Refund: EE customers could be owed up to £80 after the operator's blunder

Thousands of EE customers are in line for refunds for charges spanning two years after it was revealed the phone operator wrongly charged VAT on data used abroad.

Britain's biggest phone operator is doling out between £2 and £80 to all customers affected by the blunder.

Customers who used internet data while outside of the EU between October 2012 and October 2014 have been overcharged – about 0.5 per cent of EE's total 28million customers.

EE will not be offering refunds, but rather will credit customers' accounts with the money owed.

Those affected should have been reached by text message and will have the balances refunded automatically.

Any former customers who believe they may have been overcharged should contact the operator directly.

EE said the blunder was a system configuration error and that it never profited from the mistake – the collected cash went directly to HMRC.

'Due to a configuration error in our billing system, made following a system change, a small number of customers were wrongly charged VAT on the Data Roaming bundle outside of Europe,' spokesman David Nieberg said.

'This was a mistake, and we are now refunding these charges and contacting affected customers to apologise for the error.'

Orange customers were not affected by the mistake, while those owed a refund should have heard about it last week.

The blunder is an embarrassment for the phone network, which is currently in the spotlight after it was announced last month it is in talks with BT over a possible £12.5billion takeover.

The news of the error comes after it was revealed mobile phone customers travelling outside of Europe are being sent hefty bills simply for receiving voicemail messages they don't listen to.

Phone giants EE, Tesco Mobile, and Virgin all hit customers with these charges.

Since July 2010, networks have agreed not to charge customers for receiving voicemail messages when travelling within the European Economic Area, which is the EU, plus Iceland and Norway.

But outside this area networks can charge what they like, sometimes up to £1 per minute.

It emerged that firms are charging customers not only to listen to voicemails, but also simply if someone leaves one.

Tesco Mobile will charge a customer the cost of an equivalent call to the UK from wherever they are in the world if they are left a voicemail.

They will then be charged again the same rate for listening to the message. If the person calling hears the voicemail message, but hangs up before the beep, there is no charge.

EE customers who are left a voicemail will pay the same rate as if they had answered the call. If they listen to the voicemail, it will cost the equivalent of a call to the UK.