Orange iphone disgusting roaming charges!

Suestar

Hi,

Ive just returned from a great two week holiday in turkey and ive been hit with a £1400 bill!! I had my roaming turned off and only used the 'free' wifi connections. Ive called Orange to dispute this, and currently waiting for them to get back to me. Even the man on the phone said "oh my god!". Ive cancelled my direct debit until further notice. My wages dont event come to that much per month! My mortgage is a small fraction of that amount! How do they get away with charging amounts like this??

Has anyone had this experience with Orange? If so what happened? How did you resolve it.

:mad:
Thanks

Sue

Exhortation

What phone is it?

Mic2904

That sounds strange to me. If you havent used the Network and you def used Wifi, you should not be charged for that.

So if you are 100% certain, I would think they would need to prove that you have used the Roaming Network...

I am not sure that if you start certain apps, they open up roaming by default?!

nomoneytoday

Did you watch Youtube / iplayer ? AFAIK £1400 is about 500mb of roaming data :eek:

jhe

we had the exact thing happen to us last year with 02 i phone. after a week in egypt came home to a bill over £600 for data use. we had turned the internet connection off {asked 02 to do it but said they couldnt}i asked for copies of when the data usage was used,which they supplied to me, the times didnt match with when we had the phone with us {it had been left in a locked safe with money e.t.c} 02 just replied that is the info the egyptian network supplied them, i wish you luck and hope orange are more reasonable with you than 02 were with me.

peterbaker

I empathise.

My son has a Nokia X6 and is quite clued up on IT, but in a very short space of time (one short call) he had spent £5 on data charges using Skype whilst roaming when he thought he was connecting via a WiFi network at a bar for which he had obtained a network password. He had overlooked some technical setting and got it working properly later.

Unfortunately smartphones and the like are like a loaded gun when roaming. There really should not be such traps for the unwary.

I do hope Orange take a generous view.

Has anyone technically-minded reading this got an iPhone or more especially an iPhone supplied by Orange who can give the OP an indication of what may have gone wrong i.e. what "unreasonable" technical hoops the OP would have needed to go through to ensure that WiFi was being used rather than the local mobile network? Does Orange have an easily activated facility to turn off data roaming?

Incidentally, some networks may be more atune to this problem than others. For example, the 3 mobile network has a facility on the MyAccount section of their website for you to turn off data roaming yourself. Even if it is switched on, they also limit data roaming charges to £45 so you have to contact them to continue. You can also apply a credit limit as another means of keeping a lid on non-bundle charges.

Good luck!

lozzaman

Agreed. Since owning a HTC Desire, everytime I leave the UK it now stays here and I take another phone with a PAYG sim in it. I'm not risking the data rip off.

Also handily stops me making the mistake of going in the sea with an expensive phone in my pocket!

Kingsd316

with an iphone its simple, turn off data roaming and cellular data

peterbaker

Kingsd316 wrote: »

with an iphone its simple, turn off data roaming and cellular data

Have you perhaps just identified for the OP what went wrong? I.e. turn off data roaming AND cellular data ...

Kingsd316

peterbaker wrote: »

Have you perhaps just identified for the OP what went wrong? I.e. turn off data roaming AND cellular data ...

The OP should have only needed to turn off data roaming, but ive found turning off cellular data to means that there is no possible way i could accidently use an iphone app which uses data, with both methods turned off you can only access the internet with wifi,

gjchester

lozzaman wrote: »

Agreed. Since owning a HTC Desire, everytime I leave the UK it now stays here and I take another phone with a PAYG sim in it. I'm not risking the data rip off.

I swap the sim from my smart phone and put it in my old Motorola K1, it doesn't do data to any great extent (deliberatly not set it up right) and it lasts ages on a charge. and if it gets nicked I'm not likely to be really really bothered about the phone jsut getting the sim blocked on the network.