Hi there, heres the story, I paid for an early upgrade online with ee. the cost was £251 including the early upgrade fee to buy out the rest of my contract and the upfront cost of the new handset. Now I ordered this the same day my new bill was generated, however my payment date for this bill is the 10th of each month, it was not due for another week so I didnt see a problem. in the after morning after ordering I checked the ee tracker to find news of my delivery only to find it `timed out` it couldnt find any record of the order number in other words. I phoned ee to find out what was going on, the rep told me for some reason the system had taken my upgrade fee but then straight away refunded it and it was on its way back to my account, she apologised and said if I wanted it back quicker I could get an indemnity on the direct debit with my bank asking them to cancel it and I should recieve payment that same day. Since then I found a better deal with another provider on the same handset (vodafones 32gb of data v 8gb ee were offering for the same price as I was paying now monthly!) I decided id use the refund to pay off my contract with EE and go with that one instead of upgrading. I contacted the livesupport on the ee website just to ensure the upgrade hadnt been put through again and to make sure it was indeed cancelled before going with the other network. I was then told that I was not being issued with a refund, the funds instead had been put towards my account balance and it was now in credit (this was presented as something I was apparently meant to be happen with) Now I wanted the refund, my bills not due till the next week and I didnt want to pay it till my next payday which falls before my payment date anyway. I was told I couldnt be refunded as the payment had already been put towards my bill and id just have to get a refund of the credit after paying my bill the next week. My issue is I never authorised this, the payment was sent as part of the early upgrade service it was payment for the early upgrade fee and the handset it was never authorised by me to be used as payment for my bill. EE have just gone ahead and done this without my permission then used that as a reason for not refunding me, I dont see how this is legal to use a payment in a way it wasnt intended without asking esp when the payment is taken as payment for a specific. product and service such as an upgrade. Not happy as not only was my payment used for something not intended by me and without my permission but the woman on the phone in the morning was obviously utterly using me. What I think has happened is ee have sneakily used the fact I made a payment for this upgrade as a way to have me pay my bill off early and just cancelled the upgrade so they can use the payment for this. Obviously very dodgy practise if so! Im just wondering if my misusing my payment in this way ee may have broken any part of their contract, id love to get a bit of revenge by using it as a reason to tear it up. Latest update got in touch with my bank, they say I cant get an indemnity anyway as the payment was by card (so the ee rep was totally using me this morning it appears!) but that the payment is still pending so it shouldnt take any time at all for EE to refund as they can just cancel it.....lets see if they choose to or see if they choose to `keep the money` on my account balance against my will......what they do will decide if I take further action im guessing, EE rep claiming they dont have the ability to cancel a pending payment......utter rubbish! I will be taking this further! luckly ive saved the chat transcripts. anyone else experienced this kind of thing?