Phone Services – Bill Advice

If you take out a contract with a phone service provider then you will have agreed to a number of obligations, and the person named on the account will be responsible for paying the bills in a timely fashion.  It is important to remember that if you have a joint telephone account then all of the people named on the bill will be responsible for its payment, and this means that all of you can be pursued by the telephone provider for late payments, regardless of how you have agreed to set up the account payments between yourselves.

Disputing Your Bill

Most phone providers offer itemised bills for their customers (sometimes for an extra charge), which list the destination, time, duration and cost of each call.  This is useful for keeping a close check on your outgoings, and you can dispute any calls that you feel have been charged incorrectly to your bill.  However if these charges were made by someone who shares this service in your home or business the named account holder/s will still be liable for the charges, as from the point of view of the provider the calls were legitimately made from your phone, and it will be up to you to chase the individual responsible for any unauthorised charges.

Disconnection

Each phone provider will have their own policies on debt and disconnection (in the ‘Code of Practice’), so it is important you are aware of these before you sign up to a service.  Consistent non-payment of bills and other charges will most likely result in disconnection, so it is important that you keep up to date with all of your bills, and if you are in the process of disputing your bill you should send a payment for the amount you feel you do owe and a covering letter to explain why you are not paying the remainder of the bill.  This should prevent you from being disconnected at this stage of the dispute due to a non-payment, but if the phone company does find that you are liable for the additional calls you will need to pay the bill in full as soon as possible.