Warning shock internet bill from orange

mrJ_5

from March, network providers should give people a set credit limit (which the user can change) to stop billing shocks like this happening again

macman

mrJ wrote: »

from March, network providers should give people a set credit limit (which the user can change) to stop billing shocks like this happening again

How can that work, given that the bills are incurred on a third party local network, and the home network may not receive the usage/billing info for hours or days after?

xycom1

Snakeeyes21 wrote: »

I'm always curious as to why people opt to use their home sim when going abroad.

Surely people don't find it too difficult to walk in to a shop when they get off the plane and pick up a sim and some credit.

Because when you're on holiday, all you want to do is fanny on and go phone shopping. :rotfl:

Snakeeyes21

xycom1 wrote: »

Because when you're on holiday, all you want to do is fanny on and go phone shopping. :rotfl:

Yes I can see how spending 5 minutes picking up a sim to save yourself from getting thousands of pounds worth of bills will simply ruin your holiday

I'm curious as to how you would otherwise spend those 5 minutes, possibly pick you nose or scratch your ar*e? neither is as productive as potentially saving £££

IMO people who don't do it deserve the bills they get, common sense doesn't cost anything, but there seems to be a lack of it in this day and age

prl100

xycom1 wrote: »

Because when you're on holiday, all you want to do is fanny on and go phone shopping. :rotfl:

Snakeeyes21 wrote: »

Yes I can see how spending 5 minutes picking up a sim to save yourself from getting thousands of pounds worth of bills will simply ruin your holiday

I'm curious as to how you would otherwise spend those 5 minutes, possibly pick you nose or scratch your ar*e? neither is as productive as potentially saving £££

IMO people who don't do it deserve the bills they get, common sense doesn't cost anything, but there seems to be a lack of it in this day and age

Buying a local sim takes little more time, than it would to buy a phone card for the payphone - the way we used to do things a few years ago.

boliston

macman wrote: »

How can that work, given that the bills are incurred on a third party local network, and the home network may not receive the usage/billing info for hours or days after?

PAYG sims seem to roam OK and the usage comes off the credit balance in real time, can't see why contract can't be real time as well.

Timk42

I just came back from a trip from Switzerland, and on arriving was unable to use my UK vodaphone SIM for some reason. I needed to send an email urgently, so I figured I would just use the Swiss Sunrise SIM I always use in Switzerland on these trips. Quite a mistake. The PAYG SIM was blocked after 5 minutes when the credit ran out. Logging onto my SUNRISE account later I found that at one point I was billed 36CHF (about £20) for 1 minute 43 seconds of internet access. During this time I could not have transferred more than 2MB of data.

Sunrise says its simply the charge levied by the network operator I connected to in the UK.

From my bill I notice that the previous evening in Switzerland I spent one hour connected to the internet on Sunrise network and incurred a charge of 0.11 CHF. about 6 pence. That makes the internet I used while roaming in the UK at least 11000 times as expensive on a per minute basis!

How can such ridiculous disparities exist in this day and age? And why are the regulators not doing something about it?

Its strange that a term that often comes up in the small print of telecoms contracts is "subject to fair usage". Are consumers getting fair usage when they are suddenly billed unreasonable and unexpected amounts for data.

How about this for an idea: Isnt it about time customers got together, made there own contract and offered it on mass for tender to the mobile operators. I for one am getting a little fed up over getting ripped off by these companies.

Timk

macman

Switzerland is a real potential catch-out, as the EU restrictions do not apply, and presumably data is billed at the vastly more expensive 'Rest of World' rates.

mrJ_5

I guess the rule of thumb is to only use a local SIM for mobile broadband.