Could this be the next big money claim thing?

[MitchT]

Suppose someone takes out a 24 month contract on a new smartphone. It costs them £40/month. After 24 months they leave the service running, even though they could upgrade or take a sim-only deal, and it's another 12 months before they get round to deciding their phone service is a bit of a rip off and change to sim-only.

Their new sim-only deal offers the same service but costs £10/month. This means they've been paying monthly credit charges, for the last 12 months, for a 'phone loan' which they'd actually paid off at the end of their initial 24 month contract.

Can they claim back the £360 overpayment?

I remember once having to claim back money from a personal loan company after the loan ended but the payments kept going out because I'd not cancelled the direct debit thinking they'd automatically stop taking the money. In the same way, if, after 24 months, you've covered the cost of the credit used to buy a new phone on a contract, but you keep paying the same amount every month, even though the charge for the 'service' ( calls, texts and data) is only a small portion of the monthly amount, can you claim back the portion that represents 'loan' repayments which you've continued to make beyond the point at which you had paid the loan element off?

I wonder how many people are in this situation!

[MitchT]

x type said:

MitchT said:

I remember once having to claim back money from a personal loan company after the loan ended but the payments kept going out because I'd not cancelled the direct debit thinking they'd automatically stop taking the money.

surely that's your fault for not checking ?

Sure, but I assumed (wrongly, as it turned out) that once the loan was repaid they wouldn't demand any further payments, in the same way that if a bill which you're paying by direct debit changes from one month to the next the company you're paying always demands the right amount, so I assumed that a loan company would demand 'zero' once I'd paid the loan off. Anyway, my point is that I got the overpayment back and I was pondering whether the same might apply in the case of phone contracts. If you've paid off the loan for the handset and then continued paying the same monthly amount by default then surely that proportion should be refunded as you've basically just continued making repayments on a loan that you've already paid off.