£300 overcharge for data roaming

[Abbyx0]

Spoken to various EE customer service advisors who have each confirmed that my all inclusive roaming extra means I can use my plan data as normal in EU and USA (plus a couple of other places).

So to my surprise I received notification of a £300 overcharge. Queried raised and advised it's a known issue and basically keep an eye on my bill. Complaint also raised due to the amount of overcharge 

Received a call early (albeit the caller was very lovely) providing me an option to suspend my DD this month and pay my usual bill via card or be debited the full amount and have the overcharge credited back to me.

I chose the suspension route. However, my account still reflects I will be debited the full amount next week. I've also noticed that the next billing cycle has a charge of £245.08 predicted already (when looking at the breakdown of this, no actual charges are listed all calls / texts state £0.00) 

Anyone else had the same issue and had a successful resolve?

[bristolian]

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@Abbyx0 wrote:

Received a call providing me an option to suspend my DD this month and pay my usual bill via card or be debited the full amount and have the overcharge credited back to me.

I chose the suspension route. However, my account still reflects I will be debited the full amount next week.

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It may take a day or so, for your account to reflect the cancellation of the DD.

[AHarMan2]

Have you been charged for calls that should have been part of your allowance ? If so then yes it's a known issue with EE wrongfully charging customers during the process of being moved to real time billing.

[ij4m13]

Yes I’ve been overcharged on multiple occasions and every time it’s EE’s error. Yet they make it unacceptably difficult, time consuming and stressful to resolve it as until you get someone who is aware of the problem it’s about as constructive as banging your head against a brick wall and equally as painful. 
You’re fortunate it’s only happened the once. As I’m roaming a lot I’ve encountered the same overcharge “error” on so many occasions that I can’t recall the number of times off the top of my head. 
I’ve had enough and after being offered £35 compensation for what’s taken me over 6 hours of phone calls  to even have the mistake acknowledged. But it’s yet to be reflected on my bill as EE like to leave the overcharge on your account until the following month thereby labelling you as someone who doesn’t pay their bills on time. I don’t know if this would affect someone’s credit rating as I don’t care as it’s not something that concerns me but I can see how it could incorrectly affect someone who it’s important to. 
As with all the many mistakes and errors suffered while a customer of EE, they show no concern about the affect it has on their customers and I believe it’s a company policy never to accept responsibility or admit liability. 
In the 3 years as a customer I’ve suffered an unacceptable number of problems and I’ve calculated that the cumulative cost in time wasted in telephone calls alone amounts to over 200 hours. Quite unbelievable I know but I have kept records of all the calls as I always expected I’d need to provide evidence in future.
As it turns out I’m pleased I did because after the current debacle where I was subjected to a number of very aggressive and confrontational EE agents who gave me the usual run around from department to department as no one wants to deal with the situation. That or they’re made deliberately impudent by EE making it so hard to rectify the problem I expect many juts give up.
I’ve finally had enough. I won’t be wasting my time taking it to the ombudsman as they’re brought and paid for by the companies they presided over (yes the ombudsman get their funding from EE and others in the industry so it’s far from an independent arbiter as they like to make out. It’s no wonder they positively encourage customers to take their dispute to the ombudsman as they know they’ve got their back. There’s an unquestionable conflict of interest present given the ombudsman’s existence requires on the companies signing up to their scheme, which btw isn’t mandatory) . 
The best and only way to get justice against this kind of blatant abuse of corporate power is the courts. Use the small claims court as it’s affordable and you’ll get a fair hearing. As a layperson you’re given help by the court especially if it’s against a company who send their  professional legal team to represent them. I wish everyone was aware how bias and unfair the mediation service is. The only way to ensure impartiality is to have the service  paid for out of the pubic purse, then maybe the companies might have to show greater concern for its customers. 
back to the overcharge. Given it’s an endemic issue EE are aware of why haven’t they corrected it on all affected accounts and taken measures to inform  their customers of the issue rather than waiting for them to report the problem. It’s anlmost ans if they induced the overcharge in the hope that some customers would simply pay it not realising. It would only take a fraction of the accounts affected to pay it for them to make millions given the number of customers such an error would affect. And why hasn’t the regulator intervened to enforce this on EE. There’s a reason the industry is such a mess with companies misbehaving and making systemic “errors” and that’s the lack of oversight and regulation. 

[Linzi_H]

Hi @ij4m13 

I'm disappointed to hear that you still have concerns regarding your bills and payments, and I know you'll want to get this sorted as soon as possible.
I can see a member of our team advised you to contact our complaints department directly. Have you had the chance to do this yet? 

