Overseas orange data rip off £1000.00 bill!

Galaxychocolate

Hi all,
I am new to this forum, and it is my first post of many many to follow as I am absolutely seething with Orange mobile.
Let me explain, last year I was a new user of an iPhone and naively used the phone with data switched on during my three week holiday in Spain. I use the phone mainly for work sending emails etc so for this I used the hotel wifi, but i had the phone on me at all other times. On my return I received a bill for £780, not good! But after talking with orange I was advised that this was normal and I should have purchased an abroad bundle in future. So I paid up accepting my error and carried on.

This year I went on a 5 day trip to New York with exact same iPhone and orange contract. This time I called orange services and advised that I was travelling abroad and that I had a Nasty bill last year and could they recommend what I should do as I would want to use the data service in New York for planning subway links, site seeing maps, Internet searches etc, he advised me to buy a 10mb world data package which he said should be sufficient for my uses, also he said that should I approach the end of the data use I would receive a message from orange stating this and whether I would wish to proceed to go over the limit, so I now felt happy and safe in the knowledge I was prepared for my trip.

On coming home I received a bill for £989.00!!, £840 of which was data usage!! You can imagine my shock etc.
I called orange who said not to worry, they will do there best to sort it out, even the adviser was shocked at the amount. She firstly offered to increase the data bundle sold to their biggest at 50mb and then charge the remainder at the £8 per mb charge which would have nearly halved the bill, still not good enough, but a start in the right direction. She said she needed authorisation over this and would call me back next day, but not to be "sad" and all will be sorted out.
I received the call next day as promised, but the previous offer was denied and as a good will orange would pay £150 towards my bill and tough for the rest.
I must say I have been a loyal orange customer for 22yrs, my bills are always paid on time via direct debit and my credit rating is faultless, the highest they have seen as said by the upgrade team.
I feel I have been misled, misold, misadvised and ripped off big style. I am currently taking this further and sending various letters to watchdog, Orange head office, every forum etc etc, I cannot believe they can happily charge these obscene amounts without warning etc, surely in this modern technological age there should be some kind of warning system in place to prevent this? :mad:
Any thoughts or advice greatly appreciated, many thanks in advance.
:money:

Snakeeyes21

quite simple really, you use it you pay it.

10mb is !!!!!! all, im sure you were aware of this, seemings the amount of data you usually use will be
in the logs on your phone and on every bill you have recieved in the past.

Even ot accessing the 'internet' via a browser and just letting the phone do its thing syncing emails and
stuff will use a hell of alot more in a week.

There is absolutely nothing you can do about it, orange have already done what most would advise
to do and go for a good will gesture.

To have it happen once is a learning curve, for it to happen twice is just foolish..

Spitfire55

On the Iphone Settings - There is a Option to Turn Data Roaming Off/On

if you Keep the Internet Connected - it will sync/check for emails when its in your pocket.

Next time you go away make sure you turn data roaming off

Galaxychocolate

Guys,
Thanks for the prompt replies, 10mb, to me could be stardust, I am a property developer and not in any way data savvy, I was advised for my usage that would be sufficient and, yes as you stated, foolishly, accepted and trusted an individual who I would have thought would be in the know.
Many, many people ask me for advice in bricks and mortar, horses for courses?
The data segment of my bill, mmm, well to be honest I have a tarrif that includes my monthly data, I get my bills electronically, not paper ( save a tree and all that !!!!) and as I am busy I tend not to study the bills themselves but just look at my bank statements when I do my quarterly VAT etc, my bills are usually £50 to £80 a month, so £989 stands out!

Thanks for the advice, but I still feel there is a great Missjustice here, and £8 per mb, if 10 mb is !!!!! as you state, is overly expensive and all a scam anyway.

