Philippa Perry ‘punished’ by EE after she fell victim to fraud

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jul/11/philippa-perry-ee-punished-fraud-hassle-phone-company

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When her mobile phone suddenly stopped working at the beginning of May, Philippa Perry found herself embroiled in a “Kafkaesque” nightmare involving fraud and apparent identity theft, threats of having her phone service cut off, and many weeks of hassle.

Perry, a broadcaster, journalist and psychotherapist who is married to the artist Grayson Perry, told Guardian Money that if being defrauded by persons unknown wasn’t bad enough, she feels as if she is being “punished” for it by her soon-to-be-ex-mobile phone company EE.

Her tale of woe emerged just days after EE, whose adverts are fronted by Hollywood actor Kevin Bacon, was fined £1m for “serious failings” in the way it handled customer complaints. This was Ofcom’s largest penalty for poor complaints handling in any industry, and the regulator’s fifth biggest overall.

Perry lives in London and, as well as writing for publications such as the Guardian, she has presented TV programmes including, most recently, BBC4’s Sex, Lies and Love Bites: The Agony Aunt Story.

She says that out of the blue during the first May bank holiday weekend, her mobile phone stopped working. When she eventually got through to EE – whose brands include Orange and T-Mobile – it told her that another phone line and two iPhones had been taken out on her account. “I said: ‘That’s not me – that’s fraud’,” she told Money.

It transpired that in April someone had managed to go online and, using her number and name and address, order the phones. “According to EE they were delivered to my address – but they definitely weren’t,” she says. “This unusual activity caused them, without warning me, to suspend my account.

“I’m glad they noticed the fraud, but was annoyed they had just stopped the service rather than contacting me to ask about this unusual purchase. To this day I cannot understand how the phones were debited to my account. I was alarmed that it was so easy for someone to do that without having to prove they were me.”

Perry says EE seemed to accept this was fraud – but the incident caused problems with her monthly direct debit to the company. “They didn’t warn me that the direct debit would now not work, and so the following month my service was suspended again,” she says.

She was told everything would be sorted out, and says EE reduced the portion of the bill she owed “by way of an apology”. But, of course, this wasn’t the end of the problems – she later received a text saying EE was about to cut her off for non-payment.

“I paid the charges with a debit card to prevent my phone being cut off, then rang them up again and got an assurance that the fraud was being dealt with and that my direct debit would function again in future. Then, this month, my account was again suspended.”

Perry says she received further assurances that this wouldn’t happen again, but, by this point, she had lost all confidence in the company and asked to be released from her contract. She was somewhat surprised to be told that she would have to pay £344 to quit it, despite having been treated badly and having been a customer for years.

“I paid it as I need to feel secure that I won’t be cut off. We don’t really use our home phones, and any work I get comes via my mobile.”

Perry is now in the process of switching to 02, and says she is angry the fraud was allowed to happen in the first place, adding that it did not help that she was given incorrect information about how to report the incident to the police and obtain a crime number.

“The fraud was in April, and by 1 July I was still suffering the consequences.” She says EE’s “carelessness” in allowing the fraud to take place has cost her hours of her time, in terms of trying to sort things out, in addition to the £344 she had to pay “when I lost faith that they would ever be able to restore normal service”.

She is concerned that if EE has her down as having defaulted on payments, this will have an impact on her credit rating. She also fears she may have had her identity stolen.

Perry recently received a letter from her credit card provider telling her that her £5,000 credit limit was being cut to £500, and several weeks ago another odd thing happened: a Vodafone mobile phone that she hadn’t ordered arrived out of the blue at her home. The contract had apparently been taken out using a bank account that wasn’t hers.

While she has yet to get to the bottom of precisely what has happened, Perry says: “Being defrauded – someone using your name in vain – is bad enough, but then being punished for it by the phone company … it’s unbearable.”

Money emailed EE about Perry’s case on Monday 6 July and posed a series of questions. After much prompting it told us: “We apologise to Mrs Perry for an administration error that meant her phone service was suspended after the fraud had been highlighted ... We are continuing to investigate the fraud.”

On the £1m Ofcom fine, EE said: “This relates to our historic performance regarding complaints handling, collected from 2011 to April 2014.

“While this in no way excuses it, it is important to note that we identified issues … and began our programme to tackle these problems head-on in 2013, before Ofcom started their investigation. We have made considerable improvements since then.”