Brighton woman fights EE over mobile phone contract

Brighton resident Beth Hemsley, 32, has been locked in a dispute with EE over the contract which she opened in 2014 and struggled to cancel for years.

EE says there is no proof she tried to cancel the contract, which Ms Hemsley disputes.

The battle has led to eight missed payments, debt collectors getting involved and thousands of pounds of legal fees.

Ms Hemsley said: "It's been awful. The impact this has had over the last three years has been horrific.

"Every time I look at my credit score, it makes me so sad, because I've followed EE's instructions every single time.

"I've done what they've said. I put my trust in them to protect me, and they've done totally the opposite.

"And then to receive the letter from their lawyers — oh god, I could have screamed."

Ms Hemsley opened an EE phone contract under her name for another person at the George Street store in Hove in 2014, as they could not get one themselves, she claimed.

For years the arrangement caused no problems, even as Ms Hemsley said she and the individual fell out of contact.

She claimed the person used the phone and paid the bills themselves, and she forgot that the contract even existed.

But the school safeguarding officer claimed the contract was renewed repeatedly over the following decade without her knowledge.

Ms Hemsley visited the EE store on George Street in Hove multiple times (Image: Google)

Ms Hemsley said she only became aware of the problem in January 2023, when she checked her credit score while trying to save for a house deposit.

She found a missed payment recorded against her name by EE, a company with which she believed she had no dealings.

She contacted EE by phone and then attended the George Street branch in person.

She said staff told her that because she had opened the original contract, she remained responsible for it.

Ms Hemsley said she changed the account password during that visit, and explicitly told EE staff that she did not want the contract renewed or continued once its term expired.

It was also during this visit that she learned an iPad contract had additionally been opened in her name by the same person, she claimed.

Ms Hemsley said she was given assurances by EE staff that a note placed on the account would prevent any further renewals.

On a later visit to an EE store, she said a member of staff reviewed the account and told her he could see a record of her previous visit, confirming the contract was not supposed to be renewed again.

In April 2024, she called EE to try to confirm the iPad contract had been cancelled, but could not pass the company's telephone security check. She believed this was because the account password had been changed without her knowledge.

Beth Hemsley fears she will not be able to buy or rent a home with her current credit score (Image: Supplied)

She was told to attend a branch in person with photographic identification, which she did at an EE store in Brixton, cancelling the iPad contract there.

At that point, she assumed the phone contract itself would also not be renewed again, given her earlier visit and the assurances she had received.

But in December 2024, checking her credit score again, she said she discovered further missed payments recorded against her name.

Around the same time she said she also received a letter from Moorcroft, a debt collection agency instructed by EE to recover the outstanding balance.

Ms Hemsley returned to the George Street branch in January 2025 and asked why the contract had not been cancelled as she had requested in 2023.

She said staff were unable to explain why her instructions had not been followed.

By this point the contract had run past its fixed term, meaning she was able to cancel it outright, which she did.

In written correspondence sent by EE's solicitors, DWF Law LLP, the company disputed that it was ever told not to renew the contract.

The letter stated there is "no record of any instruction not to renew, nor of any restriction or block being placed on the account".

Ms Hemsley says an EE staff member gave her this business card on one of her visits to the Hove branch. We have blurred the employee's name (Image: Supplied)

Ms Hemsley said: "I find it quite incredible, the fact that they're sticking to their stance.

"The money was never the problem. It's the credit score. They won't take the missed payments off my credit score.

"I now have eight missed payments, and trying to rent a house or buy anything with those sorts of things on your credit score is just impossible.

"I mean, it's just crazy. It's madness."

EE has never been able to produce a signed copy of the renewed contract that it says binds her to the debt, Ms Hemsley claimed.

EE's position, conveyed through its solicitors, is that it is under no obligation to retain hard copies of contracts and that its case rests instead on system records of account activity.

EE claimed that there is "no account footprint evidencing in-store verification" of any such visit to the George Street branch in 2023.

But Ms Hemsley holds a signed business card which appears to have been given to her by an EE staff member at the branch, which she claimed corroborates her account of visiting the store to flag the problem.

EE says there is no record of Ms Hemsley visiting the store in Hove (Image: Google)

The debt at the centre of the dispute is relatively small.

Ms Hemsley said the original sum was in the region of £300, though fees and charges have since increased it.

Legal costs incurred fighting the case are understood to run into thousands of pounds. A family friend called Stuart Bower is covering Ms Hemsley's legal fees.

In a letter to EE's solicitors, Mr Bower expressed his strongly-worded view that EE are "acting in the most disgusting and unethical manner".

Debt collection agency Moorcroft, who were instructed by EE to pursue the outstanding balance, later wrote to Ms Hemsley confirming it had returned the account to EE and would cease all further collection activity, after reaching what it described as an impasse over whether she should be held liable.

EE's solicitors have rejected the significance of Moorcroft's withdrawal, stating that it is "not uncommon" for debt collection activity to cease when a bill is disputed, and does not amount to any admission that the debt was wrongly pursued.

An EE spokesperson said: “As this is an ongoing legal case it would not be appropriate for us to comment further.”