Roz Dean, 72, exceeded her company phone’s SIM card’s 50GB monthly limit over a three-month period and was dumbfounded when provider 02 told her she owes them £18,000
A pensioner was horrified after being slapped with an £18,000 phone bill for going over her mobile data allowance with O2 saying she’s got to pay every penny.
Roz Dean, who owns drainage firm RGR Facilities, thought there had been a mistake when the telecom giants allegedly tried to take the first of three eye-watering payments in January. The 72-year-old blocked a £12,000 transaction but was left furious when the communications comany investigated – and concluded their giant bill was accurate.
She blocked the initial £12,000 bill believing it to be an error but O2 confirmed it wasn’t and sent two more invoices claiming an additional £6,000 had been spent on the same line. Invoices show how one work phone racked up £18,000 in data charges for exceeding its SIM card’s 50GB monthly limit between December and February.
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Roz, who is threatening legal action, says O2 customers service workers verbally reassured her the enormous fee would be waived only to then uphold it after their investigation.
O2 say the decision was made because the device was sent text alerts warning it had used 80 per cent and then 100 per cent of its data allowance and that there was no spending cap on the account.
Account holder Roz believes her phone supplier should have sent the warnings to her rather than the device, which was being used by an employee. Her work phone contract includes unlimited data for just £48 per month, leaving her to feel the £18,000 bill, which must be paid within the next two weeks, is ‘ridiculous’.
Since being contacted, O2 said they’re ‘working with RGR Facilities to reach a satisfactory outcome’.
They insist data usage warnings were ‘consisently provided’ and the charges are ‘valid’ but they accept ‘things could have been handled differently’. Roz, from Shepherd’s Bush, West London, said: “When I called up we thought it was an error because it was so huge and so did they.
“They didn’t send the warnings to anyone who is paying the bills but they sent it to the worker’s mobile phone and they didn’t send anything saying ‘you’ve racked up £1,000 in costs’.
“Most people would assume that if you go over it’ll charge you an extra £20 or even £100, something like that. You don’t think it’s going to be tens of thousands of pounds. When they’re charging more than £1,000 for under 100GB of data but you can get an unlimited data tariff for about £25 per month then that’s ridiculous.”
Invoices recorded the employee used 54GB of data on November 17, costing £1,586.14, and 33.4GB on New Year’s Day, costing £978.96 – which averages at £29 per GB used outside of the allowance.
Roz says a typical monthly bill for one of their phones on the 50GB data allowance is £37.62 and the whole company’s bill, which covers 11 work phones, comes to around £550. One mobile data provider estimates that it would take an hour of streaming Netflix on regular definition to use 1Gb of data.
It estimates that it would take 833 hours to use 50Gb of mobile data while browsing the internet and 50 hours to use 50Gb of data watching standard definition Netflix. Roz said: “If they had asked us to pay a small amount to clear this up then we would have done but they just investigated and said ‘no way, the whole thing stands’.
“The person who had the device said he wasn’t doing anything abnormal and that he was just making regular calls on WhatsApp.
“In future I think O2 should communicate with the account holder because you feel like they’re catching you out. It makes me angry. I’ve never not paid anything but I’m adamant not to pay it and if I need to take legal action then I will do. We’re a small business and they shouldn’t do that. I feel they’re targeting small businesses and it’s tough in the business world anyway.”
Roz says she could use the money to hire another apprentice, given ONS figures show youth unemployment is at the highest rate for almost five years (5.2 per cent). The owner, who oversees a team of between 16 to 18 staff, says she wants to leave O2 when the issue is resolved.
An O2 spokesperson said: “While we consistently provided the customer with warnings about their data use and all charges are valid, we accept we could have handled this case differently. As a gesture of goodwill we are reviewing their bill and working with them to reach a satisfactory outcome.”
