cheap!