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Recent changes to T-Mobile’s
fair-use limits for mobile data had customers clamouring to
get out of their contracts. Vodafone met a similar furore when it slashed
its data allowances, as did Orange when it upped
its call charges. Such changes can give you the right to
break your mobile phone contract — you just
need some spare time and
a geological level of patience.
If you feel like you’re locked in a Faustian pact, we’ve
whipped up this easy guide to getting out while the
getting’s good. Next time you read that your network has changed its
spots, and you like the smell of freedom, you’ll be primed and ready.
1. Get in quick
T-Mobile quickly backed
down from bringing in the cuts for existing customers, after
it recognised that they weren’t buying its claims that fair use wasn’t
part of their contracts. Orange did
the same after its customers did a runner in their
droves.
So if you want out, act quickly — preferably on the day you
hear the news that your contracts’ conditions have changed. Otherwise
you could easily miss the boat.
2. Find your material detriment
We spoke to two law-men about the issue — Stephen McGlade, a
solicitor at Which? Legal
Services, and David Gordon, a solicitor specialising in contract law.
They told us we all have the right to get out of contracts if
they’re changed in a way that will cost us more. It’s all thanks to the
Unfair
Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999, which governs
contracts that the customer isn’t able to freely negotiate.
In the T-Mobile case, for example, although the network said it
wasn’t going to charge you if
you go over its new 500MB-per-month cap, it would throttle some services on your
phone. And people who spoke to the network said they were advised to buy a more expensive deal if they tend to go
over the cap often.
That means if you use bags of data, the service you receive from
T-Mobile would change, or you’d have to pay more. In the lawyering
business, that’s what they call ‘material detriment’ — and that’s the
key to breaking your contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations.
In this example, if you consistently use less than 500MB of
data, you’d have a
harder time wriggling out of your deal. But if you plan to use more
data in the near future — if you’ve changed jobs or houses and you’re
losing your Wi-Fi, for example — then you could still give it a go.
T-Mobile argued that the data bundle wasn’t part
of
the core price plan — that it was an add-on or an additional extra.
But that’s a matter of interpretation. If you consider the data as part
of the core service, you could argue that it’s included — especially
if
it was one of of the major reasons why you chose T-Mobile.
The network must also give you a month’s notice of any big
changes to your contract, so make a note of when they were announced
and when they come into force. If it’s less than 30 days, that’s a
weapon in your quiver too.
3. Were you mis-sold?
You could also argue that T-Mobile was guilty of mis-selling
the
deal,
if its salesperson sold you the contract by telling you flat-out that
the data allowance would be larger than 500MB. That’s another reason
you could walk away from your contract.
If you ordered your contract over the phone, the network
should have a recording of the conversation, which would back up your
claims that you were mis-sold a deal that doesn’t suit you.
4. Bring snacks
In our experience, trying to wrangle out of a phone contract
is harder than wrestling an angry boa constrictor covered in baby oil.
The key is to metronomically repeat your arguments like a demented broken record.
Gird your loins and get ready for a looooong phone call.
Here are the points to hammer home:
-
The amount of data, overseas call charges, or whatever is
being changed, was one of the main reasons why you
bought
the contract — it’s part of the core service for you. -
You use so much data, make so many overseas calls, or
whatever relevant action, that you will have to pay for a more
expensive deal (or suffer reduced service) — that’s the ‘material
detriment’.
Doing this over the phone can be an exercise in frustration, so you must strike quickly. Just be ready for a marathon session —
call-centre staff seem trained to keep you at bay with a soul-sapping
ability to contradict. Don’t take no for an answer.
The alternative is going straight to the litigators’ best
friend — the post.
Writing a letter is painful, but it hurts less than taking on a slippery
call-centre operative. We like this letter
whipped up by grumpy blogger Cantankerous as a starting point
for
your particular complaint. Writing a letter, however, does give the
network a chance to change its mind about the changes, which solves the
problem but won’t set you free from your contract.
Don’t forget to ask for your PAC code so you can keep your
number.
You may also want to cancel your direct debit and offer to pay the
balance of your bill
directly — that will keep the network from snagging any unexpected
fees
directly from your account.
5. Use the big guns
You must go through your network’s complaints procedure —
here’s T-Mobile’s
— but then, if you don’t get what you want, you can complain to Ofcom. In
our experience, although it takes time, Ofcom does a good job of
squeezing the networks until they behave.
Ofcom has also stated it will investigate
if lots of people complain about a network swapping its terms, so throwing in your whinge could help everybody’s case.
