O2 fined £10m for 8 years of overcharging its customers

MOBILE operator O2 has been fined £10.5million for overcharging customers over eight years.

More than 250,000 people were hit with billing errors when they switched to other providers, including being hit twice for some charges. Of these, about 140,000 failed to spot the mistakes and overpaid a total of £2.4million as a result.

Telecoms watchdog Ofcom said the firm had broken its rules by failing to provide accurate bills.

When customers change mobile provider they should receive a final bill setting out any remaining fees they must pay before their account is closed.

But an error in the way O2’s systems calculated these bills meant many paymonthly mobile customers were charged for some fees twice.

O2 first identified the problem in 2011 but phone-users continued to be overcharged until 2019.

Ofcom enforcement officer Gaucho Rasmussen said: ‘Customers trust their provider to bill them correctly and fix any errors as quickly as possible. But these

‘Hit twice for the same fee’

billing issues continued for a number of years without sufficient action from O2, and thousands of customers were overcharged as a result.

‘This is a serious breach of our rules and this fine is a reminder that we will step in if we see companies failing to protect their customers.

‘We are satisfied the company has taken action to prevent this happening again.’

Affected customers – who are thought to have been overcharged by £18 on average – have now been refunded in full, plus an extra four per cent as compensation.

Where O2 was unable to contact phoneusers, it has agreed to make a donation to charity for the equivalent amount.

A spokesman said: ‘We are disappointed by this technical error and sincerely apologise to customers impacted.

‘We identified the issue ourselves and notified our industry billing auditor. We have also taken proactive steps to refund all impacted customers.’

Anyone who thinks they have not received their money back is advised to contact O2 directly.

THE governing body of curling has apologised after it unwittingly offending human rights activists opposed to alleged atrocities in China.

Representatives from the Stop Uyghur Genocide group had contacted the World Curling Federation (WCF) to appeal for support for their plight.

Campaigners used social media to urge the WCF to ‘speak out’ against the Chinese Government when the team attends the Winter Olympics in Beijing next February.

But the WCF, based in Perth, blocked the campaigners’ account in what it describes as a ‘misunderstanding’.

‘Account was blocked in error’

A WCF spokesman said: ‘The account was blocked in error as the federation was dealing with a number of bot accounts.

‘As soon as the mistake was realised the account was unblocked. We apologise for this mistake.’

Campaign group representative Rahima Mamut has written to WCF secretary general Colin Grahamslaw demanding a meeting.

She wrote: ‘It would be a travesty if the Winter Olympics, which are supposed to promote tolerance and understanding, were used by the Chinese Government to distract the world from a systematic attempt to destroy a people.’