Pricewatch: Three continues to bill after customer dies

Running a communications company is undoubtedly a complicated business and we understand that sometimes mistakes are made but the idea that a company would take money from a dead person’s bank account for many years and then refuse to refund even when the error is flagged to them repeatedly is beyond comprehension. But yet again, it is what we have to highlight on this page and the culprit is Three Mobile.

“My mother died in 2016,” begins a mail we received from a reader who asks us not to publish any of her personal details.

“I notified Three of her death, which they confirmed at the time, and requested [they] cancel her accounts in September 2016. I gave them the customer account number on the monthly bill [and] Three agreed to close the account.”

Our reader says the last bill received before her mother’s passing included a line for “Data add-on 700mb” for €8.26 before VAT. She knows this because still has the bills. She can see no reference to a separate account number for a mobile data plan nor was the data plan billed separately from the mobile phone account. “I understood from the call with Three in September 2016, when I dealt with a sympathetic agent, that everything would be cancelled,” she writes.

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In October 2016, a final bill came showing no further payment required and a credit of €3.36 which, she says was never refunded although she stresses that is incidental rather than central to her complaint.

The bill was addressed to the estate of her mother – an explicit acknowledgement of her passing.

“There was no reference in this bill to a mobile data account [but] in error, Three had not cancelled the mobile data add-on, despite it being part of the same invoice with no separate account number provided [and] despite being asked to cancel everything in relation to my mother and despite acknowledging that she was deceased.”

Instead the company “kept charging each month for the mobile data add-on, to the amount of circa €7.99, varying slightly over time”.

Our reader says she has “not received any correspondence from Three on invoicing for that mobile data plan either by email or post to my mother’s address. Consequently, I only identified the Three deductions from my deceased mother’s bank account when I saw annual bank account statements sent to my mother’s address. No email correspondence has been received from Three at my mother’s email address since her death.”

She does highlight postal correspondence she received from Three – which came to her mother’s home address. It was dated March 1st, 2017 and was to do with contract change to the mobile data plan. That letter was addressed to her mother and did not refer to the estate.

“I rang Three to highlight the error regarding the mobile data plan, asked for the deductions to be stopped and for a refund for the deductions taken in error. The Three representative agreed that it was an error and agreed that it should be refunded, but said they could not locate the deductions in the system so could not do anything. They asked me to get [from my mother’s bank] a transaction code associated with the deduction in order that Three could identify it in their system.

“I was led to believe that once the transactions were identified that there would be no issue in cancelling and refunding deductions since the original notification of my mother’s death. On that basis, I [wrongly] assumed it would eventually get sorted. Three confirmed again to me today that they have a record on file of this call and have the call as occurring in 2018.”

She says she looked into cancelling the direct debits at the bank end, but, although she is co-executor, she did not have authority to stop the direct debits from her mother’s account.

She says that “given the difficulties I experienced numerous times in contacting Three by phone, I tried the online chat facility. This took some time to go through all the details again. In the end, the chat agent said it [could not] be resolved via the online chat facility and to email instead. I subsequently emailed Three and had a few back and forward emails, going through the details again. In the end, the email agent said it cannot be resolved via email and to either use the online chat facility or to call them.”

She then got another letter in February of this year “addressed again to my mother without the estate reference, which was pursuing payment for an alleged balance outstanding of €33.12 [and stating that if payment is not received, then the account will be forwarded to a debt collection agency]. It also referred to being ‘previously asked to clear your account in full, but according to our records you have not done so’, despite no other correspondence having been received.”

So in March she rang Three again and “got through to an agent. I went through all the details again. This agent came across as helpful and understanding. The agent agreed it was an error, and agreed to cancel the request for billing and to arrange a refund, gave me a case reference number and said it would be resolved in 10 days. I received a bank statement for up to end March showing no refund. In late April, I asked the bank if any credits from Three had been made to the account; none had been made.”

So she rang Three again and was told “not to worry about the now circa €40 invoice from April in respect of recent months of unpaid bills. I went through the background again, noting the required refund which should be made in respect of deductions since the original cancellation and that a corresponding full refund for those years had been agreed [again] by Three on the call of March 9th, 2022.

“The Three agent agreed it was an error but said they could not do anything regarding refunding the deductions taken in error because they cannot locate their documentation of previous communications or of the original cancellation. I noted I am not responsible for Three’s gaps in documentation. I asked to speak to a supervisor.”

When she did speak to a supervisor she was told the company is “willing to cancel any further payments due. I noted that I had been told this already on the calls of March 9th and May 6th and that my focus was the refund of the deductions taken since the original cancellation in 2016. However, the agent was adamant that there was nothing Three could do about a refund because they had no record of cancellation. In particular, the Three supervisor indicated that it was not sufficient for me to ask for cancellation of the mobile phone account or even to ask separately for cancellation of the mobile data plan – they required the account number for the mobile data plan. I challenged this, noting that there was zero use of the mobile data since cancellation of the related mobile phone account.”

Three systems apparently cannot locate related account numbers based on name and address, or even when providing the person's mobile phone account number

She also notes that the mobile data plan “cannot be used without the related mobile phone account [this was not disputed by Three], and the mobile phone account had been cancelled in 2016 [also not disputed by Three]. The mobile data plan certainly cannot be used by the account holder [deceased since August 2016]. No invoicing correspondence in respect of the account was provided [other than the threatening letter regarding non-payment referred to above], also not disputed by Three.”

When she asked what other avenues she could explore she was told she could “go to a separate complaints team online, though indicated that it was unlikely to change the outcome [given it had already been escalated to him, as supervisor]. I noted that I understood that I was already in a Three complaints process [given I received a case number]. I flagged that I would consider escalating further with ComReg or Pricewatch; this did not appear to matter to Three.”

Our reader says it is “ridiculous to me, to name just a few points, that, from my experience: despite being informed someone is dead and their accounts are requested to be cancelled [with name, address, and customer account details being provided], that Three can continue to bill for a data add-on that could not possibly be used [even if the person were still alive!]”

She also notes that “a single invoice with a single customer account number can be provided by Three for a mobile account and data add-on, but they expect you to cancel using two account numbers, when the invoice includes only one account number. Three does not need to provide correspondence on monthly or annual invoicing for a mobile data-on that they are taking money for.

“Three systems apparently cannot locate related account numbers based on name and address, or even when providing the person’s mobile phone account number. This seems particularly poor when dealing with cancellation requests for deceased customers.”

She reckons Three has taken about €500 from her mother’s account between October 2016 and November 2021, which she believes should be refunded to her estate.

We got in touch with Three and received the following statement: “We are very sorry for the understandable upset the customer has experienced. Three Ireland has processes in place to manage cases such as these. However, in this instance the correct steps were not followed. We pride ourselves on our level of service to customers, however on this occasion we fell short of that. We have resolved the issue with the customer directly, including initiating a refund process, and we are also conducting a detailed review to ensure this does not occur in the future.”