Overseas Data Roaming Charges

london_lady

I have just had my mobile contract suspended by Vodafone for running up a bill of £1050 for roaming while in South Africa. I used my phone on occasion to check Facebook and email however did not use the internet for anything other than this. I was advised via text when arriving in SA that "data costs start from £3 per 1MB per day" - there is no way the amount of internet I used exceeded this so 15 days x £3/day = £90.

Does this sound right and fair and is there anything I can do to argue this bill? My usual monthly bill never exceeds £40!!

To top is off Vodafone have closed their customer services department until the 3rd January so I am now left without a phone until then.:mad:

Please someone help me!

David_Scott

There's already loads of posts on this subject which might give you a quicker reply. You don't say what phone you have? Most smart phones update silently in the background several times a day and maybe more depending what the setting are set at. It is quite possible that you have used 30mb a day which isn't very much at all.

OneADay

Sounds like 23MB a day which is about £70 a day at £3 per MB.
That is easy to rack up on a mobile with large emails being downloaded.

Seeing as they warned you, the only thing you can ask them (when they open) is to reduce the charge down because its steep.

dazzaofdagenham

i ran up a bill of £600 quid in america and after much pleading T.Mobile reduced it to £300.

Be carefull with smartphones....

Darren

sandsy

Exactly the same thing happened to me in South Africa a couple of years ago too - but with T-Mobile. I only looked at a handful of webpages and not every day - I was convinced that I hadn't used the data they said I had. I had nothing that updated automatically on the phone that I had with me. I didn't download any emails.

I queried it and they reduced the charge substantially (about 2/3rds, I think).

NFH

My Orange bill showed that I had used data that I hadn't used. My bill showed that I had used 916MB but my iPhone recorded that I had used only 404.5MB. Orange's billing system showed that I had downloaded large quantities of data during short daytime periods on two days in my billing month, which if true would have severely drained my battery, but it didn't because I didn't use the data. Also there's no way that my iPhone could have downloaded the alleged high quantity of data in the short periods stated. Fortunately this was in the UK and just within my usage allowance so there was no cost. Nevertheless I asked Orange to investigate several times and made sure that copious notes were made on my account in case the same thing should happen in future when I'm roaming, but they failed to investigate. I'm sure the networks know all about these billing errors. If it can happen in the UK, it can also happen when roaming. Don't give up until they reimburse you in full.

DUTR

NFH wrote: »

My Orange bill showed that I had used data that I hadn't used. My bill showed that I had used 916MB but my iPhone recorded that I had used only 404.5MB. Orange's billing system showed that I had downloaded large quantities of data during short daytime periods on two days in my billing month, which if true would have severely drained my battery, but it didn't because I didn't use the data. Also there's no way that my iPhone could have downloaded the alleged high quantity of data in the short periods stated. Fortunately this was in the UK and just within my usage allowance so there was no cost. Nevertheless I asked Orange to investigate several times and made sure that copious notes were made on my account in case the same thing should happen in future when I'm roaming, but they failed to investigate. I'm sure the networks know all about these billing errors. If it can happen in the UK, it can also happen when roaming. Don't give up until they reimburse you in full.

Remember part of the data usage will be for upload too, just checking my account here on my phone, used 11mb in 2 days, so will be hard pushed to hit even 500mb, even though Im on the unlimited unlimited O2 bolt on :j

NFH

DUTR wrote: »

Remember part of the data usage will be for upload too, just checking my account here on my phone, used 11mb in 2 days, so will be hard pushed to hit even 500mb, even though Im on the unlimited unlimited O2 bolt on :j

Indeed, and the 404.5MB recorded by my iPhone was made up of 370MB download and 34.5MB upload. You can usually guess that your upload will be around 10% of your download unless you're doing a lot of intentional uploading (e.g. sending photos etc).