Contract’s a raw dial
Watch out for hefty extra charges if you go over phone allowances
Financial worries or just looking for better value for money? Consumer champion Fergus Muirhead answers your questions
Q MY PARTNER took out a phone contract with Orange a few years ago. It was a plan that included the iPhone4 (which was fairly new at the time), 600 minutes of talk time, 500MB data and unlimited texts. The original price was £30, which has subsequently risen to £33.57 a month. As it is his phone and he receives the bills (on paper), I was unaware of his recent charges. When I was doing some family budgeting recently, I discovered that in the last seven months, he has paid £1526.79. One month alone was £505.99. Almost all of the excess charges are for calls – there was, I think, one charge of £10 for excess data. He was recently elected to be the chairman of a charity so his phone usage has increased quite dramatically. As soon as I became aware of the issue, I arranged a new SIM-only package. For £25 a month, he now has unlimited calls and texts and 25GB of data.
As my partner is a hearing-impaired 76-year-old, he finds it very difficult to deal with call centres. I have to call on his behalf.
I called Orange to protest that the charges were unreasonable – £480 extra for calls when they offer unlimited calls for £20 seems to be unfair overcharging to me.
I asked why they did not text or call to notify him that he was so wildly beyond his bundle, even though he was paying more than 15 times his package.
I didn’t get anywhere. Their stance was that he did make the calls and calls outwith the bundle are charged at 40p per minute. Mary Rodgers (name changed by request)
A I AM getting a lot of messages like this at the moment and I’ve printed your email in full because I think a lot of readers will understand the situation you were in. Many will have been in similar situations.
This suggests to me that mobile companies have a lot of work to do when it comes to making sure their customers understand the detail of the contracts that they are
getting into when they sign up for a new deal.
I thought you were getting a bit of a raw deal and spoke to Orange on your behalf. After a bit of chat back and forward, a spokesman came back to me with this statement:
“Orange customers can check their usage at any time by calling or texting USAGE to 150, and through their monthly bill.
“We always recommend that customers check their bill regularly and contact our customer services team immediately if they have any questions.
“As a gesture of goodwill, we have offered to cover the cost of your reader’s phone usage for six months. He has accepted our offer and is happy with the outcome.”
I agree with Orange that it is really important for customers to check their bills regularly to ensure they know how much data they are using and how many calls they are making.
I also think it’s great that they offered to cover your partner’s phone usage for six months.
But I’m concerned that they, and other mobile providers, seem to be passing the buck on this issue.
They seem to want to continually put the ball back at their customers’ feet by telling them that it is their responsibility to be continually checking their accounts and usage.
They need to realise that while this is true, there is a bigger issue involved. It is that there are so many contracts on offer with so many different terms and conditions, that it can be difficult to know exactly what you’re buying.
Added to that is the fact that the contracts change so often and a small change in usage patterns can lead to hugely inflated bills.
Consumers have to take some responsibility for the way they use their phones. But I think phone providers could do a lot more to ensure contracts are more transparent and that customers are notified much more quickly when a change of usage means that a switch to a different contract would be appropriate.