EE to refund VAT to wrongly charged mobile customers


Updated on 22 January 2015 | 2 Comments

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.

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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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