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EE’s VAT Blunder On Roaming Charges Means £1 MILLION Pay Out
EE will be paying some customers back for incorrect VAT charges on data while roaming
EE has admitted incorrectly charging customers on its network with VAT on mobile data used aboard while roaming. As a result, the company is paying out around £1 million to those wrongly charged, with payments ranging from £2 and up to £80.
Anyone owed a refund by EE will be contacted by the network and the value will be paid back in credit to EE mobile accounts rather than in cash. It’s thought the hiccup will have affected users between October 2012 and October 2014 while using mobile data outside the EU. The figure of affected users represents around 0.5% of EE’s customer base, according to a report by ThisIsMoney.
Customers don’t have to do anything as EE will contact via text and credit accounts automatically. However, if you think you may have been incorrectly charged during the period but are no longer with EE, you can contact EE’s customer services department.
Commenting on the issue, EE has stated it occurred due to an error in its system configuration. It also assures that none of the cash arrived in EE’s coffers, instead landing directly with HMRC. The issue does not appear to have affected Orange customers, but have been encountered by EE and T-Mobile users.
“Due to a configuration error in our billing system, made following a system change, a small number of customers were wrongly charged VAT on the Data Roaming bundle outside of Europe,” spokesman David Nieberg said. “This was a mistake, and we are now refunding these charges and contacting affected customers to apologise for the error.”
Paul Briden
16:54, 20 Jan 2015