Linzi

[ij4m13]

Obviously my remarks didn’t provide a satisfactory explanation of what I’ve had to endure over the years and more recently with the systematic failures with so many aspects of my account management. I’m afraid that EE have completely abused any faith I might have had that they’re willing or able to fix the overwhelming number of mistakes and errors. 
I suggest you reread my last post where I explain my most recent interactions in the last two days regarding the incorrect over charging, coming only days after contacting EE to get them to reinstate my online access to my billing which hasn’t functioned for over 5 months and has been reported on many occasions only to be repeatedly ignored as is the way with every problem I’ve encountered with EE of which there have been too many.  
If this is deliberate by EE to create widescale over charging error in the hope that a fraction don’t get disputed and thereby earn EE millions (I wouldn’t put it past them) or that EE doesn’t have the capacity to maintain and administer their customer’s accounts without the high probability of over charging them. Either way it’s EE proving itself to be incapable of providing a reliable and trustworthy service. I always find it interesting that these so called mistakes only happen in favour of EE when it comes to the charges made to its customers accounts.  If it was a random error then surely there’s the possibility that EE could just as easily under charge. But as any EE customer knows this categorically never happens which raises the question just how much of a mistake is this widespread over billing? 
if only EE provided the right support directly to its customers rather than having you and your colleagues try and cover up the mistakes on this “community” site then maybe it wouldn’t have to be as bad as it is. 
again I refer you to my previous message where I explain my position and that due to the inability of EE to fix the problems it’s created there’s now only one avenue left for me now. I don’t expect EE has had to defend its inadequacies and failures in a court that often because it’s managed to fob if disgruntled customers to the utterly useless ombudsman service who’s agenda is to deflect blame away from the companies it’s supposed to be adjudicating on, but due to the blinding obvious conflict of interest they’re never willing to decide against the organisations who pay for them to exist. 
it’s been a staggeringly difficult few years as a customer of EE and I see no evidence to suggest it’s going to get better but plenty to suggest it’s likely to get worse. For that reason it’s time for me to move on but not without me making a sizeable claim for compensation for the obscene waste of time that I’ve had to spend fighting EE over an eye watering number of errors and failures with my account. 
I definitely can’t be accused of not trying as I’ve evidence to prove the ridiculous number of calls and the time spent in the vain hope it will be the end of the problems. 
to anyone who’s just started their journey with EE you need to know however bad you think it is it will only get worse. 

[Peter_W]

Good morning @ij4m13, thank you for taking the time to explain all of this. 

I really do appreciate the concerns you've raised here, especially with how long these issues have been going on for. 

We don't have access to your account via this public forum so can only offer general advice based on what you've described, but as @Linzi_H highlighted we have a dedicated complaints code of practice that for all customer queries.

We would always encourage you to follow this route, and if you remained unhappy with the outcome following this then you're welcome to look at other external options, but it's always best to give us the opportunity to work within process fist.

Peter

[ij4m13]

No doubt you would know this but I believe you and your colleagues just post on this forum in order to try and dispel genuine complaints by customers who have to resort to this forum because of the ineptitude and inability of EE to offer an adequate complaints and resolution  service. 
I now have EE threatening to cut my service unless I pay a bill which I don’t owe and there’s nothing I can do because I won’t be back in the UK for ages and I can’t even port my number anywhere else whilst I’m overseas.  as usual. I bring this to the attention of the ombudsman and they are in my opinion complicit because unbeknown to most people their service is brought and paid for bye the company they are supposed to be adjudicating over The ombudsman is funded entirely by the industry so it is inherently not an independent service because there is a conflict of interest if they derive all their funding from the telecom operators they are supposed to be somehow independently adjudicating complaints for. it therefore came as no surprise that my genuine complaint about the overcharging was closed for no apparent reason by the ombudsman there by wasting all that time and leaving me in a situation where I either concede to EE blackmailing me and pay a bill I shouldn’t, or I stand my ground and lose my service which is important as it serves my verification for many banks and financial services which I need to maintain. The state of the industry is appalling as it is totally stacked in favour of the oligopolistic system that operates against the many millions of customers to further enrich their shareholders. With so little oversight available to most customers and no truly independent the industry will continue to abuse and exploit its customers in the covert manner. it has done for years. This is the sad state of affair that me and many others have to face and we left having to make pathetic and pointless complaints to a community service which is pointless and toothless, exactly as the industry wants.

and that’s why people like you and your colleagues are given the task of making pointless and inept responses to peoples concerns. Telling me and others to just complain to EE shows no regards for the fact that the complaint service doesn’t work and is deliberately made to be obstructive and impossible to negotiate. All of the mistakes and errors by EE I contend are deliberately manufactured on the basis that a number of them get paid either by mistake or because people cannot stomach the pointless fight against EE and as such EE make millions more in profit from the misery of its customers.

[Linzi_H]

Hi @ij4m13 

If you contact us directly and do open a complaint, the team will look at any options to keep your service active until this is looked into further. If the bill is recognised as being outstanding, you will receive standard reminders about this.

We will always advise you of the best next steps within the Community, and getting in touch is the best thing to do now.

Linzi