Play’s Costly Mistake. The operator made a mistake, but it is the client who has to pay for it

Mrs. Paulina had two contracts with the Play networkwhich were slowly coming to an end. Our reader did not actively use any of these numbers and did not even know where the SIM cards were. During the sales conversation, she clearly conveyed this to the consultant representing the purple operator. She didn’t care which contract would be extended.

The number to leave has been chosen completely random. Finally, Mrs. Paulina decided give up one numberand the second contract extend for subsequent years. She chose the offer with a new phone, Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra 1 TB worth PLN 6,799. This amount was divided into 36 monthly installments.

Documents confirming the extension have been received to her correct email address. It was there too confirmation of termination of the contract to the second number. The new contract was drawn up on November 14, 2024 and contained the correct data, including: correct email address for sending invoices. This last piece of information is crucial to the whole case.

Soon, the client began to receive further invoices from the operator, which – as she claims – she paid regularly. She was fully convinced that they concern a new smartphone contract. She did not verify the fine print, assuming that the purple operator had performed his task correctly.

The situation has changed dramatically after about three months. Mrs. Paulina’s new phone suddenly stopped working. The woman completely lost the ability to make calls and was cut off from the world. She immediately contacted the Play customer service office. The cause of the problems quickly became apparent. It turned out that the invoices she paid did not concern the current smartphone contract.

The cancellation of the first issue did not take place. The documents were not processed correctly in the Play system and the operator continued to issue invoices based on a contract that should have been terminated (according to the notice given). The client paid them blindly. Invoices for the new contract were sent “into the void”because the purple operator was entered in the system wrong email address. In fact, however, it is not known whether and to whom these invoices were sent. Play claims that it was sent to a non-existent e-mail address. But is it really non-existent? The purple operator showed no evidence of this. If Play sent them to an existing address, there may have been a violation of the GDPRwhich Mrs. Paulina noticed.

The account of the new contract has increased huge debt. Play decided that the client was avoiding paying her bills and immediately took action blocked telecommunications services. Then the operator terminated the contract due to… subscriber’s fault. The purple ones also put a high one on our Reader financial penalty for breaking the contractplus fees for unpaid equipment. The total amount to be paid was over PLN 8,700.

Mrs. Paulina asked for the outstanding invoices to be sent to her correct address. She received them with a long delay, and what’s more Play demanded a one-time payment of the entire amount. The client asked for a human approach, she wanted to spread the debt or start sending invoices again. Her e-mail address was already known. The operator categorically refused.

The case was transferred to an external debt collection company, Taxat. Debt collectors immediately started their procedures, sending numerous letters to Mrs. Paulina requests for payment. They used for this short text messages. They wrote too e-mails to the client’s correct address. This time there was no problem with establishing contact details. Employees of the debt collection company demanded immediate repayment of the entire debt.

I tried to talk to Play that since I didn’t have these invoices physically, maybe they should restructure the contract somehow so that I would receive these invoices from the beginning, one every month, as God ordered – to my authorized e-mail address. Not only was I refused, but in the meantime they also sent me a letter informing me that they were terminating the contract with me DUE TO MY FAULT, because I paid the invoices they sent me, and the invoices for the Samsung contract were sent to some e-mail address from the pile of bushes.

The language of the message was very strong. In one of the text messages, the debt collector made suggestions to the woman lack of reading comprehension skills. Another employee encouraged people to return the money honestly. Mrs. Paulina was also threatened with court and a personal field visit to her place of residence.

The client submitted further official complaints to the operator. She demanded urgent annulment of the sentencepointing clearly at mistakes of Play employees. It was about typo in email address and failure to process resignation. Mrs. Paulina also demanded refund of money for false bills from the terminated contract. Play rejected most of her arguments. The purple network continually claimed that it is the subscriber who is responsible for all the confusion.

It is worth adding here that Mrs. Paulina stopped paying them after discovering that she was receiving invoices for the terminated contract. This led to a rather absurd situation.

Instead of giving me back the money that I paid for the terminated non-existent contract, Play also ordered that it would charge me some kind of fine here too, because I guess the PLN 9,000 is not enough.

