Plan.com and EE account accesss

[Shwri33]

I had a call from a company saying their were the business arm of EE and could save me money on my mobile contracts. As they clearly had access to my accounts quoting data only known if they could see, of course I trusted them. 
Why has since transpired is nothing less than a gross misconduct of my data as far as I’m concerned and this is a sector o work in and understand well of customer data protection.

so here is my current situation, I called to want to terminate my business contract, both handsets are now fully paid. The cost to exit? £1k as I have 14 months of a three year contract. Paying for one mobile not being used will cost £467 to exit!! 
I wanted to upgrade one phone which I could have easily done via EE and my app, which I didn’t realise I would lose as I didn’t think I was anything more than an EE business customer. 
I was loyal and happy with EE now I am furious that you gave out me my data and duped me into this unscrupulous contract. 
I would like EE to sort this and cancel this contract? If not I’m taking this as high as I can and I will not be blaming plan.com. They already have a shocking reputation now and it dumbfounds me why you would associate yourself and give my data to them! 

[Shwri33]

I am at the point of taking this to the communications body. I was a loyal EE customer and one day o got a call saying it was their business account team and they could save me money. They had full access to my EE account so I didn’t doubt. I am now stuck with an extortion of a contract that I would never be paying if I had stayed directly with EE (which I still thought I was part of) they are telling me it will cost me £1.1k to get out of my airtime contract on two handsets fully paid for!!  I will never go back to EE after this if they can’t get this fraud of a company stopped and clear me of this contract 

[XRaySpeX]

Do you have a contract with EE or somebody else?

This user discussion forum can have no access to your specific account. You need to raise this with CS.

[Gazza1234]

Yes you should contact the Telecommunications Ombudsman who will help sort it out. 

 By law all telecommunication companies have to keep recordings of the new contracts that they set up over the phone. This information is available through doing a Subject Access Request (SAR). I did this to help a friend caught up in this Plan.com nightmare. He had been cold called by Plan.com’s third party and told they were from O2 to renew his contract. A week later his phone went dead, and then he received an email saying he was on a non cancelable 3 year Business contract with Plan.com.

I helped him out. I emailed Plan.com saying my friend had been scammed and I sent the evidence from The Guardian, The BBC and Trustpilot where it is clear that the cold callers blatantly lie in order to secure contracts (and get their commission).  Plan.com attempt to distance themselves from the scam by saying that they are not in control of the their parties and so are not responsible (a very weak argument). However the recording that the BBC journalist made on their iPad of one of their third parties blatantly lying and saying they were from O2 is very very damning. They have also been reported about in the Guardian and The Telegraph. 

So the gig is up and Plan.com know it, you just have to stand up to them. Unless they can provide an unedited copy of the cold call when the contract was made, then they have no proof of a legitimate contract.

I sent them a Subject Access Request asking for unedited recordings and transcript of the initial call and they didn’t answer (because this would prove the fraud), and since then they have never emailed my friend ever again or asked him for money. However he did have to get  a new number. However I recommend that going to the Ombudsman is probably the best way to do it. 

If EE are anything like O2 then you can’t expect them to be of any real help sadly.

The Guardian ; https://amp.theguardian.com/money/2023/oct/23/my-o2-mobile-contract-was-cancelled-against-my-will

BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001xvgy

Subject Access Request https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/getting-copies-of-your-information-subject-access-request/how-to-m...

[Gazza1234]

EE won't have given your data to Plan.com.(it's illegal for then to do so)  The way the scam works is this:

Plan.com use unscrupulous third party call centres who search online databases and probably buy your data from the dark web. With your data they can know quite a bit about you including when your EE contract is finishing. They then cold call you pretending to be from  EE and with the data they have on you can convince you they are EE.

They then offer you what seems like a great deal and so you agree to a new contract with them. Later on you find out that you have been scammed into taking out a contract with a company you have never heard of who are based in the Isle of Man. The third party get a commission and Plan.com have a new contract with you. 

You won't get anywhere with EE because they didn't sell your data. With O2 for example despite possibly thousands of their customers ending up being scammed in this way, to this day, they still list Plan.com on their website as "Approved Business Partners". Hard to believe but you can check it out for yourself.

I suggest you  do a Subject Access Request as this is the only way to get the evidence you need to prove you have been scammed. 

Don't waste your time with EE. Also be very careful when the 3 year contract is up, if you still have a contract then,  as there are many stories where people say that Plan.com have renewed them on to another 3 year contract without their permission and the misery never ends. Checkout the 1 Star reviews of Plan.com on Trustpilot -- you will need a strong stomach --- 

You can write to Ofcom but all they will tell you to do is contact the Ombudsman.

The thing is because of all the bad publicity that Plan.com have got over this then if you have evidence that you have been conned in this way then you have a very good chance of getting out.