bill dispute with orange

Dan1878

i'd feel lucky they offered me the chance to buy a bundle - it's not something they offered me on my lower bill (£200!)

fairman

Buzby wrote: »

Why do you believe a data bundle works when roaming? Unless I is an explicit arrangement with a particular stated overseas network, any data used abroad will be billed at the prevailing rate of the serving overseas network, ten passed to your local operator which adds its mark up - whic makes roamed data an expensive business.

We purchased international data bundles. the question we were asking was how much data we would need, the problem is we didn't realise we were driving a car now not a bus, neither did he.

What i really want to know is do you think we should've been aware of this difference.

Or would it be more reasonable to expect an orange customer services rep who we have just had problems changing our contracts from a bus to car contracts, to know find out what we were using and advise us accordingly.

If i rang my mechanic and asked how much petrol would i need to drive from glasgow to london, i would expect he would ask, are you driving a bus or a car.

fairman

NFH wrote: »

Orange charge £10/GB for data in the UK (based on £5 for 500MB). They charge £8000/GB for data outside the EEA. Ask Orange to justify why their charge is 800 times more in New Zealand than in the UK.

I totally agree. £8000/1gb is madness. Hi Orange, what can you give me for £8000, um you could watch a few video clips on your phone while in new zealand if you like. !!!!!!.

NFH

Dan1878 wrote: »

i'd feel lucky they offered me the chance to buy a bundle - it's not something they offered me on my lower bill (£200!)

He arranged the bundles before the trip but Orange failed to apply them:

fairman wrote: »

were told our bundles hadn't been loaded,

Are the retrospective bundles that Orange subsequently offered larger than the ones you originally agreed with Orange before the trip?

fairman

Having said all this, you could reasonably be expected to have periodically checked your data usage on your iPhones to make sure you weren't going over your purchased 50MB bundles, despite Orange's advice before your trip. In other words, you had a degree of responsibility for the high charges.

we were watching it like hawks, the problem was the figure changed from £250, to £1800, then back to £250 following our phone call, and stayed at £250 for the rest of the trip.

They said that they just assumed we phoned to unlock the phone as were happy with the current bill, our understanding was that they hadn't loaded the bundle accidentally, then loaded, hence the change in figures.

their reason for not phoning back, they can't make international calls. i find this amazing.

our reason, we were about to get married.

grumbler

fairman wrote: »

We bought INTERNATIONAL DATA bundles, the question we asked was how much we would need, reply-based on your prev usage, 50mb would be plenty, considering we were using 32mb average per month, and (the part you love)ONLY going to be away for 75% of that time, i.e. 21days.

We had to phone them about 5 times to sort out the change of contract from BBs as didn't require the specific BB bundle anymore, and had to get them to change us to iPhone contracts.

1. from these numerous prev customer services communications to change the contract,they should ALREADY know we have iPhones.

2. if the comparison is like a bus to a car, wouldn't that be the first thing he would look at when recommending how much data we would need, Sir, are you driving a bus or a car??? Very obvious to someone who does this for a job. Should the average person know that 2 smartphones could differ so much in this one specific point, when everything else is more or less the same, i.e. texts, calls AND contracts cost the same give or take.

OK,
Let's assume that before going abroad you always used mobile data only and never used WiFi. So, the network's data was a good indicator of your actual usage.
Lets' assume that you can blame the poor chap for not predicting that your usage pattern will be different abroad and you'll be crazy enough to watch and upload youtube in NZ. Let's assume that he offered you the biggest and the most expensive data roaming bundle.

Two questions:
How much do you owe?
Is it reasonable to rely on the chap's guess instead of the data counter, that AFAIK any iPhone has by default, then blaming the poor chap for guessing incorrectly?

Also, I don't understand what you are trying to say by typing "INTERNATIONAL DATA bundles" in upper case.

baza52

You knew you were going to use the phones and that you needed to buy an international roaming bundle.

You also knew how much each bundle came with and what you could use without being charged.

Its very easy to see the ammount of data used on an Iphone yet you continued using data after you had used your bundle.

How much over did you go? did it not occur to you to turn data roaming off when you had reached your limit or try to buy another bundle?

custardy

fairman wrote: »

Buzby wrote: »

Why do you believe a data bundle works when roaming? Unless I is an explicit arrangement with a particular stated overseas network, any data used abroad will be billed at the prevailing rate of the serving overseas network, ten passed to your local operator which adds its mark up - whic makes roamed data an expensive business.

We purchased international data bundles. the question we were asking was how much data we would need, the problem is we didn't realise we were driving a car now not a bus, neither did he.

What i really want to know is do you think we should've been aware of this difference.

Or would it be more reasonable to expect an orange customer services rep who we have just had problems changing our contracts from a bus to car contracts, to know find out what we were using and advise us accordingly.

If i rang my mechanic and asked how much petrol would i need to drive from glasgow to london, i would expect he would ask, are you driving a bus or a car.

would you tell him you had traded the Panda in for a Lambo?

NFH

fairman wrote: »

we were watching it like hawks, the problem was the figure changed from £250, to £1800, then back to £250 following our phone call, and stayed at £250 for the rest of the trip.

No, you've misunderstood. I'm not referring to the amount of charges accrued on your account (which can take up to 3 months to appear), but the amount of data recorded by your iPhones' data counters. You should have kept an eye on the amount of data you were using to make sure you didn't go over the 50MB that you'd bought in advance, especially given the significant consequences of exceeding the limit.

This is the bit that you got wrong. On the other hand, Orange's failures were:

• Failing to ascertain your likely data usage with iPhones and mistakenly forecasting this based on your previous usage with Blackberrys.
• Unreasonably charging £8000/GB in New Zealand vs the normal £10/GB in the UK.

NFH

Next time you go, get local SIM cards. If you'd done this, it would have cost you:

• Telecom New Zealand: NZD 18 for 300MB
• Vodafone NZ: NZD 30 for 500MB
• 2Degrees Mobile: NZD 20 for 1GB

Orange UK was the worst option. For one gigabyte, NZD 20 wins over GBP 8000.