Mobile Stolen Abroad - Huge Bill!

[BYO]

My mobile was pick pocketed whilst in Barcelona last weekend. o2 was notified as soon as possible some 9 hours later (had no phone or money). Today i've received a bill for £22,336.96... yes, 22grand!

 

The bill shows close to 2000 calls made to Serbia, Russia and Afganistan, many of them lasting about 15 minutes and most of them concurrent to within 30 seconds. As a result there are nearly 350 hours worth of calls in the space of only 5-6 hours totalling £17k and a similar amount of incoming calls bringing the total to nearly £19k + VAT

 

Ive read stories on the web in connection with this where people are liable to £1000 bills etc up to one a £8,200... but £22k??

 

o2 are investigating and appear helpful as well as completely astounded by the magnitude of this.

 

Any advice out there on this one??

 

Thanks

[Human Writes]

From a strict contractual standpoint your liable for the charges, the contract will state your responsible for keeping the SIM safe and your liable for any charges incurred from the SIM if it is lost/stolen until you report the fact that it is missing.

 

You can try and argue that they have a duty of care to you and should not have allowed these charges to accrue because they are completely unreasonable and out of character for your usage and they should have fraud prevention measures in place to allow them to detect and prevent usage of this nature. From a practical standpoint they can't realistically expect you to pay these charges, they are obscene - most of mobile phone companies are highly sensitive to media pressure, if they insist you are liable go to a reputable media outlet, the guardian, the times etc and contact their consumer journalist - you'll probably find at the first sign of serious media interest they will reach a settlement with you or waive the majority of the charges, they really won't want to see a picture of you holding your bill in a paper and complaining about the extent of the charges.

[2Grumpy]

I thought that there was a maximum EU roaming charge - this is well above that.

 

I believe that this can be challenged on those grounds as well as suggesting that O2 has a duty of care to its customers

[Human Writes]

I thought that there was a maximum EU roaming charge - this is well above that.

 

I believe that this can be challenged on those grounds as well as suggesting that O2 has a duty of care to its customers

 

There is a cap on data usage as I understand it, but the amount of calls or text messages is not capped as far as I am aware.