£91,000 phone bill calling chatlines

What a 'wanker'

(11-04-2013 15:12 )rjack11 Wrote:  What a 'wanker'

even a bigger wanker than me

(11-04-2013 10:27 )elgar1uk Wrote:  AyVeeWan is CharlieDeeFan. I recognise the style.

Perhaps it's a cunning impersonation of CharlieDeeFan. In which case it could be anyone.

In my view he is an idiot as it is already quite expensive to phone these services on a land line and its going to cost a lot more on a mobile phone therefore it is set at an premium rate.

(11-04-2013 13:02 )mellover Wrote:  Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. It's giving people carte blanche to run up silly bills.

I think the fact that Vodafone reduced the bill is effectively an admission by them that they should never have allowed it to reach such a staggering figure in the first place.

(11-04-2013 13:02 )mellover Wrote:  If i was them i'd have hounded him to prison

You can't go to prison just for not paying a bill. Vodafone certainly could have pursued him for the full amount if they wanted to though. It reminds me of a similar case involving William Hill the bookmaker, where someone had run up a large bill and blamed the whole thing on William Hill for letting him do it, but still ended up having to pay the full amount.

(11-04-2013 10:27 )elgar1uk Wrote:  AyVeeWan is CharlieDeeFan. I recognise the style.

I think you may be jumping to conclusions elgar. There are several twitter accounts which are probably CharlieDeeFan, but I don't think the AyVeeWan account is among them. However, I notice that CharlieDeeFan is still registering silly account names here, so he's obviously attention seeking and trying to get us to talk about him.

(12-04-2013 09:17 )Prince Henry Sinclair Wrote:  

(11-04-2013 13:02 )mellover Wrote:  If i was them i'd have hounded him to prison

You can't go to prison just for not paying a bill. Vodafone certainly could have pursued him for the full amount if they wanted to though.

Correct - in this country debt comes under civil law, so they could get a County or High Court judgement against him and if he didn't pay up send in the bailiffs or have him declared bankrupt.

You can go to prison, though, for unpaid tax/VAT bills and Council Tax, but that is only in extreme cases and usually where there's been some sort of fraud involved or eg if you've tried to hide your assets.

Mind you, if he was calling the lines for 16 hours a day I'm surprised the neighbours didn't become suspicious, especially when the snow stuck to their shovels!

(12-04-2013 09:17 )Prince Henry Sinclair Wrote:  It reminds me of a similar case involving William Hill the bookmaker, where someone had run up a large bill and blamed the whole thing on William Hill for letting him do it, but still ended up having to pay the full amount.

I remember that case too, but the guy there didn't actually run up a bill. He had paid for all his bets, but sued William Hill to try and get the money back from them, on the grounds that they owed him a care of duty as a problem gambler and they shouldn't have let him bet so much in the first place.

(12-04-2013 09:17 )Prince Henry Sinclair Wrote:  You can't go to prison just for not paying a bill.

Erm, yes you can, try not paying a parking fine or your poll tax.