Future-Comms - joseph Stickler

[BCS]

I moved to Future Comms in July 2018 I had been with Vodafone for 17 years and never had any problems.

 I regret very much that Jack from Futurecomm set up the call which was a three way call between me Vodafone and him.  When Vodafone were trying to give me a better deal he cut the call as he obviously thought they were talking me back… oh if only!

 

 The only reason I moved to Futurecomm is that they told me I would have exactly the same deal as with Vodafone which was all free texts and all free calls but they would also add free roaming without any charges for calls or text which was great as my son lives in Spain. 

I asked them if there would be any extra charges for certain numbers or texts or calls and he said definitely not.  I asked him to put this onto the contract which is did.  

 I was not informed at any time that on agreeing O2 who is the service provider would take much more than the agreed price from my bank account every month and then Futurecomm would be refunding me the difference. 

 

I would never have agreed to this as it can easily put your bank account into overdraft and incur bank charges.  I also noticed afterwards that I was in a three year contract whereby I had only agreed an 18 month contract. 

 

Once everything was set up I noticed after a couple of months that they were taking huge amounts of money hundreds of pounds and much more than agreed from my bank account. 

 

I called Jack who had sold me the package and said don’t worry this can happen you will be refunded on your next bill.  This was not the case and the money they were taking from my account was increasing. 

I called back and they said Jack has left.  Futurecomm Customer Service were very unhelpful and extremely rude and unprofessional.  One of them telling me to hurry up, cos her friend was waiting outside and she wanted to go home. 

 

Another time a guy very aggressive responded by asking ‘’what are you going on about”, I said pardon me and he repeated ‘’what are you going on about”.  I was being very polite myself.  

 

I then had them asking me to give them my username and password so they could look into my online billing which I thought was very strange. 

 

They then sent me an email with a zip folder containing 2000 pages of billing and told me to look through that!  Next I spoke to O2 and at that point they had taken a total of £450 from my account. 

A week later the whole lot of £450 had been refunded to my account.  Some weeks later the £450 had been taken from my bank again.  Since then I constantly have huge amounts of money taken out of my account on a monthly basis and nothing refunded.  I have written so many complaints to Futurecomm, but no response. 

I write warning reviews on Trustpilot and on Google and just get generic responses saying we will be in touch and they never are.  I have taken to heading my emails ‘’Complaint No. #’’ and am up to no. 7 even thought there are many more than 7.

 

As I had left the name of my company in my reviews another person who had the same problems as me called me and told me that he had gone to CISAS Communication & Internet Services Adjudication Scheme and they had sorted it out for him and he had got out of his contract and he suggested I did the same, so I called them but they said they are no longer dealing with Futurecomm. 

 

I am led to believe that all telecoms companies have to be covered by an independent disputes body but it looks like Futurecomm are not. I have kept a log with dates and times of everything that has happened.

 

I did read one poor very old couple who were living on a small pension and Futurecomm were taking nearly all their pension from them monthly… very sad!

 

I am devastated about this and am looking for anyway someone can help me, or I can help someone else in the same position as me.  Surely, if we all get together, we can do something about this situation collectively.  Thank you for reading all this.  I look forward to hearing from you.

[BankFodder]

Hi and welcome to the forum. You notice that I've tried to space out your story a bit to make it easier to read. Large blocks of text very difficult to deal with although I know it's difficult particularly if people are posting from a telephone.

We going to have to ask you quite a lot of questions because your story seems to be pretty unusual.

The typical Future comms story is that they fix up a contract between you and O2 and then they give you a rebate every month – typically about £18 per month. Often they also promised to pay you your termination fee with your previous supplier which might be anything between £80 to £120.

 

So the usual scenario is that people sign up for a three-year contract with O2, pay O2 the monthly subscription and then get cashback from Future comms. The usual scenario seems to be that Future comms generally speaking doesn't seem to pay the cashback so that people can be owed several hundred pounds and in one case I saw a figure of about £1300 on trust pilot.

For some reason rather most people seem to be going along with it and receiving promises which are constantly broken and seem to be tolerating it for a couple of years or more and are simply saying that they won't sign up again but they don't take any other action.

To my knowledge there are about three or four people who have now issued proceedings against future comms. One person who sued for several hundreds of pounds has received £18 and a defence to the rest of it.

It all makes me feel very uncomfortable because a business which works this way could easily be a business which is in trouble and doesn't have good cash flow. We'll see.

Your story seems to be rather unusual because I gather that the money has been taken out of your account by Future comms – not by O2. Is this correct? How are you paying O2 for your service?
If future comms are taking overpayments out of your account on a direct debit then the first thing that occurs to me is that you should invoke the direct debit guarantee which will bring your bank into the equation and that will give you a lot of power.

But first of all, it will be very helpful if we can understand in detail how your arrangement with Future comms works – because it seems to be completely different to anything we have heard of so far.

[BankFodder]

Okay I understand that in fact your problem with Future comms is following the usual pattern.

You have entered into a three-year contract with O2 brokered by Future comms. There are two telephones and you are contracted to pay O2 £28 for each one for unlimited texts and unlimited minutes and 6 GB of data.

Future comms have promised to return £28 per month to you – but only for 18 months.

You entered into the contract in July of last year and so far Future comms have paid you nothing at all. Surprise surprise.

By my reckoning this means that they are you £252.

I'm afraid that the only thing I can suggest is to send them a letter of claim – using a recurring letter of claim format so that future comms understand that if you don't have your money within 14 days you will see them and that not only that, every time they break a deadline for paying you the next instalment that you will see them again.

If you are prepared to do this then we can certainly help you and it is very simple – and assuming you win you will get your money back. There is no reason why you shouldn't win although I am troubled bit about the cash flow position of this company and it will be interesting to see what happens when one of the existing actions which have been started moves to enforcement.

If you want to send a letter of claim then you should be sure that you understand what it means to take a legal action in the small claims court. It's very easy and it's pretty well risk-free. Don't imagine that you can send a letter of claim and then not bother. Don't bluff. You only lose credibility.

Here is a link to a post which I made some time ago in relation to a recurring letter of claim – and you might want to consider that in relation to this company because it seems that their whole pattern of business is not to pay their debts.

Let us know what you want to do