HELP NEEDED URGENT: Orange Outrage on data roaming

grumbler

macman wrote: »

You didn't get 'fleeced', you paid the advertised rate that you accepted when you took out the contract.

The only small problem that you are missing is that he probably paid this advertised rate for for the MBs that he never used.

macman

Mercifully that's another argument altogether (at least for the rest of us).

davidjwest

macman wrote: »

You didn't get 'fleeced', you paid the advertised rate that you accepted when you took out the contract.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it.

However, I used due diligence and my best endeavours to stay within the 30 Mb limit I had paid for, as advised by Orange.

Their advertised rate of £3 per Mb is profiteering, if they can make a profit from charging £3 per 30Mb.

davidjwest

NFH wrote: »

I find it quite hard to use as much as 30MB in one day, as that equates to 900MB per month, and I usually use 200-400MB per month in the UK. Maybe it's because I always use wireless networks whenever available, often just for a decent connection speed.

Agreed, both days in question we went to explore the local area and I had to use maps on the net, I suspect they may be quite data intensive.

No wifi at the place we stayed unfortunately.

The other days I was using less than 10 Mb, so in theory you could argue I paid for 150 Mb over the five days and only used 113 Mb.

NFH

davidjwest wrote: »

Their advertised rate of £3 per Mb is profiteering, if they can make a profit from charging £3 per 30Mb.

Agreed, but the average £3/30MB/day bundle user probably only uses a fraction (10-15MB maybe) of their full 30MB allowance. It's possible that they make a loss or nil profit on users who use the full 30MB, as that works out at 10p/MB.

Having said that, Vodafone charges £10/month or £2/day for 25MB/day for European roaming. At full usage, the monthly option works out at only 1.3p/MB and the daily option at 8p/MB, both cheaper than Orange.

Jon_01

Bare in mind its the roaming network that set the price not Orange (or any other UK network). Some overseas networks looks at roamers as 'a nice little earner'.

grumbler

Jon_01 wrote: »

Bare in mind its the roaming network that set the price not Orange (or any other UK network). Some overseas networks looks at roamers as 'a nice little earner'.

It's both network's conspiracy I believe. And judging by how easily Orange often refund 50% I think they share the loot about 50/50.

BTW, the maximum wholesale price in EU is limited by €0.50/MB: http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/roaming/regulation/index_en.htm

NFH

Jon_01 wrote: »

Bare in mind its the roaming network that set the price not Orange (or any other UK network). Some overseas networks looks at roamers as 'a nice little earner'.

True, and it's striking how much wholesale prices for visiting roamers can vary between networks in the same country. Until 2001, there was a certain degree of competition between networks in each country for visiting roamers, with prices and billing increments varying significantly for outgoing calls and text messages. These differences were passed on by UK networks to their end-customers. Incoming calls were always uniform for a particular country or region.

Some networks outside Europe still pass on these differences to their customers. For example, Du in the UAE charges different incoming call charges to its own customers depending on the roamed network in a given country, particularly when roaming in countries like Russia and the USA. This creates a big incentive to manually select a particular network within a country.