Data Roaming caps

grumbler

I know you can take a bundle.
I don't know how it is possible to take a 'Cap'.
Can you explain what exactly you took and how? Some link would help.

Regarding the EU I see: "The maximum wholesale prices for data roaming fall from €0.80 to €0.50 per MB". I don't quite understand what this means, but what you pay is a retail price, not wholesale.

vuittondreamer

did anyone see watchdog last night on Data Roaming?

I cannot understand how the Networks are getting away with charging these costs! if eu cap is 0.50 per meg, why do they think it's okay to charge £4.00 - 8.00 per meg!
sorry just ranting folks.
Would you buy a car for £10,000 and then expect to pay £80K for Fuel, its the same principle isn't it? or am i the only one who thinks it's total extortion! (actually i know i'm not, cos the Mobile Comsumer guy on watchdog said there's simply no difference data surfing in the uk or europe)

grumbler

vuittondreamer wrote: »

did anyone see watchdog last night on Data Roaming?

I cannot understand how the Networks are getting away with charging these costs! if eu cap is 0.50 per meg, why do they think it's okay to charge £4.00 - 8.00 per meg!
sorry just ranting folks.
Would you buy a car for £10,000 and then expect to pay £80K for Fuel, its the same principle isn't it? or am i the only one who thinks it's total extortion! (actually i know i'm not, cos the Mobile Comsumer guy on watchdog said there's simply no difference data surfing in the uk or europe)

EU is just one step away from a socialistic/communistic model where half of the working population are busy calculating the 'correct' prices and enforcing them everywhere.

The high price itself is not a problem. You can survive abroad without the mobile internet. The problem is that these high charges are unpredictable, hidden and unexpected for many people.

Instead of regulating the prices the regulators have to force the manufacturers and the networks to make sure that the customers are aware of the costs and of the actions required for avoiding them and can make a weighted decision about spending or not this sort of money.

If I knew that petrol costs £8 per a mile I woldn't buy a car in the first place or would buy it for using on special occasions only.

Techhead_2

Wholesale price means the price a supplier charges another. It doesn't mean that 0.50€ per megabyte is the cost to your provider of your usage.

At the least you have 0.50 for the overseas network, 0.50 for each intermediary and then whatever the cost price for your network.

This will get cheaper though as roaming networks are starting to offer data at domestic rates without it going through an intermediary to your hone network. In the same way BT Fon works for wi-fi.

Say you are roaming on networkX, when you go to use the internet they'll intercept it and pop up a page offering you to purchase a day or week of data at a domestic rate.

Gordon_Hose

Good old Orange!

Badger_Lady

Yep. Everything's covered here, so just to summarise the key points:

1. The data you consume is not just the size of an email you've downloaded, or an image you've retrieved from the web. It's also background data that all your applications on the smartphone are using - Facebook notifications, email sync'ing, automatic updates... it can significantly add up without you ever touching it. The only way to avoid using all this data is to change your phone's settings so that 'data roaming' is switched off, or to ask your network to do the same (although Orange usually just refer you to your phone settings).

2. The EU data cap is set to €50. Orange calculate this as 16MB on a contract phone. When you enter an EU country, Orange send you an automatic SMS informing you of this and inviting you to buy a data bundle that will switch the EU cap off. You can purchase the bundle by replying to the SMS or, presumably, skip the bundle and just opt out of the cap.

3. Orange charges £3 per MB of data consumed. If you don't know how much data you've consumed (bearing in mind 1 above), then you can't work out your data bill. If you ask Orange for the breakdown, it will correlate with the £906 charge.

4. Yes it is overpriced, but it is also upfront. You have chosen to opt out of the cap, you have chosen to keep data roaming and you have not been in control of your own billing. So technically you have brought this upon yourself. That doesn't mean their charges are fair, but it does make you a little slack.

As far as I know, you can challenge this with Orange but I don't know much about how to get a successful reduction of the bill... who does have experience of this, and what should the OP be doing?

vuittondreamer

Good news i did challenge orange and got the bill reduced to half. Orange were pretty understand too, but they said they would rather keep my business than not.
All in all quite please (although it's a bloody rip off! there's no difference browsing here to browsing abroad, and this should reflect in the cost esp in european zones!)
just another thing to rip off customers though!

there had my whinge.