£3000 Orange bill. please help.

Olesya

Hi there,

I have been trying to find help and have come across this site.

I hope you can help me. I have spoken to my mum this afternoon and she called me crying and in complete despair.

Beginning of this month when she returned back from abroad (she was visiting my grandma) she tried to use her phone but she could only receive calls and not make them so we contacted Orange and they said they put a bar on the her phone as the bill reached £1300. Of course it was a shock and my mum was very upset, she had no idea how it came to that and they said that its all data charge but my mum can barely log into to check her emails, she does not use internet ... after the initial shock i spoke to Orange (her english is very limited) and I tried to lower the bill but they just wouldnt badge. My mum has been their customer for over 4 years, always paid her bill and never had a bill over £150 and now BAH! £1300. I was trying to tell them that she does not use internet and possibly it was pressing by mistake but again they wouldnt badge.... so this afternoon when i spoke to my mum, her bill came through and its not £1300 but just over £3000!

Why didn't orange put a bar on it when it went over £200 or lets say £300 - my mother's bill in 4 years was never more than £150?

My mum is definitely not able to afford to pay it, she is a single mum with 16hrs a week of work, she struggling as it is.

Please could you give us advice how we can lower this bill? who can we speak to?

I am very much looking forward to your responses.

Kind Regards,
Olesya

Jon_01

You need to find out what was used and when. What phone does she have ? And where in the world was she at the time ?

Orange won't have known the usage while she was roaming as the billing would have been done by the network she was using at the time. They then send the billing in to Orange once every 24 hours or so.

Olesya

Hi Jon,

Thank you for your response.

She has a blackberry and was in Ukraine. She doesn't use the phone abroad for calls as she knows its very expensive, maybe a text here and there and usually keeps it on in case I need to contact her.

Regards.

Jon_01

Ok, so, has she email set up on the BB? It sounds like it's been checking for the whole time she was away. That would explain the usage (it checks for new mail every few seconds and even if there isn't any it still has to send the log in info).

I was hoping she had been in the EU somewhere, that would have been a help, but Ukraine.

You need to confirm with Orange that the usage is through the BB checking for email (they should be able to tell from the usage reports).

Olesya

No she does not have an email set up on her bb

Jon_01

Then you need to get the usage info from Orange. I can see how else she could have used that much ?

mrcamp

Like others said, contact orange to get the details of the exact usage. It seems like something was trying to connect or connected, and in the process used up a lot of data. You did mention that she did nto make any outgoing calls but may have received incoming calls. Regardless, I am pretty sure data and call charges in the Ukraine will NOT be cheap at all.

whitewing

If people in the UK were calling her on her mobile while she was in the Ukraine, am I right in thinking that she (not them) would be charged the difference between them calling her in the UK, and the fact that she was abroad? I don't know if that makes sense.

baza52

more than likely BB mesenger or other app(s).

Olesya

Thank you very much for all your responses.

I have her bill here - calls added up to £19.09 and the rest is internet and date 378.0615megabytes which cost £3024.492.

Regards

Olesya

she does not use bbm.

can you see how shocked and puzzled we are to receive this bill