EE customers to receive £1m refund after VAT mix-up

A "small" number of EE customers will share a refund of roughly £1m after they were wrongly charged VAT.

Customers who went outside of the EU and used internet data between October 2012 and October 2014 are affected - about 0.5% of EE's total customers.

The company told the BBC the money "was never EE's" and that the overcharge, blamed on a system-configuration error, went directly to Revenue & Customs.

Refunds will range from about £2 to £80 per customer.

"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.

He added: "We've claimed that money back from HMRC, and then it goes back to the customers.""This was a mistake, and we are now refunding these charges and contacting affected customers to apologise for the error."