Reader's queries

S'up Three, why chase a man to India for money?Dara from Dublin sent us a mail in connection with a recent experience he had with 3 Mobile. "After about 15 years with O2 and its predecessors I got a better deal from 3 for a new iPhone 4S and I reluctantly moved over on October 28th," he writes.

“At this point I should mention that my wife and I are completely debt free (depositors in fact) with impeccable credit histories. We have never bounced a cheque or a direct debit. I checked my credit record a few months ago with ICB (Irish Credit Bureau) and it was 100 per cent clean.”

A couple of weeks after the switchover, Dara went to India for two weeks. As part of the trip he went para-gliding in the Western Ghats. “When I was in the mountains I got a call from 3 to say that I had exceeded my credit limit and that unless I paid them €100 immediately I would be disconnected.”

He says that while a credit limit is referred to in the terms and conditions, no one had mentioned it and he was never notified of his credit limit which turned out to be €165.

“How can I comply with a credit limit that has not been communicated to me? I was being held to ransom so I reluctantly instructed 3 Mobile to take the €100 they were demanding through my direct debit facility. They refused and insisted that I had to give them my credit card details as payment. Again, I had no choice as we had no internet and, quite often, no power, in the Western Ghats so 3 got their pound of flesh under protest.”

He was also told he could ask for an increased credit limit of €300 so he immediately applied. “They went off to think about it before coming back within a few minutes to me to say that they were declining my application. I asked them for the basis of their decision to decline and they refused to answer.”

On November 28th he called in to his local 3 Mobile shop where he spoke to a manager who would only give him his first name – Gerard. Gerard was “reasonably understanding” of his complaint and said he would escalate it to his head office “and would call me back promptly”.

At this point our reader wanted a refund of the €40 they charged him for calls to 3’s customer service department while he was in India, a refund of the Visa payment, an increase in his credit limit to €500, a written apology and a written assurance that there would be no recurrence.

Three days passed and there was no sign of a response so he dropped in to the store again. “Gerard said that he had meant to call me and that Three head office had refused all my requests. He wouldn’t give me the name of the person who had made this decision – nor would he forward me the email he had received. What really galls me is that they made no apparent effort to assess my credit-worthiness and, at any time, they were entitled to collect whatever funds they wanted under my direct debit mandate.”

We contacted the company to find out more. In a statement we were told that the default credit limit on our reader’s tariff was €165 “and this is laid out in our terms and conditions”. It said that to increase the credit limit a person needs to be signed up for three months and have two successful payments posted to the account. “In this customer’s case he did not meet the criteria for increasing his credit limit as he signed up on October 28th and requested the increase on November 30th. As a gesture of goodwill 3 has provided a €40 refund for calls made to 3 customer services and increased the credit limit on the account to €500. This has been discussed with the customer who is happy with this position and the package overall.”

The pain of that sterling differential

A reader called Hugh Gallagher is “constantly bemused” by the huge price differentials that continue to exist between the Irish outlets of British retailing giants and their UK ones. “My wife bought gloves in Debenhams this week, priced at €37.50. The sterling price tag underneath read £25. At today’s rate, the UK price corresponds to €29.21. He believes that €8.29 “is a lot to pay for a very light item to be shipped from the UK to their Irish warehouse, leaving other costs of doing business here out of the equation. The same is true of Next, MS and other chains. Are we always taken for fools in this Republic? Evidently we are!”