carphone warehouse mis sold contract

[CaptainBalrog]

Hi

 

My wife and i got a new phone for our son for his birthday. We got it from carphone warehouse on their iD network.

 

We were told in the shop that the contract would be limited to £5 above the monthly contract amount.

 

Several days after he started using the phone the service stopped completely.

 

We were not notified as to why. We had to first examine the handset to establish usage and second contact iD customer support.

 

The whole reason we rushed to get a phone was because we were going on holiday and our son was flying out to meet us after the first week so we really needed him to have a working phone. I emailed iD impressing upon them the urgency of our plight but their response was late and worthless.

 

I examined the handset and the usage statistics suggested a lot of data use. In the region of 5 gigabytes! Now our son is fairly tech savvy but he is only twelve. Still, he jelously guards his 3g allocation and is very careful about making sure he uses the house broadband when at home. He had not taken the phone out of the house at all since he got it and he insisted that he had checked to make sure he was using wireless and not 3g. I realize you cant fully trust a twelve-year-old when they think they've done something wrong. Just including this for completeness.

 

So we went on holiday still not knowing if the phone would work. I only had the facts of the matter confirmed while we were travelling through Spain. We were on our way to pick our son up from Malaga airport. I actually managed to get through to iD and they told me our son had accumulated a bill of £138 pounds over the contract payment. Now it's all a bit of a blur but i think i told the person on the phone that i wanted to cancel the contract and it was within fourteen days but i think she said i'd have to apply in writing or something. We were in the middle

 

Now my wife left the carphone warehouse shop with the understanding that we were getting a contract that was limited to £5 overspend so that was a shock.

 

When we got back (On the 29th of june) i made a writted complaint to carphone warehouse. Yesterday(29th of july) i received a response. It said that we were infact on a contract that was limited to £75 and that the charge of £138 was a mistake. They said we would get a refund of £75 and said they were prepared to discuss switching to the contract that we were supposed to get in the first place.

 

So I've set the data limit on the handset so that can't happen again but I'd really like to get the rest of the money back as they have definitely mis sold us the contract we are currently on.

 

Anyway i just thought i'd add my own experience here. If anyone has any advice it would be much appreciated.

[tobyjugg2]

I have no advice to give on the contract issue, but will highlight that many android phones will disconnect a wifi data connection when they 'go into sleep mode', but do not automatically reconnect when awakened to do something.

This means that they will default to using the phones data package even when you might still be at home and think you are using your main internet for data.

Its caught many people out.

[spalding78]

I have no advice to give on the contract issue, but will highlight that many android phones will disconnect a wifi data connection when they 'go into sleep mode', but do not automatically reconnect when awakened to do something.

This means that they will default to using the phones data package even when you might still be at home and think you are using your main internet for data.

Its caught many people out.

I've used 10-15 different Android phones over the years and never experienced this. Model?