Mobile Telecommunications Market: Contracts

Debate between Gavin Robinson and Nigel Huddleston

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point that touches on the whole purpose of this discussion. Many people are either on plans with services they never use, in which case more flexibility would be appreciated, or paying a penal rate for services they did not anticipate using but ended up using. That is costing consumers hundreds of millions of pounds a year—I think that £885 million a year is spent on out-of-tariff charges, for example.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

I am on the Labour Benches because I want to give the impression that Labour Members are also interested in this important consumer issue. In fact, I should be sitting beside my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—

[Gavin Robinson]

It was only a quip, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I have a sim card for an iPad that I do not use, but I have discovered that for the last two years the provider has been removing £10.21 from my bank account every month. When I phoned and asked to cancel the charge, I was told I needed the serial number on the sim card, which I no longer had. Is that not something that should be looked at—taking finance for a service that is unavailable?

[Nigel Huddleston]

I know that many Labour colleagues are also very concerned about this issue, but the hon. Gentleman makes a good point about the failure of customer service and the perception that providers can dip into our accounts, regardless of whether the service is being delivered or is adequate to an individual’s needs. We are building a picture here of the customer service challenges among the mobile operators.

There is another point of which many Members will be aware from their constituency correspondence. It concerns a situation where a consumer signs up to a contract, perhaps with a new device, that is then bundled with a service charge. Go forward 24 months, to when the contract expires, and instead of being over, the contract is rolled forward, and we get this bizarre situation where the consumer continues to pay for the device as well as the service. This can be a considerable hit on their finances. Some 46% of mobile users do not change their tariff as soon as their initial bundle ends and so pay an extra £92 effectively for handsets they have already paid for. This is a dire consequence of such behaviour. More transparency and proactive communication would help. Such behaviour is why levels of switching and the major carriers’ reputations for customer service are so low.

I understand that mobile businesses are businesses not charities—we expect them to make a profit and invest in infrastructure; they employ hundreds of thousands of people and contribute millions to the Exchequer every year; they do many positive things—but they need to realise that it is possible to make a profit and give good customer service. A good start would be for operators to make switching easier, separate handset costs from service costs, make that clear in bills, which some do but many do not, and proactively communicate the best available deals to customers.

I ask the Minister and regulators to put more power back in the hands of mobile customers, and I ask mobile operators to do the right thing by their customers and avoid unnecessary regulation and legislation. I thank my hon. Friends for participating in this debate, at a much later hour than originally anticipated, and I particularly thank the Minister for taking his time to attend the debate. He brings vast experience to this arena, and I hope he will continue to work with colleagues in both the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to create an even more competitive, fairer and consumer friendly mobile market in the UK.