Charity Citizens Advice have suggested that mobile phone customers should be allowed to set monthly caps for their mobile phone bills to avoid debt. The charity claim providers do not do enough to prevent debt in their customers.
It can be easy to spend more than you expect on your mobile bill. It can often be difficult to gauge how much mobile data is being used at one time on browsing the internet or using apps such as Facebook or Twitter. Citizens Advice point out that many customers make payments that aren’t covered by their contracts in addition to their monthly contract fee, including in-app purchases, premium rate numbers or text donations, that also inflate a bill.
In a report, analysing 26,600 mobile phone debts from 2015, Citizens Advice found that many times, companies played a significant role in getting people into mobile phone debt, for example by improperly assessing whether a customer could afford a contract. Assessing whether a customer can afford a contract is not always an easy task, especially when considering young people’s contracts.
The charity points out that businesses in other sectors are required to use bill caps, for example credit card companies.
It is also claimed mobile phone providers fall behind when it comes to debt collection. They were ranked as the worst private sector debt collectors, far behind banks, energy companies and other service providers.
In addition to bill caps, Citizens Advice recommended that mobile phone networks should allow all customers to transfer to different tariffs as an alternative to disconnection; provide debt advice and allow room for negotiation before debt collection; and take more care not to try and collect bills which are still in the formal query stage.