data sting

angie_3-2

I've just come back from a holiday in France and opened my latest Orange bill to find that I've been charged £58 for just viewing - not downloading content - from bbc online (news/weather etc).
I rang C Services to query this and was summarily cut off after a 20-second conversation in which I was told: "It's different abroad."
Is there anything I can do about this? Is this correct? On the Orange website it merely says that you will be charged for sending or receiving data. I appear to have used 8.5 megs for looking at a free site.

espresso

angie wrote:

I've just come back from a holiday in France and opened my latest Orange bill to find that I've been charged £58 for just viewing - not downloading content - from bbc online (news/weather etc).
I rang C Services to query this and was summarily cut off after a 20-second conversation in which I was told: "It's different abroad."
Is there anything I can do about this? Is this correct? On the Orange website it merely says that you will be charged for sending or receiving data. I appear to have used 8.5 megs for looking at a free site.

You say that you did not 'download content' but how do you think that it was displayed on your phone so that you could view it?

Obviously when abroad you will be charged at a higher roaming rate shown here.

According to the website 8.5MB would have cost more than £58 but as you have used it, you will have to pay for it. There is no such thing as a free site when using GPRS. I agree that it is expensive but it's hardly a data sting!

:eek:

Alfie_E

Sadly, it’s correct. There isn’t any difference in your terms “viewing” and “downloading”. Both are just downloading – the network sends the data to your mobile handset, and your handset sends a little bit of data back to help orchestrate the transfer of data to you. People tend to mean viewing, when they’re downloading stuff of a transient nature – you get it, you look at it, it’s gone. Whereas they use downloading, when they receive stuff with the intention of keeping it.

8.5MB doesn’t go that far, and it’s quite easy to use that amount. You need to take a look at Martin’s Mobile Roaming: Holiday calls for less. In future, it might be a good idea to use a local SIM card when abroad, provided you can get one that gives you the GPRS (data) access you want to use.