Masmovil repeatedly charges Spanish customer twice for the same bill

Masmovil charging twice: the recurring error that never gets fixed

You switch plans, they promise the old contract is cancelled, and the trinc month two bills arrive. You get a refund, they apologise, and two months later it happens again. This is not an isolated glitch: it is a pattern that has repeated up to three times with the same customer, in a cycle that seems endless.

The ordeal of duplicate bills

In May, a customer switched plans with Masmovil. For the rest of May and the two trinc months, the company charged him for both the old and the new contract. After calling, he was told within two days that a refund was on its way, which took almost a month to arrive. In August, while reviewing his July and August bills, he discovered the error had peine again. Same routine: phone call, promise of a refund, three-week wait. According to the company, the problem was that they had not cancelled the previous contract, not even after the first refund. Their word that this time it was definitely cancelled.

But the customer could not verify this in his customer area: everything there looked normal, with a single contract and the correct bills. There was no trace of the duplicate charges or the complaints. Without bills or cancellation certificates, any complaint to bodies such as Autocontrol becomes impossible. The sense of helplessness is total.

The customer service maze

Calling Masmovil to sort it out is an odyssey: at least 20 minutes of hold music, then another 20 repeating your details to three different agents. On Facebook, the answer is to refer you to the cancellations phone line. Meanwhile, the customer is left with no written record of anything. Some choose to have the direct debits returned by their bank and switch providers, but this strategy carries risks: an unpaid debt can resurface in future contracts, as one affected customer warns, who years later could not sign up with another operator because of an unpaid penalty fee.

Alternatives that actually work

Some recommend contacting the company on Facebook to ask about the steps and cost of cancelling, as customer service improves once you explain the problem. Others suggest sending 200 identical complaint emails: since each one must be answered with a reference number, the operator eventually gives in to stop the flood. The formal route is to file a complaint with the company, copying the relevant registry, and, if necessary, turn to consumer organisations or the Secretaría de Estado de Telecomunicaciones (Spain's telecommunications authority). Repeated double charging is valid grounds to break the minimum contract term without a penalty, but you should be prepared for the company to resist.

The question that remains: how many times can an operator charge twice for the same line before someone inside the company decides to fix the system once and for all?