MSE news: Complaints over erroneous iPhone data roaming charges

Quaff

adsteps wrote: »

Just wanted to add, they may also try to get around it by saying the 'push email' facility may have run up the charges, but cut them off and insist you stopped this. Also, they did mention someting about a £40 limit on the roaming charges, but i'm not sure about this but it did add weight to my claim as it was over this.

In my opinion, writing a letter/email complaint is not as good as speaking to them directly as calmly and politely as possible. They have time to respond and fob you off via letter whereas if you are polite but insistent on the phone they may be more likely to help as it's totaly at their discretion.

Hope this helps...

X Adam

From this month new EU regulation were introduced that cap the amount a Mobile Phone company can charge for Data Roaming whilst abroad. With O2 the minimum cap is 50mbs of Data you can download, which you will be charged £40. Once you exceed 50mbs, then you services will be restricted until you request them instated. You will also have to go into your setting and reset your network settings (they don't tell you this when lifting the bar) Rgds John

Kingsd316

Can you not ring up before you go and tell them to set the data limit to zero? then just use free wifi

allyreilly

I too was charged for data roaming while i was in cyprus July 2010 .. i rung 02 before i went and was told to turn just data roaming off (which it is all the time ) and that was it .. i turn my phone on in the evening just to check for texts and that was it.. the rest of the time the phone was in the hotel safe ..on my return i check my bill on website and had got £30 of data charges on my bill .i rung o2 and was told no probs i would get a refund ... A week late i that no text to say i would get a refund so i rung again and was told i WOULD NOT get a refund as i had used data roaming to check emails .. which i did not do .. i asked to speak to someone else and then spoke to someone in iphone tect team and they told me to take it to an Apple store to check my phone was working ??? i did this and the tect guys at the store were Brill but said there was not a fault with my phone and to go back to 02 which i did and NOW they are saying on the 4th Aug that they are aware of the problems with data roaming and are refund any charges + £10 for my trouble ??? Lets just wait and see what happens :mad:

Roberts56

Hi,

I am writing in for help on what i can do with a shock of a phone bill i recieved from T-Mobile. I went to egypt in July for two weeks and during the second week i fell sick and stayed in my hotel room till i was better. I decided to ring T-mobile to see about data roaming packages and deals they were offering.

The customer service assistant said that i can get 500MB for either £5/£7.50 i can not remember but thought thats good ill go for that. She said to just turn on data roaming and it will automatically be added to my account. So that being done i started to use the data roaming on my phone till about 4500MB to be safe.

Now last night i look online and check my T-Mobile account, and to my complete shock my next bill is £3671!! When it should be my standard £35 a month!!! I nearly had a heart attack there on the spot, as it is the most i have ever seen.

I rang T-mobile today and they went on to say that they will investigate the matter, and to call back on the 15th of August when my billing date is. So i have to sweat it out till then, which i find unreal!!! This is no joke or laughing matter and they expect me to hang about till then not knowing if i have to fort it out or not.

I then ring them back demanding to know what is going on as i can not wait till then to see if i got to pay but they wont help! So now i just have to panic till then, which is just WRONG!

Please can someone give me some help or advice on the matter as i am freaking out and dont know what to do.

Roberts

Andy001_2

Hi folks,

Both my wife and I have been away to Egypt and both had the exact same settings on our iphones (Both the 3G model) however she has been charged for using data whilst over there.

Before we left the UK I switched off data roaming on both phones and even switched data off in the uk to make sure we would not get any charges.

She is on the phone with O2 CS just now who are claiming it is only a fault with iphone4's and is refusing to even consider the fault lies with the phone. What model have most people had when this problem came up?

willie_bath

O2 have finally replied to my complaint, and agreed a refund for erroneous data charges whilst abroad, unfortunately they still have no clue what the problem is, I hope this does not just die away because we are getting refunds, it is a spectacular waiste of time to continually phone them!

M_Thomson

Andy001 wrote: »

Hi folks,

Both my wife and I have been away to Egypt and both had the exact same settings on our iphones (Both the 3G model) however she has been charged for using data whilst over there.

Before we left the UK I switched off data roaming on both phones and even switched data off in the uk to make sure we would not get any charges.

She is on the phone with O2 CS just now who are claiming it is only a fault with iphone4's and is refusing to even consider the fault lies with the phone. What model have most people had when this problem came up?

It's been mostly iPhone 4 so far.

royth

Both my wife and myslef have Iphone 3gs's running ios 4.0.1(8A306)
My wife traveled to Poland last month and we both traveled to Lanzarotte 2 weeks ago, we got the phone bill jut after we got back and we have both recieved data roaming charges. Whilst abroad we both noticed that we recieved email even though we always have our phones set to have data roaming set to off, so we both double checked the setting as yes it was still off. The data charges were only £5 for the pair of us but out of principal i phoned O2.

I was told it was down to us to manage our data roaming, I explained that we have it set to disabled on our phones they then blaim apple and say its not their problem refusing to refund to avoid data roaming charges I would have to ask them to put a data roaming bar on so i said to put the bar on and I asked to speak to a supervisor as i was not happy about the £5 data charges, she shaid out of good will she would refund the £5.

Later i recieved a phone call from O2 (same lady) saing they cant put a data roaming bar on all they can do is put a data bar on, so i said Don't bar it as there would be no point in having an iphone with no data!!

She said that what we should do to stop the charges in the future is ....


go to Settings \ General \ Network and slide Data Roaming to off

go to Settings \ Mail Contact and Calanders \ <email account account name>\slide Account to off

goto Settings \ Notifications \ slide Notifications to off

She said this will stop data charges in the future! I wont be traveling for a while so cant test it but hope some one out there can try it and report back.

bubblesmoney

" I had 3G and data roaming turned off on the iPhone. I spoke to Orange about this, and they said it was due to another option called "cellular data" which appeared in the iOS 4 update. This also needs to be turned off, which I did not do as I didn't know what it was for.

Orange said that it was not their responsibility to inform customers of any changes to the software which may affect the way they use the phone or charges incurred.

So you have to turn "cellular data" off as well as 3G and data roaming. Personally, I'd be more tempted to get a rubbish phone and stick the SIM card in that whilst away. Avoids the hassle."

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/mobiles/iphone-users-complain-of-rogue-roaming-charges-50000067/

see the numerous other examples on line on this and other links

android and other iphone / smartphone users plesase note this comment ... "Android has had a similiar issue with this - due to working in the cloud.

Even with international roaming switched off, and syncing switched off, rebooting the phone causes it to check for contacts etc (often ignoring the above statuses). It's always a good idea to go in and change your APN address - add an extra couple of k's to the end of it - that way it doesn't matter what you forget to switch off (whether your operating system picks it up or not), and it is easy enough to change back when you get back."

i prefer instead to go manually to the APN setting and deselecting that option. or you could use apps to switch off or change the APN setting. on android there are many free apps for controlling this APN setting like APNdroid etc (too many free and paid to mention which control the APN). disabling or deselecting the APN will switch off all data access as far as i know and turn your smart phone into a dumb old style phone which is not internet capable but can still get calls and texts and can use the rest of the PDA like features of your smartphones including GPS navigation so long as you dont need to download any data. so having copilot software one can do GPS navigation without needing to download any data.

hope this helps avoiding such situations.

Kingsd316

You shouldnt have to turn of 3g, just data roaming and cellular data