<div id="readability-page-1"><div><div><blockquote>Has a company treated you unfairly? Ruth Emery, our consumer champion, is here to help. To contact Ruth, click here*.</blockquote>Dear Ruth,I work for a grease management company that supplies its field technicians with work mobile phones. We recently received several very high bills from O2 after one of our workers exceeded the data allowance on his phone.In total, O2 says we owe more than £18,360. It has refused to waive the charge. It says the technician was notified when he used 80pc of his data, then 100pc, and that there was no cap in place to limit data spending.However, we, the company that arranged and paid for this mobile phone contract, were never warned about the data usage.We would like to know how it is possible to have built up such a large bill when unlimited data contracts with O2 typically cost in the region of £22 a month, and why a charge of in excess of £18,000 was allowed to be accrued in a short period.The telecoms company did not make any attempt to contact the bill payer to notify us or allow us to cap the spending.We’re a small company with fewer than 20 staff, and being hit with a cost like this is the difference between us hiring another apprentice or buying valuable equipment.MR, London</div></div><div><div>Dear Reader,I’m sure it was rather startling to receive these enormous bills. You’re a senior member of this busy company, which provides grease and drainage solutions to businesses such as restaurants, hotels and hospitals.Having a work phone is vital for your workers who are out on the road speaking to clients and updating them about the fight against FOG (fat, oil and grease) – and you don’t have time to also fight O2 over these sky-high charges.Your technician racked up a £9,542 bill in December and you flagged this with O2 in January when the matter was brought to your attention. However, you were still discussing the matter with O2’s complaints team when another £3,927 bill arrived for January, followed by a £1,831 bill for February. With 20pc VAT on top, this gave an eye-popping total of £18,360.You finally received the crushing news in March that O2 had “declined to waive the charges, as these have been deemed valid”.I wondered what on earth your field engineer was doing to trigger these unexpected charges. You told me he was in the UK when this happened, so this wasn’t a question of being abroad and data roaming charges causing the bills to spiral out of control, as has happened to other readers.The technician told you he’d only used the phone for WhatsApp calls, although you suspect these were personal rather than work calls.They appeared on the statements as “GPRS calls”, with most occurring between 10pm and 1am. This stands for General Packet Radio Service, which is essentially an old-school 2.5G data connection. While the invoices refer to “calls”, the GPRS charges may also relate to internet browsing and downloads.When the first giant bill arrived, your company cancelled the direct debit and filed a complaint, believing the bill must have been in error.It’s regrettable that O2 didn’t move faster to investigate your case. You say that when you realised the January bill was also inflated, you asked for an upgrade to an unlimited data contract, but were informed you had to wait until the next bill before this could be done. This resulted in further costs being incurred in the February invoice.It’s also unfortunate that your company didn’t request a spend cap on the contract in the first place. This would have put limits on phone usage and prevented excessive charges, a wise move for all companies to consider for their staff.However, I agree with you that a business contract like this should also warn the bill payer (as well as the phone user) about potentially high fees, so I asked O2 to review your case again.It said: “While we consistently provided the customer with warnings about their data use and all charges are valid, we accept we could have handled this case differently, so as a gesture of goodwill, we are reviewing their bill and working with them to reach a satisfactory outcome.”It has agreed to waive £14,687 from the total bill and reminded you that you can set up email alerts in your O2 business account to monitor your workers’ phone contracts.You told me you intend to ask the technician to contribute 50pc of the outstanding costs and to switch all your workers’ mobile tariffs to unlimited data.The technician who caused all this mess has now left your company.</div></div><div>*Please note that by submitting your content to us, you are consenting to The Telegraph processing your personal data where required by law. For further details, please see our Privacy Notice.</div></div>

A grease management company faced an unexpected £18,360 phone bill from O2 due to excessive data usage by a technician. Despite O2 notifying the technician of data limits, the company was not informed, leading to significant financial strain. After complaints, O2 agreed to waive £14,687 of the bill, acknowledging they could have handled the situation better. The company plans to implement unlimited data plans for all employees and seek contributions from the technician, who has since left.

The telegraph

iShares US Telecommunications

‘O2 let my employee rack up a £18,000 phone bill without telling me’