USA charges

etmorley

I got a bill from O2 which was unbelievable.
I spent 10 days in Florida at my parents house which had wifi access. I turned off my data roaming in London before I left.
I was amazed to find £75.00 of charges for text messages on my last bill. I asked O2 to investigate and supposedly, they did.
I never received any feedback from them until I contacted them again today.
I had 12 pages of text messages that I was supposed to have sent over 10 days, totalling 300 messages. I have never sent that many messages in a month, in the 5+ years I have been with O2. O2 can not tell me to whom I am supposed to have sent all those messages which is strange. It said it was all from my sim.
Is there any way I can check if this is the case?

NFH

Are the texts to a number that you recognise? If not, have you tried to identify who the number belongs to?

grumbler

etmorley wrote: »

O2 can not tell me to whom I am supposed to have sent all those messages which is strange....

If they cannot tell you the numbers, then they cannot charge you. Get it in writing from them, pay under protest, then sue them for £75 plus troubles via the Small Claims Court (online). I am pretty sure they will not go to court and will pay you after you send them a letter before action.

etmorley

All the texts are to SMS message centre. The times of some sent messages are only seconds apart. I

NFH

etmorley wrote: »

All the texts are to SMS message centre. The times of some sent messages are only seconds apart. I

Do you receive a lot of text messages? I'm wondering whether you have erroneously been charged to receive SMS while in the US. US networks charge their own customers to receive SMS, but visiting roaming customers are subject to the charges of their home networks, i.e. zero in your case. Which US network were you roaming on?

grumbler

etmorley wrote: »

All the texts are to SMS message centre. The times of some sent messages number are only seconds apart. I

Well, I can imagine that your phone was sending texts to this 'fictitious' number because of some fault. In this case O2 are right charging you for this. And after all it was only data roaming that you turned off.
What happens if you send a text to this number in UK? Have you tried?

However, in this case you can possibly sue the supplier or the manufacturer for these charges.

NFH

grumbler wrote: »

Well, I can imagine that your phone was sending texts to this 'fictitious' number because of some fault.

I think this is very unlikely. It's much more likely that the US network is erroneously billing O2 for O2 customers receiving SMS, which is why the SMSC appears on the bill. This happened many years ago when a Spanish network (Airtel) started charging visiting roaming customers to receive SMS (9p/message after home network markup). It was quickly corrected after many complaints.

mrcamp

I doubt you are being charged for incoming txt in the US, even in error. Myself and family have used UK sims in the US for years, and have never been charged to receive incoming txts.

NFH

mrcamp wrote: »

I doubt you are being charged for incoming txt in the US, even in error. Myself and family have used UK sims in the US for years, and have never been charged to receive incoming txts.

That doesn't stop a rogue network or billing error being introduced for the first time, as happened in Spain a few years ago. This is more likely to happen in the US than in Spain because it is the norm for US networks to charge their own customers for receiving SMS.