horrendous data roaming charges

lyndab2

Just received a £1200 mobile phone bill from Orange after being abroad. This consisted of £50 of call charges (which I expected) and £1100 worth of data roaming charges (absolutely not expected!) even though I didn't use any of the internet facilities on my Iphone. They have said I had downloaded 145mb at £8 per mb. I have tried to reason with them and also wrote to their Executive Office, but they won't budge. All they are prepared to do is allow me to buy a £50 bundle which will bring the bill down to £900. Any advice would be much appreciated...I have a 16 month old baby and only took my phone on holiday to make a daily call to my husband.:mad:

smartphone

Hi lyndab2 - the only suggestion really is to keep trying to reason with them. The problem with iPhones (as is outlined quite a bit on this forum), is that they use data all the time even if you don't think you're using any apps on the handset. If you go abroad, you need to switch data roaming off, this is in Settings-> Network -> Data Roaming. Good luck with it.

NFH

Some questions:

• If you go into Settings, General, Networks, is Data Roaming on or off?
• How much data did your iPhone record that you had used during the period in question? Remember to add up sent and received data.
• What country or countries were you visiting? Orange have recently introduced £6/day data roaming bundles for a small number of non-EEA countries.

grumbler

Abroad - was it outside EU?

NFH

lyndab2 wrote: »

I didn't use any of the internet facilities on my Iphone.

Your iPhone uses data constantly, including when you're in the UK. How do you think it checks for e-mails, connects to the server to receive push notifications, iMessage etc?

lyndab2 wrote: »

All they are prepared to do is allow me to buy a £50 bundle which will bring the bill down to £900.

They do have a much larger data roaming bundle on their business tariffs - £135 for 200MB. Ask them to apply this bundle retrospectively and to recalculate your bill. Also point out that Vodafone would have charged you only £5/day for 25MB/day of data. Ask them to justify why they are over 30 times more expensive for data roaming than Vodafone (based on a 7-day trip).

lyndab2

grumbler wrote: »

Abroad - was it outside EU?

Yes, Cape Verde.

NFH

lyndab2 wrote: »

Yes, Cape Verde.

Unfortunately Orange's new £6/day data roaming bundle is not valid in Cape Verde. See http://www.orange.co.uk/roaming/cape-verde/

However, Vodafone's £5/day data roaming bundle is valid there, in fact worldwide.

grumbler

lyndab2 wrote: »

Yes, Cape Verde.

Unlucky then... There is a cap, but for EU only.

NFH

If you switched on data roaming (which I assume you did), then there is a useful argument you could make. Since the merger of the Orange and T-Mobile companies with the consequent roaming between the two networks, in order to use your iPhone in the UK, you have to enable data roaming to avoid data being cut off when your iPhone roams automatically on to T-Mobile. It's quite possible that you were advised to enable data roaming by Orange customer services for this reason. Because of this unprecedented scenario, it is reasonable to expect Orange to warn customers automatically of data roaming charges by SMS when they roam on to a network abroad as opposed to on to T-Mobile.

malkie76

I'm on Orange with an iPhone, and it routinely prompts me when I go overseas with a 'do you want roaming on or off?' as soon as you get off the plane.

timberflake

It sounds to me like you went abroad and didn't turn roaming/cellular data off. If that's the case then I'm afraid you are liable for the charges, the only thing you can do is appeal to their better nature and/or work out a repayment plan.