O2 admits overcharging 70,000 roaming customers

THE country’s telephone watchdog has demanded a report from mobile phone company O2 into how 70,000 of its roaming customers were overcharged.

The second-largest mobile phone company has admitted charging customers too much for roaming calls when they travelled abroad since the end of March.

An O2 spokeswoman confirmed some customers had been charged rates above its standard roaming tariffs set at 59, 79 and 99 cent because of a billing problem. She also admitted some customers were charged up to €1 per minute more than they should have been while making or receiving calls when abroad.

"We are doing everything to sort it out as soon as possible all our customers who have been overcharged will be reimbursed in their accounts by the end of July," the spokeswoman added.

The company became aware of the problem in April and appointed a team headed by its technology director Oliver Coughlan to tackle it, she said.

John Doherty, director of ComReg, the Communications Regulator, said while 50% of those affected already had their accounts corrected, he was concerned that the internal safeguards to prevent something like this happening had failed.

"ComReg is seeking a full and detailed response from the company on the steps it is taking to resolve the outstanding accounts and the additional safeguards O2 proposes to take," Mr Doherty added.

All three mobile phone companies will also have to agree a code of practice on tariff presentations by the end of July. This will allow customers to understand and compare bills with other companies.

Meanwhile, Consumer Affairs Director Carmel Foley said the O2 overcharging incident highlights the bigger problem of roaming mobile phone costs here.

"These charges should not be as high here with the huge profits that mobile phone companies are making there is a definite case for a major reduction in them," Ms Foley said.

And the Consumer Affairs Director said this latest case of overcharging at O2 is a further blow to people's trust in mobile phone companies.

Labour's communications spokesman Tommy Broughan said this case reinforces the perception that the public is being ripped off by the main mobile phone operators.

All three operators, O2, Vodafone and Meteor, defended their charges and insisted they were as competitive as possible.

They said that it is impossible to have one set rate because of the large amount of individual agreements they have to make with so many countries worldwide.

But all three companies have streamlined their charges as much as possible and introduced between three and five rates.