SALLY SORTS IT: My 12-year-old ran up a £9,000 mobile bill on our holiday in Egypt

We went on holiday to Egypt in December and brought three mobile phones with us. On the first day my partner called our provider EE to ask if we could get internet for our kids while we were away.

The prices were so ridiculous that he decided to forget about buying data and bought some texts and calling bundles instead. We thought this was the end. But at the end of January our phones were cut off.

My partner called EE to be told we had exceeded our credit limit as our bill was over £9,000. We couldn’t believe it.

EE is unwilling to negotiate except to reduce the bill to £7,500, which is apparently the maximum in the contract.

We don’t normally go over it with a dime, so why weren’t we informed of what was going on? We have a £10 spending limit on our phones and obviously got it right, but nobody did anything.

LM, Carlisle.

Sally Hamilton replies: Returning from Egypt with a pyramid-sized phone bill that far exceeded the cost of your holiday must have been a pain.

It turned out that the charges had piled up because your 12-year-old daughter was using social media and playing computer games on her phone, which can be quite expensive for travelers to Egypt.

She succeeded, even though your partner had decided not to purchase data packages for the telephones. It appears she had responded directly to EE texts received when the plane landed.

If your partner had known about this exchange, he would have seized the phone immediately. Unfortunately, you and he were not aware of it and remained so until your phones suddenly shut down in the UK.

This was especially alarming because it happened when your partner was in the hospital, so you couldn’t reach him by phone. He was eventually contacted and called EE only to find that the huge roaming bill was the cause of the blackout.

He offered to pay EE for the data used between your child’s activation of the service and the phone call he made to say he didn’t want data, but this was declined.

While I was surprised you hadn’t noticed that your daughter was so busy with her phone, I felt empathy for your plight and asked EE if it would lower your bill further.

After some consideration, it came back with an offer to reduce the cost to £4,500 – half the original bill.

You still felt harassed, so you went to the Ombudsman. But it thought EE’s 50 percent offer was reasonable and suggested accepting it. You did this to protect your credit and put the whole regrettable experience behind you.

While I feel it was your fault for not monitoring your daughter’s phone usage more closely, I expected more compassion from EE.

Customers need to be protected from such outrageous charges. Who would actively choose to spend a Pharaoh’s ransom on playing games on their phone?

Frustratingly for you, while some mobile companies, including EE, apply a £45 spending limit to data used abroad to protect customers, it doesn’t apply in all countries, nor does it apply to situations where customers opt for add-ons , such as data passes.

In Egypt, data can only be used if EE customers purchase the expensive add-ons. So there is no limit of £45.

Catherine Hiley, mobile expert at comparison website Uswitch, says: ‘Since Brexit, the £45 global roaming limit has been removed from UK law, so there are very few roaming protections available to customers.

“While some networks, such as Sky Mobile, Giffgaff, O2 and Three, have retained this global limit, others, such as Tesco Mobile, have removed this protection.”

In short, this means that destinations like Egypt, which is outside the standard roaming policies of most UK networks, could pose a greater risk of overspending for holidaymakers.

When your daughter fatefully clicked on the EE links, your bills started to mount up to £57.10 per 110MB of data she consumed. Uswitch figures show that streaming an hour-long show on Netflix or similar consumes 644MB.

For example, if your daughter binged a seven-episode series, that would have resulted in a bill of £2,340, or if she streamed a two-hour movie in high definition, it would have consumed 4.2GB of data, which is about £2,394. .

An hour of gaming could have set you back £30. It’s easy to see how the bill grew to a staggering £9,000 plus.

You’ve learned a sobering lesson from your mobile bill woes – one you’d like to share as a warning to others.

Holidaymakers wishing to avoid such ‘stress on the Nile’ should consider turning off roaming and calling only when there is free Wi-Fi, such as in a hotel.

Make sure kids understand the implications – and if they don’t, take their phones off for the duration. To be on the safe side, consider regularly checking your mobile accounts while you’re away.

You can also buy a local SIM card at the destination, which can cost as little as £10 to £20 and will provide plenty of data.

You simply replace your mobile’s usual SIM card with the temporary local SIM card. A device must be ‘unlocked’ to accept the Sim, so check with your carrier before you leave.

Where has my £985 tax refund gone?

Last August I got a £985 tax refund from HM Revenue & Customs [HMRC]but it was deposited into a bank account that was closed some time ago.

In the past, all tax refunds were paid by check, so I didn’t know it went straight to a bank account.

My husband’s refund was immediately refunded, but mine is still missing six months later, despite spending hours on the phone with the IRS and bank.

JM, Worchestershire.

Sally Hamilton replies: Your accountant disapproved you, you said, because you signed your tax return without checking the bank account listed on the forms. He had a point.

In your defense, you had always received a check in the mail for a refund due, so it never occurred to you to question this detail.

However, the oversight has cost you dearly, in terms of time lost calling and emailing the Tax and Customs Administration and your bank – not to mention the financial returns you would otherwise have on the money in a savings in the meantime. – or would have received an investment account.

I suspect what happened was that your old account number was reused. Many banks reuse numbers from accounts that have been closed for several years.

If the payment had ended up in this old account, which now belongs to another customer, the tax authorities should have issued a ‘recall request’ through their bank and hoped that the customer would return the money.

Anyone on the receiving end of such a windfall should note that refusing to return it could result in them being sued for “maintaining improper credit.”

Whatever the explanation, I thought the Tax and Customs Administration should put on its skates and take care of things. Waiting six months is a long time.

It took another four weeks but I’m happy to say that HMRC finally got the refund back and forwarded it to the correct account.

While it stated that the bank details initially used for each of the past 12 years had appeared on your tax return, it also confirmed that you updated this information in October of last year and therefore apologized for the lengthy time it took to sort things out. unload.

You told me you’re just glad you finally got your money.

Your case serves as a lesson to all of us to be careful about checking bank account information when sending or arranging payments.

While banks adhere to a code of conduct to try and recover money sent to the wrong place, they cannot guarantee that they will get it back.

• Write to Sally Hamilton at Sally Sorts It, Money Mail, Northcliffe House, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT or email sally@dailymail.co.uk – include telephone number, address and a note addressed to the offending organization giving them permission to talk to Sally Hamilton. Please do not send any original documents, we cannot take any responsibility for that. The Daily Mail assumes no legal liability for answers provided.