Mobile phone restriction of service.

[seylectric]

How can a mobile phone company (or landline company for that matter) legally restrict your service to incoming calls for one late payment?

My argument is that the line rental aspect of the bill is paid IN ADVANCE (i.e on the previous month's bill), so they are effectively preventing you from using the service you have already paid for!

[comanche]

I had a furious row with my mobile company a couple of years ago about a similar issue. I went to the US just as my UK house came on the market and so, unsurprisingly, I needed to use my phone quite a lot out there.

On my return to the UK, Phones4U called up and demanded that I pay all the call costs since my last bill (about £200) there and then or they would suspend my service. I refused on the basis that I hadn't purchased a pay as you go service and all my bills had been paid on time. Needless to say they carried out their threat but they didn't just restrict outgoing service, they turned the whole thing off so that I couldn't receive texts or incoming calls.

I told them to go and stuff themselves.