A medical student is being chased for payment by phone company 3 after a thief stole his mobile and racked up £1,500 worth of calls.
A medical student from Cardiff faced a visit from the debt collectors after a thief stole his mobile phone and ran up a £1,500 bill while he was out of the country on a charity placement in South Africa.
Trainee doctor Michael Barker was doing voluntary work in a hospital in Lesotho, an AIDS stricken area of South Africa, when his mobile phone was taken and his agreed credit limit exceeded by a massive £1,425.
However, despite Barker reporting his phone stolen as soon as he returned to the UK, mobile provider 3 are chasing him for full payment.
Speaking to the Guardian newspaper Barker said: "I simply don't have £1,500 to pay 3. In the past I have never been over my credit limit of £75 - yet suddenly loads of calls are made in a very short period, but this doesn't alert 3 to the fact that something is wrong.
"You would have thought that once the bill reached £75 they would have contacted me and said, 'Is it you making these calls', but nothing. I'm going to do everything I can to fight this."
Barker maintains that the last he saw of his 3 mobile was when he stored it at the bottom of his rucksack at the start of his month long African ‘adventure’. Despite keeping his bags in locked accommodation for the duration of his hospital placement, someone managed to access his belongings and stole his mobile phone.
Before he noticed it was missing, the thief managed to rack up £1,500 worth of calls on Barker’s account, including several lengthily calls to 3’s customer service centre.
Despite the fact that the thief exceeded Barker's agreed £75 credit limit many times over, the network provider still held him responsible for the bill and threatened a visit from debt collectors if he didn't pay.
At the present time customers are held fully responsible for any calls made on their mobile phone up to the point that they are reported stolen. It is this clause of ‘unlimited liability’ in the terms and conditions of 3’s mobile contract that allows them to hold Barker fully accountable for the cost of the calls a thief made.
While this seemingly unjust condition has caught many an unsuspecting traveller unawares, its fairness has not yet been tested in court. However, after an appeal by the Guardian newspaper, communications regulator Ofcom are now looking into a number of similar incidents to determine whether official intervention is needed.
Despite initially maintaining their stance, 3 have now agreed to reconsider Barker's situation after repeated appeals from the newspaper.
Source
Comments (8)
Any opinions expressed below are solely those held by individual users and are not in any way endorsed by, or representative of those held by Money.co.uk. We accept no responsibility or liability for the accuracy or content of any material submitted and maintain the right to publish, remove or edit it as we see fit.
Phil E. Drifter
2nd Dec 2008 23:14
This guy is an idiot. If your phone gets stolen, you report it stolen, THEN you're not liable for any incurred charges.
why would he know his phone is missing from the bottom of the bag. his laptop shown can email anywhere in the world. odds are a medical trainee in africa would not have the funds to use his phone.
Jennifer Mims
3rd Dec 2008 15:35
I never leave comments on these, but I would like to say incase anyone reads what I think. That I am sure the phone was not on his mind, going on a missions trip can be a very exciting thing and he just wasn't really paying attention to losing his phone... Or judging by what he said he thought it would stop at the 75.00 anyway so he just didn't report it yet.. Not sure . We always jump to tell people off in America anymore, no one belives anyone.. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.... JMO.... Have a Blessed day..
Texjaycee@aol.com
3rd Dec 2008 16:56
Mobile phone companies have NO PROBLEM shutting your service down for the non payment on a month contract... They give you a PRESET limit on what you can use and in some instances shut you dont when that is reached. IT is totally criminal on the cell phone companys behalf to NOT HAVE cut the phone off when he went over his limit MANY TIMES over..... If anyone is to blame....If anyone needs to pay, maybe they should foot the whole bill for being so absurdly fulla SHIT
jongils
3rd Dec 2008 17:35
As usual a large corporation is being relentless with collection from a victim of phone theft. I agree that you should immediately notify your cel phone service provider of your loss.
I think it is also the responsibility of the cel phone service provider to recognize unusual activity on a customers phone account. There was a preset limit. Why was the service not interrupted when the usage reached it's limit? Credit card companies are quick to call you with unusual activity.
The phone companies have grown so big, so fast that they cannot or do not want to monitor cel phone use.
This is just another case of greed and mistrust.
6.17 As described in Section 6.14 above, we will send you a bill on a periodic basis, which will usually be monthly. The bill will state the amount of the Charges due from you and the due date by which you must make payment. If you fail to pay your account on time, you will be breaking your
agreement and we may Suspend or Disconnect you. In this case, you will have to pay any outstanding Charges. We may set a credit limit on your account until you have established a good payment history with us or if you fail to pay your account on time. We will let you know the
applicable credit limit which we may increase or remove without notice. If you exceed the credit limit we set, we may Suspend any or all of the 3 Services you use until you have made a payment
to your account. You should not use the credit limit for budgeting as the amount you owe is not capped or limited by any credit limit we set.
Basically it means that 3 does not provide pay-monthly service with EXACT credit limit.
lsvgsmanfred@aol.com
3rd Dec 2008 18:38
From the Misery Loves Company Dept: nice to know folks across the ditch are just as screwed by their phone companies as we are by ours. . .
Lindsey
3rd Dec 2008 20:01
Im glad I dont live in the UK. Rules are weird over there.
