T-Mobile - ******* retards.!

Columbo · 7 Sep 2011 at 11:26

**Rant Warning**

Received a letter in the post yesterday from a Debt collecting agency Buchanan, Clark & Wells.

My wife, according to the letter owed £50.96 + £5.48 admin charge for missing 2 payments. (contract is £25.48 p/m) and we have 7 days to pay or we are off to court.

Now my wife moved banks last month and it looks like her T-Mobile DD was cocked up in the process so one payment missed, but the 2nd payment is the one that is due this month ffs on the 22nd. There was and always has been plenty of money in her account.

So she missed one payment on the 22nd of August (3 weeks ago) and hasn't yet missed another one yet they demand via debt collectors that this be paid.

What kind of cowboy outfit are they? T-Mobile never once contacted my wife telling her payment had been missed, no functions were restricted on her phone, no letter received and no information from her old bank saying there had been a failed DD attempt.

We accept that she should have noticed that no payment had gone but is there really a need to get debt collectors involved at this stage?

After speaking to them last night it is according to them 'standard practice' for missed payments so as a result I've payed the remaining term of her contract off and will be moving elsewhere.

Shocking practice in my opinion and we will be staying well clear in future.

Sorry for the rant

kevpuk · 7 Sep 2011 at 11:32

Woah ! That is very poor !
I have been on T-mobile for a fair few years now, and - whilst I have not missed a payment and been 'lucky' enough

eek

to experience this - there CS does seem to have dipped off a bit in recent times......that said, this is unacceptable behaviour from a company IMHO !

Russinating · 7 Sep 2011 at 11:39

kevpuk said:
there CS does seem to have dipped off a bit in recent times!

Since they merged with Orange basically. They have to fund their 241 cinema antics somehow - let me introduce shoddy Indian call centres.

Scrutinize · 7 Sep 2011 at 11:39

I would be more annoyed that this will most likely show on your wifes credit history as missed payments and could count against you for a few years, you may be able to contact experian to get it removed if it is unreasonable of T-mobile or t-mobile can't / won't do it themselves once you have settled outstanding debt.

however T-mobile are perfectly entitled to do this and are acting in accordance with the contract between you. after all, it was your decision to change banks not theirs. you should really have ensured all the DDs were paid and been tracking them closely and been aware of the potential for this to happen during the change over

moving banks can be a headache

Columbo · 7 Sep 2011 at 11:48

mrk1@1 said:
however T-mobile are perfectly entitled to do this and are acting in accordance with the contract between you. after all, it was your decision to change banks not theirs. you should really have ensured all the DDs were paid and been tracking them closely and been aware of the potential for this to happen during the change over

I accept that fully, but surely a quick call from CS to my wife would have been a much better solution. Its not like they haven't got her number is it?

They now have to pay the Agency for their part and have lost a customer.

kevpuk · 7 Sep 2011 at 11:48

I agree with the above in part, specifically the responsibility around moving DDs etc., but still think that T-Mobile's actions/response are far too heavy-handed ! Yes, a payment was missed, but are debt collectors really the right approach to take ? Surely there will be associated costs involved also, not to mention the potential 'goodwill' hit that will become evident ?
All seems mightily cras of T-Mobile, to my mind.

shine · 7 Sep 2011 at 11:52

It would have made sense for T-Mobile to have sent a reminder to your wife about the missed payment, however from their point of view they were probably notified of a cancelled direct debit but no new payment instructions.

It may have looked odd from their point of view so they moved quickly to retrieve payment. Again a call/text or letter in the first instance would have been the best course of action.

Myshra · 7 Sep 2011 at 12:00

Russinating said:
Since they merged with Orange basically. They have to fund their 241 cinema antics somehow - let me introduce shoddy Indian call centres.

Amateur insulter, T-M and Orange used india outsourcing WAY before the merger

Highly suspect the DD was instead replaced with a force-stop DD notice from your bank and this is terms for contract breach IIRC. This is where it gets a bit bizarre though, networks will not cut you off instantly because of a missed payment or two - they know how much you rely on your phone etc... and cutting people off is pretty miserable for all involved so they tend not to.

Banks have a full process for switching now and I thought all DDs were guaranteed to be transferred?

It's worth noting that [/i]all[/i] of the big 5 afaik do this or similar. While I can appreciate you're ****ed off, this would have happened wherever you were. You should have received a mail bill though, did you get nothing in the post?

The paying out your contract though, that was throwing money away to them

When you buy out you essentially don't pay for billing for X months which costs the networks a large amount of that X per month you give them so you may have even made them money by buying out

str · 7 Sep 2011 at 12:01

I paid my T-Mobile bill early so I could change direct debit details (couldn't change DD unless there was £0 balance) and they charged me £3 when the direct debit would have been due even though no money needed to be taken from my old bank account lol.

Django x2 · 7 Sep 2011 at 12:16

mrk1@1 said:
I would be more annoyed that this will most likely show on your wifes credit history as missed payments and could count against you for a few years, you may be able to contact experian to get it removed if it is unreasonable of T-mobile or t-mobile can't / won't do it themselves once you have settled outstanding debt.

however T-mobile are perfectly entitled to do this and are acting in accordance with the contract between you. after all, it was your decision to change banks not theirs. you should really have ensured all the DDs were paid and been tracking them closely and been aware of the potential for this to happen during the change over

moving banks can be a headache

It won't show up at all on her credit file (if it is just one missed payment). Although their practice seems odd. The usual is, a missed payment is claimed for again 5 working days later. If it's missed again it will get marked on your credit file, but only as one missed payment, which, for a mobile phone, most lenders don't take in to account anyway.

Russinating · 7 Sep 2011 at 12:35

Myshra said:
Amateur insulter, T-M and Orange used india outsourcing WAY before the merger

Well I signed up to T-Mobile last September and I always got through to British call centres before the merger, so meh.

Columbo · 7 Sep 2011 at 12:44

Myshra said:
The paying out your contract though, that was throwing money away to them When you buy out you essentially don't pay for billing for X months which costs the networks a large amount of that X per month you give them so you may have even made them money by buying out

Not really sure how it works for them but she had 5 months left to pay which cost me £127.40 to pay off + the £5.48 admin charge. This included the 2 months demanded on the letter.

Her phone is worth £132 via recycling from Fonebank so the net for me is -£0.88p

Perfectly happy with the result and more importantly we don't have to deal with them anymore.

Bloomfield · 7 Sep 2011 at 13:11

ManCuBuS said:
Not really sure how it works for them but she had 5 months left to pay which cost me £127.40 to pay off + the £5.48 admin charge. This included the 2 months demanded on the letter.

Her phone is worth £132 via recycling from Fonebank so the net for me is -£0.88p

Perfectly happy with the result and more importantly we don't have to deal with them anymore.

Fair enough if you're happy with the result, but you haven't just spent 88 pence, you now have to pay 3 months extra line rental to someone else. You also saved T-Mobile money by giving them the same amount of money that you would have gave them anyways, only now they don't have to provide you with their services.

The sensible thing would have been to see out the contract and save yourself on line rental, aswell as making T-Mobile actually give you something in return for your money

.

Columbo · 7 Sep 2011 at 13:18

Bloomfield said:
Fair enough if you're happy with the result, but you haven't just spent 88 pence, you now have to pay 3 months extra line rental to someone else. You also saved T-Mobile money by giving them the same amount of money that you would have gave them anyways, only now they don't have to provide you with their services.

The sensible thing would have been to see out the contract and save yourself on line rental, aswell as making T-Mobile actually give you something in return for your money .

The financials weren't really that important to be honest, not dealing with them anymore was.