EE to refund VAT to wrongly charged mobile customers
Data roaming bundle customers affected outside Europe.
Mobile phone users with EE could be in for a refund, following the discovery of a “configuration error” in the billing system. This meant that VAT at 20% was being levied against data usage when it shouldn’t have been.
If you are an EE or T-Mobile customer, went somewhere outside Europe between October 2012 and October 2014 and used data through a data roaming bundle, you may be entitled to a payout.
Calls and texts were unaffected by the error, as were Orange customers.
If you’ve been overcharged
Should the above apply to you, then you shouldn’t need to take further action. EE has said that it will be contacting and automatically refunding existing customers.
However, if you’re an ex-customer and you believe that you may be entitled to a refund, you’ll need to contact EE customer service – call 07953 966 250 if you were an EE customer, or 0845 412 5000 if you used to be with T-Mobile.
An EE spokesperson said: "Due to a configuration error in our billing system, made following a system change, a small number of customers were wrongly charged VAT on the Data Roaming bundle outside of Europe. This was a mistake, and we are now refunding these charges and contacting affected customers to apologise for the error."
EE also made it clear that because VAT is a form of tax, the mistakenly-taken cash was not held by itself, but by HMRC until the error was realised. At this point, the phone provider requested the money back from the taxman.
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@Fender; Very similar experience to myself. I originally joined Orange with a two year contract. During my contract they announced a merger/buyout/whatever with EE. So far no problems & no need to use customer services. Then EE decides to upgrade our local transmitter to 3G. Seemed like a good idea at the time but there was no mention that the coverage would reduce drastically and leave me without a signal for the last ten months of my contract. The only support number I could find was a mobile phone number which is 21p/minute from my home phone (no signal at all on mobile). I did find an email address but never received a reply from any of my emails which were backed up with a letter in the post. I gave up calling the support number because of the cost. I spent a good few pounds on calls but never got to speak to a human. I couldn't afford another phone, didn't want another contract, so could only answer text messages and voice messages while I was out shopping. Funny thing, at the end of the contract I emailed to ask for my phone to be freed up for another network (at additional £20 charge to me!), and they sorted everything out via email... Never again, EE.
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EE are even worse that Talk Talk their customer complaints is rigged up to make it all but impossible to sort out a problem. The only option is to write a letter. If you do that they ignore and dance round the problem and reply with cut and paste answers that fail to answer anything. The letter they send back offers an 0845 endless option phone number, but wait for it, you cannot speak to the person who its claimed wrote the letter. There is no email address in short your banging your head against a brick wall. I moved my phone after seeing an offer on Martin Lewis I filled it all in on line everything went fine until some EE salesman rang me. Once I made clear I did not want to buy all the extra's he was touting he slammed the phone down, then it appears cancelled my order. Switch over day came, my old provider switched off, but as my EE unbeknown to me had been cancelled, we ended up with no land line and no broadband. This took six half hour phone calls to sort out. The because the original con man had cancelled my order, EE then said I was out of time for the offer, the original reason I moved. So anyone thinking of changing to EE. think again, they are the absolute worst absolutely dreadful.
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23 January 2015