Phone provider refused to waive money owed on contracts taken out by a man with learning difficulties
I am a voluntary advocate for a 30-year-old man with learning difficulties. He took out 23 concurrent mobile phone contracts with different companies without fully understanding the implications. This left him with debts of around £10,000 which he could not service.
He no longer has the handsets and cannot explain what happened to them. He has a doctor's letter which confirms his lifelong learning disability and also that he would not have understood the implications of signing these contracts.
The saga has caused major family difficulties, with his mother being hospitalised, in part due to the stress, and relationships becoming strained.
We have had a sympathetic response from Talk Mobile, Three, EE, Orange, 02 and, after a long struggle, Vodafone. All waived the debts and barred the young man from using their networks again. Virgin, on the other hand, has ignored our letters and refused to reduce or waive the £1,500 owed on the three contracts he took out with them. AB, Overton, Hampshire
This is a distressing case and, while Virgin is quite within its rights to insist that customers pay their dues, it could have looked at the unusual circumstances more sympathetically. Luckily, it turns out the firm does possess a conscience – it's lodged in the press office which, half an hour after I contact them, arranges for the whole debt to be waived and the young man's credit record to be cleansed.
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