After receiving detailed information from Mrs. Paulina, I asked the Play press office to explain the above-mentioned matter. In the message sent in response, the purple operator admitted his mistake when terminating the first contract. The cancellation was actually submitted, but due to an error on the operator’s part has not been entered into the system. Play declared that these charges would be canceled and also promised to send Mrs. Paulina an explanation and an apology.

The issue of the second contract is completely different. Play officially confirmed the employee’s error when entering the e-mail address into the system.

The situation regarding the second contract is more complicated. In this case, the charges for services and equipment were correct. As a result of an error when concluding this contract, the client’s incorrect e-mail address was entered into the system. For this reason, it did not receive invoices. However, we sent a message about each invoice along with the amount to be paid and the bank account number via SMS. In addition, when arrears occurred, the client received letters with information about the arrears to be settled so that the contract would not be terminated. Importantly, the amounts of monthly obligations associated with these contracts differed significantly. These liabilities were paid irregularly and with delays.

Because we made a mistake, we will talk to the client about possible scenarios for resolving this situation. However, we emphasize that the amount we expect is correct.

Mrs. Paulina strongly disagrees with the operator’s statement. The woman says that she never received any text messages with invoices. In mid-December last year, she sent a request to Play to provide her phone number. She wanted to know where these alleged notifications went. To this day she has not received an answer, but she received the following information:

In one of the responses to the complaint, a Play employee informed about a minor correction. She was haughty equal to PLN 450. A fatal error in the e-mail address was also confirmed. However, the letter was ending a request for payment of PLN 8,754.40. The money was to cover installments for the device and compensation for termination of the contract due to the customer’s fault.

All this happened in December 2025. However, as Mrs. Paulina wrote to me recently, the case remains unresolved to this day. Our Reader says the purple operator has not yet refunded all the money for overpaid invoices under the terminated contract. For this vindication for now she stopped her aggressive actions for a while (see update at the end).

The Play client is still waiting for a fair ending to the whole story. He considers the company’s behavior as an attempt to shift the blame for one’s own mistakes onto the consumer. She points out that the operator willingly provided her correct telephone number to debt collectors. However, he forgot to use it to send the invoices themselves or notifications about them.

Play has my phone number and even managed to pass it on to a debt collection company. Both Play and me contacted them via my phone number. This is my contact number for them. But unfortunately I did not receive any invoices for this number. Or maybe I got them on a number that I told them a long time ago? And which one should no longer exist? And because of their mistake it wasn’t announced?

Unfortunately, if they confirmed it in writing, they would most likely dig in on their own, so maybe that’s why I haven’t received any response from them yet? When extending the contract for one number and terminating the other – this is clearly in the sales conversation, which they do not want to share with me – I told the consultant that it doesn’t matter which contract she extends and which one she terminates, because I don’t use any of these numbers anyway and I don’t even know where I have the SIM cards for them. So which number was extended and which was canceled was a random guess.

The conversation was recorded and my contact number is a phone number that Play knows well, they send it to debt collection companies, but to notify me about the correct invoice issued at a given moment – they are gripped by another digital amnesia, just like with the situation with e-mail – is it a set of cases? Does Play use such tactics because it feels unpunished? This is what it looks like after I couldn’t get through their hotline and piles of complaints, and only managed to do it thanks to your intervention.

We can only hope that the case will find its proper conclusion. I will update this article when I learn something new.

A few hours after publishing this article, I received a message from Mrs. Paulina. She wrote in it that the day before she had found letters in her mailbox confirming that another proceeding had been initiated by the debt collection company, this time B2 Impact SA The first letter is a request for payment of the amount PLN 9,288.38. This amount includes the debt to the Play network operator in the amount of PLN 8,754.40 and interest in the amount of PLN 533.98.

The second letter is a notice of transfer of receivables from P4, the operator of the Play network, to Ultimo Portfolio Investment and the latter entity entrusting the processing of Ms. Justyna’s personal data to B2 Impact. From this letter we learn, among other things, what components are included in the debt. One of the items is “compensation for termination of the contract” in the amount of PLN 1,701.40.