MSE News: EU mobile charges cut, with data roaming slashed

NFH

Badger_Lady wrote: »

And "£0.67" should never be written, as it is in Orange's text messages, "£69.66p"! That's much more confusing!

I think that prices for data should be quoted in gigabytes, not megabytes. Quoting prices in megabytes is akin to quoting prices for calls in seconds (e.g. 1p/sec instead of 60p/min). Using a smaller unit serves only to disguise the high price. The EU should set the caps in gigabytes and force the networks to quote their prices in gigabytes. That would embarrass the networks into setting lower prices. "£671.91 per gigabyte" would drive home to consumers how unreasonably high the charges are.

kollas

NFH wrote: »

Most UK networks are already breaching the retail price cap for data that came into force yesterday on 1st July.

€0.70 x 0.7999 x 1.20 = £0.671916


What action will be taken against the networks for flouting the price caps on day one?

great - not bad prices!!! :T

NFH

kollas wrote: »

great - not bad prices!!! :T

The above post is spam. The user has a link in his profile to another site. There is no other purpose for such a brief first post. Admin - please delete the above spam post as well as this post. Others - please mark the above post as spam.

kollas

alert - newby! give chance! ))

Boggie

I took my work iPad on holiday in Spain at the end of July last year and then to Amsterdam on business in September. My company recently received the bill. The total is £9,979.92

The provider (Albion) use Stream for connectivity and charge £5/MB. I find it incredulous that whilst on Holiday I managed to average in excess of £600/Day! How we achieved this when most of the time was spent in the pool or sightseeing is beyond me. The total cost of roaming during our 10 day holiday was more than three times the cost of the holiday itself!!

My company are very unhappy with me and are likely to ask me to pay back for any personal use. As most of the holiday and some of the business trip will have been personal this is likely to cause us financial hardship for some time. I will have to take a loan or sell the car.

Is there anything I can do? For example will these new EU caps help? They came into force prior to both trips but the contract was signed with Albion before the new rulings.

Any help would be very gratefully received.
Thanks

NFH

Boggie wrote: »

Is there anything I can do? For example will these new EU caps help? They came into force prior to both trips but the contract was signed with Albion before the new rulings.

Many suppliers are continuing to flout Regulation (EU) No 531/2012, but not usually in popular destinations such as Spain. It is irrelevant when a contract was signed. It is relevant only when the usage took place. You need to make sure that your employer didn't opt out of the regulations and choose a different tariff, but I think it's unlikely because opt-outs are usually to facilitate a bundle which will result in a lower overall charge. It sounds as if you have a strong case.

In any case, why didn't you check the charges before using the service? Even at the EU cap of £696.61/GB, it's very expensive compared to a typical charge of £10/GB within the UK. It's like going into a restaurant and ordering an expensive bottle of Champagne without reading the menu.

Boggie

NFH – I could kiss you!

I did check with Albion regarding their roaming charges prior to an Australian business trip but didn’t think it necessary for roaming within the EU. I had taken my personal mobile into Europe and the roaming charges were not high so I assumed Albion would be similar. As this is a business device and I had regularly run up significant roaming bills without any raised eyebrows I didn’t check.

However Albion’s greed (and the fact that I watched the F1GP in the Hotel lounge) has caught them out. Normally these bills are paid automatically but a bill for nearly £10K got flagged to me by accounts and I started investigating. Now we are revisiting all the bills since last July for all the accounts we have with Albion. Assuming they are all being charged at one thousand times the EU capped rate there is a big refund due and we will spend it on one hell of a Christmas party!

I assume we are not the only victims and other businesses are auto-paying their roaming bills too. Who do I report Albion to? Ofcom?

NFH

Boggie wrote: »

Who do I report Albion to? Ofcom?

Yes, I reported Orange and Three to Ofcom over a breach of the EU roaming regulations a couple of years ago. Ofcom took their time but eventually took action and made both networks fall into line.

Boggie

The Ofcom site doesn't seem to take individual complaints any more. I have spent some time searching around the site all I can find is:

"Ofcom works to ensure everyone gets the very best from their communications.
Our role is to look at how issues affect UK consumers as a whole.
We cannot handle individual complaints.
However, we fully understand how frustrating it can be when things go wrong."

As a newbie I am not allowed to post the URL.

NFH

Boggie wrote: »

The Ofcom site doesn't seem to take individual complaints any more.

Don't approach it as an individual complaint. If you report to Ofcom that a network is charging all its customers more than the EU permitted rate, Ofcom will ask you for evidence or an example. In fact, Ofcom don't care if a network publishes prices that are more than permitted; they only care if a customer is actually charged more than permitted. Therefore a network could advertise that it charges £20/MB in somewhere obscure like French Guyana, but Ofcom wouldn't take any action unless a customer was actually charged more than the permitted £0.58/MB.