Orange bill for £500 - help

MrsPB

momstheword wrote: »

Hi

I recently received a bill for nearly £500 from orange and have set a limit on my orange account so that I cannot go over my set amount of MB per month. You should call orange and ask them to do this for you but £500 extra for an hour and ten minutes streaming doesn't seem right at all. Do you stream music or is the music you listen to saved to your phone?

She said they couldn't put a limit on my account.

MrsPB

pleasedelete wrote: »

Did orange sort it out for you?

No, not yet!

MrsPB

NFH wrote: »

How many megabytes are Orange billing you for and how many megabytes did your phone record that you'd used on the day in question? Without this information, you're going to find it hard to dispute the bill.

My data usage is usually around 200MB to 400MB per month, but one month my Orange bill showed that I had used 916MB when my iPhone had recorded that I had used only 404.5MB (370MB downloaded and 34.5MB uploaded). Orange's customer service system showed that I had downloaded large quantities of data during short daytime periods on two days in the billing month, which if true would have severely drained my battery, but it hadn't done so because I didn't use the data. Also there's no way that my iPhone could have physically downloaded the alleged high quantity of data in the short periods stated. I was just within the 1GB fair usage allowance and was not roaming at the time so there was fortunately no cost or other implication. Nevertheless I asked Orange to investigate several times and made sure that copious notes were made on my account in case the same thing should happen in future more excessively or when I'm roaming, but they failed to investigate. Unfortunately many other customers end up significantly out of pocket when the same thing happens; I was one of the lucky ones. Other people including you come on this forum complaining of a bill for freak usage on one day. I'm sure Orange know all about these data billing errors but won't admit it.

How do I check usage on my iphone?

grumbler

MrsPB wrote: »

Many thanks for your replies. Have just spoken to Orange again. I mentioned the cap.

Why do you take their word for everything? Have you checked the pay monthly out of plan costs link that says £1, not £40? I know, there is some ambiguity with browsing/streaming, but ask them about £1 cap and see what they say.

Their £40 per day means if I connect three times on one day I'll get charged £120. Am I being daft, as I don't understand their "per day"?

Either or both. Per day means per day.

Surely they should be able to tell me what I was doing to rack up such a cost? And even if I did, how does 60 mins of time cost so much? Why is it so expensive?

It's megabites, not minutes.

I asked if I could have a cap in the future, so that once I'd used up my inclusive MB it would not work any more and she said they don't offer that service. Thanks Orange - what a surprise!

Hardly a surprise. Only T-mobile do this for some tariffs and Tesco.

grumbler

MrsPB wrote: »

How do I check usage on my iphone?

You install some data counting app.

MrsPB

grumbler wrote: »

You install some data counting app.

Thanks. Can you recommend one?

grumbler

On a second thought, AFAIK, iPhone has to have some built-in or preinstalled data counter.

NFH

grumbler wrote: »

On a second thought, AFAIK, iPhone has to have some built-in or preinstalled data counter.

Yes, it has. It's under Settings, General, Usage, Mobile Usage, Mobile Network Data. It's a good deal to select "Reset Statistics" at midnight on your billing date; I have a monthly reminder to do this. The built-in data counter is much more reliable than the apps that perform a similar function.

hercules_herc

This has happened to me also. Again the bill was £500. Does it not seem suspicious that every Orange customer who has complained about this so far has ended up with a bill of the same amount and in each case have been told that their usage was due to streaming on one day. I was streaming you tube at a party where there was no wifi. Had I known this was going to happen I would have gone to HMV and bought £500 worth of cd's. It's outrageous.

I'm allowed 800 mb per month and my average use on all other months over the year was 38 mb. I apparently used 1778 mb in a few hours!!!

Absolutely disgusting. When your average use in 11 months is 38mb per month you don't expect to use almost 50 times that in the space of a few hours.

Given that I should have been allowed 9600 mb in a year and I have actually only used 2192 including 1778 in a day I am contesting the bill and will post again when I have had a response.

Anybody any other advice or success in dealing with this sort of issue.

I have just started a new business and budget £50 in my cash flow for my mobile. To be hit with a £500 bill right now is far from ideal.

NFH

Many of my foreign prepaid SIM cards, including Orange Switzerland, give me an itemised list of every data session, including the start time and amount of data used. Why can't Orange UK do this? Customer Services can see it, so it's just a question of making the information visible to customers.