Thank you

wantmemoney

Galaxychocolate wrote:

I must say I have been a loyal orange customer for 22yrs

get shot of their contract at the earliest opportunity and let them know that is what you intend.

more fool you if you stay with this unscrupulous company

drbesty

You've been a loyal customer for 22 years, the company was formed in 1995.......something not right there

Galaxychocolate

I have been with orange since 1989, mmm, wiki states formed in 1994 as you say, but I had my business number since 1989, cellnet rings a bell, I must be getting old! It was a long time anyway!!

Guys_Dad

Galaxychocolate wrote: »

Guys,
Thanks for the prompt replies, 10mb, to me could be stardust, I am a property developer and not in any way data savvy, I was advised for my usage that would be sufficient and, yes as you stated, foolishly, accepted and trusted an individual who I would have thought would be in the know.
........................
Thanks for the advice, but I still feel there is a great Missjustice here, and £8 per mb, if 10 mb is !!!!! as you state, is overly expensive and all a scam anyway.

Thank you

Take this scenario. Suppose I was a naive prospective property purchaser and I bought a house, without a survey, based upon the "impartial" verbal advice from the estate agent and subsequently found that it suffered from subsidence and dry rot, should I be entitled to a refund?

I might not have been property savvy, but I wonder what your view would be? Probably that I had not done sufficient homework, made basic mistakes and was now suffering the results of my "negligence".

You failed to do even the most basic checks - such as how many mb you use per month - surely you must have read that 500mb is about the normal for a package and, as was previously said, 10mb was diddley squat?

Your best bet is to ask for the voice recording of the conversation you had with the CS rep (if they have it) and negotiate the best reduction you can.

But accept your culpability and don't try to put the bulk of the blame on the network.

Galaxychocolate

Yes I must be a complete fool, you are correct I should have researched and become an expert on data usage etc, next time I buy a car I will spend more precious time researching the way the engine works and not in any way trust BMW,
Must we become experts in everything and leave trust to no one?, I'm not sure about you, but I have 3 young kids, a nagging wife and run 2 companies and I certainly do not have time to be researching every aspect of my life, I made a call to an advisor and received poor advice, also I never received any of the promised texts warning of over usage, oh well maybe I am a complete idiot after all!

gjchester

Galaxychocolate wrote: »

Let me explain, last year I was a new user of an iPhone and naively used the phone with data switched on during my three week holiday in Spain.

I cannot believe they can happily charge these obscene amounts without warning etc, surely in this modern technological age there should be some kind of warning system in place to prevent this?

There is a warning, it's quite clear, the iPhone DOES NOT have data enabled by default and there is a clear notice below it that it may be expensive. You must have seen it when you enable the data although you may not have appreciated what it said.

£8 per MB may be expensive but thats what they charge, and with hindsight you should have asked what the charge was before you left that. You also should have checked your bills to have an idea how much data you use, but hindsights alway a wonderful thing to look back on.

Once you leave roaming data on many smartphones sync a lot of data, email, facebook, weather, it's likely you left these apps running in the background which caused the high bill.

Orange will have to pay the foreign network for data use, so there may not be much room to get a reduction.

Guys_Dad

Galaxychocolate wrote: »

Yes I must be a complete fool, you are correct I should have researched and become an expert on data usage etc, next time I buy a car I will spend more precious time researching the way the engine works and not in any way trust BMW,
Must we become experts in everything and leave trust to no one?, I'm not sure about you, but I have 3 young kids, a nagging wife and run 2 companies and I certainly do not have time to be researching every aspect of my life, I made a call to an advisor and received poor advice, also I never received any of the promised texts warning of over usage, oh well maybe I am a complete idiot after all!

No, not a complete idiot, but certainly someone who is currently £1000 out of pocket. But look at other recent threads, and you will see you were not alone.

So, you have a number of opinions in this thread about what you did wrong but that doesn't help you get any reduction in your charge.

Your best bet is being able to prove to Orange that you got wrong advice and the only way you can do that is if they have a recording of your call, so start there.

But your first post asked for thoughts and advice, and that is what you are getting........albeit maybe not the response you might have hoped for. Good luck with the possible recording on file, though. :beer: