Overseas orange data rip off £1000.00 bill!

llyamah

Galaxy, I think that some of the posts on this thread have been a little on the harsh side. Yes, you could have been more prudent, but you did telephone Orange to explain the Spain bill and to seek advice on how to avoid this in the future. I don't think it is asking too much to expect some quality advice on how to avoid it.

Guys_Dad wrote: »

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?

No, you shouldn't be entitled to a refund, but this is a completely different situation. In the property market it is standard practice to have an independent evaluation. Should Galaxy have to hire a technology consultant to advise on his iPhone, or should he be able to expect the company providing him with a service to act honestly and diligently? I'm with the latter approach. In the housing market an estate agent is exactly that – an agent – the buyer does not contract with the estate agent. Here, Galaxy is contracting with Orange and is a customer who should be able to expect a little more.

I’m not saying that Galaxy could not have received better advice elsewhere instead of speaking with Orange, this board for example, but I don’t exactly think it was a massive error of judgment to trust someone working for Orange.

Guys_Dad

llyamah wrote: »

I’m not saying that Galaxy could not have received better advice elsewhere instead of speaking with Orange, this board for example, but I don’t exactly think it was a massive error of judgment to trust someone working for Orange.

Hold on a minute. Read the first post again. This was the SECOND overseas trip that resulted in massive bills.

If you had been caught once and wanted to ensure you weren't caught again, you would have asked Orange "How much did I use last time?" and then made 100% sure I had at least as much this time, given that OP was not going to be relying on the hotel wi-fi and using the internet for more than emails, as he did in Spain.

As for my parallel with a house - I used that as OP is in property - then, perhaps, I should have used Health Insurance. Now I have never had to claim, but I know from general knowledge that £10,000 is not sufficient and that £5,000,000 is what the insurance companies offer, so I wouldn't have taken the advice of an insurance advisor who recommended a policy with a limit of £10k.

I have no defence for the network for him not receiving the texts he was promised, though.

llyamah

Guys_Dad wrote: »

Hold on a minute. Read the first post again. This was the SECOND overseas trip that resulted in massive bills.

Yes, I know, read my post. I acknowledged that this was the second time the OP had his fingers burnt. He did ring Orange and explicitly mentioned the previous trip. The Orange representative sold him something and stated that this will be sufficient – is it not unreasonable for the OP to assume that the Orange representative knew how much he used last time? The Orange rep was clearly a complete tool for suggesting that 10Mb would suffice. My point is just that I feel that Orange are more to blame here than the OP.

And as for the (rather extreme!) health insurance example, I take your point but I think more people would recognise that £10k is not going to go very far for serious medical treatment than the number of people who would realise that 10Mb of data is not going to get you very far. There are probably a lot of people out there who have a better grasp of money than they do of data size.

Guys_Dad

llyamah wrote: »

.......................I take your point but I think more people would recognise that £10k is not going to go very far for serious medical treatment than the number of people who would realise that 10Mb of data is not going to get you very far. There are probably a lot of people out there who have a better grasp of money than they do of data size.

Absolute rot! You only have to see how many people have mobiles - from teenagers upwards - and they are far more knowledgeable about data etc than overseas health insurance. Why else would 3 advertise "All the data you can eat". I would bet that 95% of the population who have mobile contracts know how many minutes, texts and data (if applicable) they have each month.

As for the advice, 10mb may have sufficed for 5 days' email use - I believe the average email size is being quoted at about 80k these days - and with some mobiles you can set them to only send the headers up to, say 25k.

I am not saying that Orange are not culpable in any way - it all depended upon the conversation OP had with them at the time and none of use were there (that is why I suggested trying to see if the call was recorded). And OP has already admitted that he is not mobile literate. But there is no way that OP can wash his hands of any personal culpability.

spiro

In terms of the 10mb Orange figure, VFs overseas data tariff gives you 25mb per day for £5, then £5 for the 1st 5mb over that and £15 per 5mb after that. If your on a monthly tariff of £35 or more you get this free.

You dont say how may mb per day you have been charge fro but you do mention " for planning subway links, site seeing maps,", depending on what maps you use this can eat data faster than you count.

llyamah

I also think it is absolute rot to make up a hypothetical situation where someone selling insurance would advise that £10k health protection would be adequate.

It is not unreasonable for people to rely on their mobile phone operator's advice regarding data usage, especially when some people may not have any idea about data. The OP did what I think is quite a sensible thing; he made it clear that he didn’t a reoccurrence of the Spain bill and so phoned the operator for advice, which turned out to be worthless. He even told the operator exactly what he wanted to use the internet for “planning subway links, maps, internet searches”. Just because you know how much data that is going to use, it doesn’t mean everyone does or even should know that.

“Why else would three advertise all the data you can eat”? How about for people who download an obscene amount, as opposed to the user who just wants the phone for checking out the odd map and internet search – i.e. the OP in NY.

gjchester

llyamah wrote: »

How about for people who download an obscene amount, as opposed to the user who just wants the phone for checking out the odd map and internet search – i.e. the OP in NY.

The OP said the bill was £840 @ £8 a MB, Thats 105MB on to pof the 10MB he had.

Thats hardly checking the odd map or interent search. Google map is a data hog but 105MB is more than a few searches..

spiro

Galaxychocolate wrote: »

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

Unless I am missing something this does not make sense.

Without a data plan the USA is £8/mb which means, £840 = 105mb.

With the basic data plan of 10mb (which I believe you had) then £840 equates to £12.25 (1st 10mb) plus £827.75 (103.5mb at £8) - total data 113.5mb.

If you had the large bundle (as offered) then the bill would have reduced to £569.27 (£61.27 for 1st 50mb plus £508 for remaining 63.5mb), how does this reduce the bill by half?????

Transformer

Get orange to source the sales call and listen to what you were told if you fee miss sold.

Record all calls to orange they cant be trusted.

I find often with orange the customer does as much research as possible, asks the right questions and can still get miss sold by their staff, to receive the cold shoulder when errors raise bills that customers then query. They treat you as a combatant just for persuing an issue.

Andyblizz

Galaxychocolate wrote: »

Hi all,

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.

spiro wrote: »

Unless I am missing something this does not make sense.

Without a data plan the USA is £8/mb which means, £840 = 105mb.

With the basic data plan of 10mb (which I believe you had) then £840 equates to £12.25 (1st 10mb) plus £827.75 (103.5mb at £8) - total data 113.5mb.

If you had the large bundle (as offered) then the bill would have reduced to £569.27 (£61.27 for 1st 50mb plus £508 for remaining 63.5mb), how does this reduce the bill by half?????

He didnt say reduce the bill by half , he said nearly halved the bill. So from £989 to the figure you said is £569.27 this is 57.5% of the orginal bill. Therefore in his eyes nearly half..