Phone Companies: You Need to Know

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Lately I have had more trouble with phone companies. EE overcharged me. It turns out they failed to add a credit for five months, given to me for a series of issues leading to poor service. I repeatedly asked them to look at the account history. Finally, having been told different things by different people, I rang to pay my overdue bill. This time I got someone with common sense who agreed the previous bills WERE lower. I was credited with £50. The really annoying thing is I paid the £86 they said I owed, first.
Oh we could say that is just EE, but I put in Broadband. The man in the Virgin shop sold it to me as "you get a month's free trial, then you send in the agreement." He was clear I would only pay £26 something. The first bill was double. I had to go back to the shop to sort it out. We agreed in the shop I needed to pay £19 something as I paid a £25 deposit for the installation. I rang them. The person I got through to agreed this was the right amount and I paid it.
Imagine my horror when I recieved the next bill for £72.00. It took ages to sort this.
There is apparently no deal involving a month's trial. They claimed the salesperson and the person who took the payment call had it wrong. I still owed £10 from the last month. There was a late fee, a fee for not setting up a direct debit and a supposedly free call cost me £10.
Eventually, they knocked £35 off this bill and then told me that I owed £7.50 and the service was going to be restricted if I did not pay it.
This made no sense as the next payment was not due.
I argued and they finally sorted that.
Yesterday I rang them again with queries about the supposedly free conference call. Hey presto. The charge has been refunded.
The moral of all this is that you never take the first person's word for anything when you have a complaint with a phone company.
Never ever set up a direct debit as they will take too much and put your account overdrawn. Pay early instead so the don't charge you for allowing them to rob you blind.
I have no idea if this really worked. Tell them that even if you are paying the bill, you are still contacting OFCOM (If the problem, like mine, is a serious one.) You are so fed up you want to concel the contract and you will be writing, as you are a writer, a review.
I now have an EE account in credit. I have assurances from Virgin my next bill will be correct. I recorded the calls on an app I have on my phone and made the one employee in EE who finally agreed to look at my payment history send me a text saying what he had done. They are halving my bills to the end of the contract. It only occurred to me after I put the phone down that this was done because I was supposedly in financiak difficuly, but the difficulty was created by EE overcharging me in the first place.
A previous call when OFCOM gave me the number of an EE executive got me a new phone to see if it would sort out people having to text when they were trying to ring. I had been complaining for over a year!
I thought I had taken on giants and finally won. Not so. I have paid EE £86 when I needed to pay £30 something and even if this wipes my next bill the £50 was needed now, for other things, and it has all been rather stressful. The man who sorted it out said some of the notes on my account were just incomprehensible.
He also told me that changes are coming in the mobile phone world. I really do hope they will be of benefit to the customer. We had a very long chat. I got "lucky" and got someone who was willing to listen and who had worked in the industry a long time.
One change I would very much like to see is that the charge for not using a direct debit is abolished. These companies make too many mistakes.
I have literally chewed the ear off of Virgin and EE. My account ended in EE's collections as I could not pay the high bill a few months ago and that might affect my credit rating. I might have been able to do so had the bill been correct.
Oh, and when you take out a contract. Make the salesperson write everything they say on the contract itself. I really did think a month's free trial from Virgin sounded too good to be true, but the salesman insisted. EE merely sold me a contract telling me that I would get a free film each montn. This offer was an old one that had ended. They record their calls. They would have mine. Call after call querying how to get these free deals. I think that it may actually nean the contract is void.
The trouble is, as with Virgin. The selling point is not in writing. It is my word against theirs.