Couple's £163,000 mobile phone bill shock Bill

[4me2]

Couple's £163,000 mobile phone bill shock


The bill was the result of a mass of downloaded data, it is believed




An electrician and his wife had a shock when they received a mobile phone bill for £163,000, then fought for months to have the debt cleared.
For 15 years, Alan and Carolyn Mazkouri, from Swansea, had a business deal with Orange for 10 phones.
They told the BBC's Watchdog programme that they normally had a bill for £300 a month, before the shock demand came in September.
Orange has now apologised and promised a refund and a gesture of goodwill.

Download frenzy

Mr Mazkouri's contract with Orange covered his work phone and the phones used by his employees.
He reported a problem with his phone last summer when the handset seemed to overheat. The phone was eventually replaced by the shop where he bought it.
Shortly afterwards, the phone was cut off and the couple were informed that this was the result of a large bill on the account.
The bill suggested that Mr Mazkouri's phone had downloaded data by dialling up the internet every 20 minutes for three weeks.



Alan Mazkouri said that the saga caused "absolute misery" for him and his family



The data use was the equivalent of downloading more than five million emails or 15,000 songs - and resulted in a bill of £163,178.86.
Mr Mazkouri described himself as a technophobe who had trouble sending a text message, so was "dumbfounded" by the download of such a huge chunk of data.

Apology

He said that Orange agreed to cancel the debt, but then continued to send him bills for more than seven months.
He was left frustrated after trying to contact Orange, and even instructed a solicitor to do the same. He described the saga as an "absolute misery" for him and his family.
Now, Orange has cancelled the whole bill and offered Mr Mazkouri £250 in compensation.
"We apologise to the Mazkouri's for the inconvenience. We have fully refunded all charges from this exceptionally high bill and offered a further gesture of goodwill. We look forward to hearing from them," a company spokesman said.
Mr Mazkouri said he was switching mobile phone provider.
This story will feature in the BBC's Watchdog programme on BBC One at 20:00BST on Wednesday, 22 May.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22624823

[GTI]

I do feel sorry for the guy.. big companies can be ruthless and completely impersonal when chasing debt, whether justified or not. I hope Orange increase their paltry compensation by a little more and actually put a smile on the customer's face after all those months of gnawing anxiety. In addition, I hope they learn from this and understand just how wretched and scary imminent bankruptcy can affect a person. It happened to my old man in the 90's and it wasn't pleasant.

[Over Carl]

Anyone else here wondering if the old sod has managed to accidentally install an app that's caned his data, then managed to get his phone swapped even though there was nothing wrong with it and then kicked up a fuss about a bill generated due to his ignorance?

I agree data charges are obscene but I suspect there is a lot missing from this article.

[GTI]

Anyone else here wondering if the old sod has managed to accidentally install an app that's caned his data, then managed to get his phone swapped even though there was nothing wrong with it and then kicked up a fuss about a bill generated due to his ignorance?
I agree data charges are obscene but I suspect there is a lot missing from this article.

Regardless, unless you're Roman Abramovich a £150k phone bill is not normal. They should have a system trigger e.g. someone from Orange calls a customer and informs them that they just exceeded £1/2/5k worth of data.
My missus just has to buy two dresses and a pair of shoes and I immediately get a call from the credit card company asking me to confirm that our cards haven't been stolen.

[Over Carl]

I did think of that before posting, but I realised he is on a business contract with multiple phones. I believe the general trend is that consumer contracts have unmentioned limits while business are normally unlimited - the mentality being that consumers need protection / are too much of a liability while businesses don't want to be embarrassed/inconvenienced by having their phones cut off. The logic I can see behind this is that a business should have internal procedures to avoid abuse of supplied facilities so they can regulate themselves.

[pickie]

Get a decent tariff, I fuc*ed Orange off years ago as there tariffs were utterly non competitive and cost me a fortune and I hardly used it,

I can download 100 times more than he did and not be billed anymore than £12 a month Unlimited data

[DJ OD]

Get a decent tariff, I fuc*ed Orange off years ago as there tariffs were utterly non competitive and cost me a fortune and I hardly used it,

I can download 100 times more than he did and not be billed anymore than £12 a month Unlimited data

Don't bank on it. Everyone knows "unlimited" isn't unlimited...

And to download 100 times his amount, given the shite speeds of data on mobiles you would probably have to leave the phone constantly downloading the whole month to get anywhere near that amount!


DJ OD

[rookie]

Don't bank on it. Everyone knows "unlimited" isn't unlimited...

And to download 100 times his amount, given the shite speeds of data on mobiles you would probably have to leave the phone constantly downloading the whole month to get anywhere near that amount!


DJ OD

i downloaded around 25gig in a month tethering my phone on 3 mobile te only reason i have broadband at home is because ping rates are shit
andcant play xbox live that well