Help! Stepsons mobile bill > £4500

Guys_Dad

useless_git_requires_wife wrote: »

Yup, there is pretty much no chance of that happening.

Not everybody needs or cares about good credit rating. I hold fairness above that. If Orange (or any other company) do not behave in a way that I consider fair, then I see no reason to comply with their requests.

I do wish your "advice" had some element of fact in it rather than ill-informed armchair warrior opinion.

I don't disagree that the bill is extortionate, but advising the OP to simply not pay is very bad advice and your assertion that nothing worse than a black mark on the credit record is simply incorrect.

See:-
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3566555

http://www.debthelpuk.co.uk/cgi-bin/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1242530875
http://www.legalbeagles.info/forums/showthread.php?36137-bryan-carter-solicitors

shockedandstunned_2

Notmyrealname wrote: »

ALL networks already have this in place.

The problem lies in the fact that once you go out of the EU, the time it takes from when you used the service to your mobile phone company being told by the service you were roaming on what they usage is can be weeks. It is not realtime. Therefore any procedures put in place can't really work.

No they don't. Orange don't have any sort of cap outside of the compulsory EU one. In a seperate phone call to their sales department they said it was because 'their sort of customer base don't need them'. Whatever that means!

shockedandstunned_2

victor2 wrote: »

For a lot of people using but not really understanding the technology, Kb, Mb, Gb etc. means absolutely nothing. An awful lot of people with a full brain would have no idea if a Mb costs £3, what a Gb would cost, let alone how much their smartphone uses.

I think the main problem is having no idea of what one MB will get you. Turkey for example is £8.00 per MB so stepson would have recieved a message saying this. But would have had no idea how little data one MB actually is. I'm not sure I would either.

There are apps that you can download to track your spending which is what I would do in the future for me. And obviously no mobile phone on holidays for anyone not paying their own bill.

Ignoring the bill is not an option for us. I accept we need to pay them something. Still holding out they'll agree to the bundle.

gjchester

JethroUK wrote: »

Phone company were totally aware when the phone bill reached £100
Phone company were totally aware when the phone bill reached £200

Not really, overseas billing is never in real time, it can be a few days late.

The BBC estimate watching 60 minutes of video can use between 50MB and 225MB of data depending on your available connection speed.

The system is just not setup to give real time data billing, in the example of wathcin TV if you watched 60 minutes of TV you'll have run up a bill of between £400 and £1800 in the first hour mostl likely BEFORE your network is even notified and billed by the romaing network.

Using this as an example you'd get a flood of the texts as soon as the first roaming data arrived at your network potentially (if you do them at £100 splits) getting 18 texts , going from £100 to £1800 in one go which is pretty much useless by then.

Guys_Dad

shockedandstunned wrote: »

I think the main problem is having no idea of what one MB will get you. Turkey for example is £8.00 per MB so stepson would have recieved a message saying this. But would have had no idea how little data one MB actually is. I'm not sure I would either.

I have been sympathetic to your thread and how you are trying to help. I also like the fact that you are not, like some others on here, swiping at network indiscriminately.

What I would say, however, is that before youngsters are given things that could cause them or others damage, physical or financial, they should be taught how to use the item and understand it. For example, you wouldn't give a youngster a motor cycle without some basic training about gears, brakes, highway code, road signs etc.

Same caution is needed for anything that has the potential to run up huge costs and, with every respect, writing "But would have had no idea how little data one MB actually is. I'm not sure I would either. " isn't very sensible. Everyone needs to know a few basics and I have previously written that no one should be allowed to buy a smart phone unless they have taken a simple "driving test" to show that they understand the implications and just what 1 mb/25 mb data actually means in real life.

The alternative is very heartbreaking threads such as this.

grumbler

gjchester wrote: »

The system is just not setup to give real time data billing...

For £8/Mb they could have routed all the data through UK if they wanted, or could have used the system already built for PAYG.

However, it is much easier for them and more profitable to do nothing and to keep getting £7.60+/Mb for doing nothing.

MillicentBystander

Have to say it's horror stories like this that would put me off using Orange. They do themselves few favours imo. I'm with Talkmobile and wonder why Orange couldn't adopt this sort of approach to overseas data charges? Not profitable enough?

Data roaming spending cap in Europe
All Talkmobile customers are automatically opted in to a data roaming spend cap of 50 euros (ex VAT) which is equivalent to about £40 in a monthly billing period for Pay Monthly and per calendar month for Pay As You Go.

We will send you free text alerts when you use data abroad including when you reach 80% and 100% of the spend cap.

Once you reach 100% of the cap limit, you will no longer be able to use data abroad for the remainder of your monthly billing cycle for Pay Monthly or the calendar month for Pay As You Go. It’s easy to opt out of the cap, call Customer Services on 5888 from your Talkmobile phone.

http://www.talkmobile.co.uk/roaming.html

Guys_Dad

MillicentBystander wrote: »

Have to say it's horror stories like this that would put me off using Orange. I'm with Talkmobile and wonder why orange couldn't adopt this sort of approach to overseas data charges?

They do! Read your quote heading again

Data roaming spending cap in Europe

Turkey, as has been said before, is not in the EEC. But having recommended Talkmobile, how about quoting what they do when you are outside the EEC?

(From the link http://www.talkmobile.co.uk/roaming.html - they charge £7.50 per Mb which is 50p cheaper than Orange whose roaming charges, I do concede, are extortionate)

Instead, the much maligned Vodafone has the following policy

Spending cap on using mobile broadband overseas
We want to help you have greater control over how much you spend when you're using mobile broadband when you're overseas.

Unless you have opted out of the cap, we'll cap your monthly mobile internet spending at €50 both in our Europe Zone and our Rest of World Zone.

We'll send you notifications when you have reached 80% and 100% of your allowance.

When you've reached the spending cap, you won't be able to use mobile internet abroad for the rest of the month - unless you choose to opt out.

So, for a change, well done Vodafone.

grumbler

MillicentBystander wrote: »

Have to say it's horror stories like this that would put me off using Orange. They do themselves few favours imo. I'm with Talkmobile and wonder why Orange couldn't adopt this sort of approach to overseas data charges? Not profitable enough?

What you quote is in fact for Europe only, that is a small part of 'overseas'.
Most networks have similar arrangements for Europe - simply because they are required to.

If your really want an example of good approach, check [STRIKE]O2 [/STRIKE]Vodafone.

Richard_T_

The data roaming/excessive fees incidents come round like clockwork, usualy not long after the summer holidays.

When ive been abroad with a smart phone ive always opted for a UK based pay as you go sim card, ( and if possible changed it to a local sim for data ) and put my contract sim into a basic non smart phone.

when i have run out of credit ona UK pay as you go sim abroad thats been it, no more calls until i top up, once topped up everything works again, so there is obviously some real time billing going off somewhere.

Phone companies usualy have an ieda on how much you are spending with them, and they should have systems in place that let customers know if there is unusual activity on an account ( such as high data roaming charges) and warn them about it, or block data combined with a warnign text "text data to continue you have currently spent £x today )

There is some talk of some EU legislation for EU based phone companys to bring in data caps /cost caps when roaming both in the EU and further afeild maybe you should try contact your MP/ MEP?