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.
