UPD Ofcom Warn that EE Mobile May Have Issued Incorrect Bills for Calls

The UK telecoms regulator, Ofcom, claims to have found “reasonable grounds for believing” that some of EE’s customers may have received inaccurate bills that “over-[charged] them for calls they made to its customer service number, 150, whilst roaming in the EU.”

Readers may recall that the probe was first launched in January of this year (here), which followed a rough patch for the operator after it was fined £1 million for shoddy customer complaints handling (here) and suffered scathing criticism for exploding PowerBars (here). Now it looks like EE could soon be hit by yet another verdict against its past conduct.

Ofcom’s Statement

Following an investigation, Ofcom has determined that there are reasonable grounds for believing that EE contravened GC 11 of the General Conditions between 1 July 2014 and 20 July 2015 and also between 18 November 2015 and 11 January 2016. Ofcom has therefore issued a Notification to EE under section 96A of the Communications Act 2003 (the “Act”).

Specifically, Ofcom has reasonable grounds to believe that EE contravened GC 11.1 by rendering Bills to End-Users of its Public Electronic Communications Services that did not accurately represent the true extent of the service that had been provided. It did so by over-charging them for calls they made to its customer service number, 150, whilst roaming in the EU.

A Spokesperson for EE told ISPreview.co.uk:

“This investigation related to a technical billing error which affected the rate for T-Mobile and EE pay monthly customers calling our 150 service when roaming in the EU between July 2014 and July 2015. As soon as we were aware of the issue we put measures in place to prevent this from happening again and notified the relevant authorities. We have already identified and credited the vast majority of customers who were affected, and we apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.”

The mobile operator will now be allowed a chance to respond before Ofcom publishes its final verdict and any related punishment. Most recently Ofcom has been handing out quite a few fines for service failings and so we wouldn’t be surprised if they did the same this time around, albeit while requiring a commitment to refund affected customers and make support improvements.

UPDATE 12:58pm

Added a comment from EE above.