High Vodaphone bill whilst on a cruise

cuzzer1202

Hi All,

I wonder if anyone can help. In short, my wife took out a contract for my 14yr old daughter to use the phone as her's. Whilst on a cruise she stupidly used the phone whilst out at sea which ended up going through a satellite system. Stupid of us I know and we are very nieve. BUT. We have a bill of £467.00 now without VAT. Vodaphone refuse to let us set up an upper limit which would have picked up on this and say that it's up to us to dial 121 or something to get a current balance. O2 let you. So do Orange and Tmobile I'm told but not voda. In short Vodaphone allow silly people like us to run up a stupid bill. Can anyone offer any advice as to wether we can ask for a reasonable compromise or meet us half way on the bill. We are stupid I know but can anyone help us.?? Thanks to anyone who can help.

agsnu

There is a delay in reconciling billing information from the foreign network in these situations, so Vodafone will claim they can't put a bar in because they don't know how much you've used your account.

Of course, it would be possible for them to speed up this process, but there is no impetus for them to do so.

d123

None of the networks will set a roaming limit, it's because they have to rely on the foreign network to supply the billing details and some can be slow at doing this.

Vodafone are not responsible for your spend, and in reality, anyone should realise how expensive roaming is. If Vodafone let off everyone who got a high bill while roaming because they were ignorant of the charges it will ultimately impact all customers through higher usage charges in the future.

14 year olds are technology savvy, how did she think the phone would work out at sea if not via a satellite or radio link?

I think this isn't Vodafones' fault, perhaps try and get a bill reduction by appealing to them and claiming it will cause hardship, but to try and attack them and make it out as their fault probably won't get you anywhere.

Quentin

This wouldn't have happened with a payg phone. Maybe you want to consider taking the contract phone back off her, though if she can afford cruises maybe she can afford to pay her phone bill!

All you can do is plead with them for help towards the bill.

Maybe if she can't afford it you could come to some payment arangement to pay it on the drip, with her getting a Saturday job to pay it off.

a7man

I've read about people getting high bills and complaining to get the cost reduced. There was one guy in the paper who had a £20 000 bill after downloading abroad! It was reduced to about 100-200 though after a big complaint...

d123

a7man wrote: »

I've read about people getting high bills and complaining to get the cost reduced. There was one guy in the paper who had a £20 000 bill after downloading abroad! It was reduced to about 100-200 though after a big complaint...

Though the circumstances in that case were different (as I recall), he had been sold the data add-on as "unlimited" and then went to Europe and used it. The literature he was given didn't specify UK only so it was in Voda's interest to sort it quickly (as the EU are currently investigating data roaming charges).

a7man

Maybe, I didnt read into it in so much detail.

If you're a high bill payer you could also use that to negotiate with Vodafone and say you will switch networks soon (if your contract is due to end in a few months)..

cuzzer1202

Quentin wrote: »

This wouldn't have happened with a payg phone. Maybe you want to consider taking the contract phone back off her, though if she can afford cruises maybe she can afford to pay her phone bill!

All you can do is plead with them for help towards the bill.

Maybe if she can't afford it you could come to some payment arangement to pay it on the drip, with her getting a Saturday job to pay it off.

Good point. She's up for that. The cruise was a last minute Ocean village 2 which was very cheap. I think PAYG is the way forward. Ta.:T