Mobile Roaming £818 bill from Orange!

antmcclure

Help!
I took my iphone abroad with me on holiday for a week and my monthly bill has come in at £818
I contacted Orange prior to departure and paid extra for a package to give me "cheaper" calls / txt messages and and a 10meg data bundle.
Whilst abroad I only turned on the data roaming when checking my email so it was only on twice a day for approx ten minutes at a time.
Have contacted Orange, so far they are refusing to do anything to help.
Does anyone here have any advise on how I can proceed?

Thanks in advance
Ant

grumbler

Well, 10Mb is a very small allowance even for just checking emails daily. And you cannot control the data usage simply by timing. Smartphones in general and especially iPhones have various task scheduled, e.g. automatic updates (if you don't disable them) that they start executing without asking you as soon as you switch mobile data on. You should have used some data counter instead of assuming that 10Mb was sufficient.

If it was £8/Mb, then 100Mb is a realistic amount for a smartphone without proper settings restricting uncontrolled activities.

That said, data billing errors at Orange are a common place, but you have to be very persistent to make them investigating this.

simax

grumbler wrote: »

That said, data billing errors at Orange are a common place, but you have to be very persistent to make them investigating this.

I suppose you have strong evidence to back this claim?

grumbler

Several cases have been reported here when Orange admitted errors when challenged by people that kept an eye on their data usage. I can't be arsed to search and don't know how strong this is for you.

Emy1501

Unless they have charged you incorrectly your only option in my opinion is to try and argue that they gave you poor advice when phoned before you went.

They should have been able to either of offered you a package to meet your needs or advised the costs would be large.

10 mb would never have been enough

Techhead_2

I'm surprised no one had asked already - how much data did you use?

antmcclure

Thanks for advice so far.
Awaiting a return call from a "supervisor" at Orange. 1st indications are not good. Surely Orange should notify customers when bills are starting to look excessive? I've heard of other networks sending a text warning customers when excessive charges are building up.

antmcclure

Orange say I used 90mb of data. Not sure what that means in laymans terms?

visidigi

where did you go on holiday (im not being nosey, it's important...)

lovinituk

antmcclure wrote: »

Orange say I used 90mb of data. Not sure what that means in laymans terms?

It means you used 80mb more than your bundle. In other words 9 times more than you pre-paid for. They are charging you for using that extra 80mb.

grumbler

visidigi wrote: »

where did you go on holiday (im not being nosey, it's important...)

To some of many places where 1Mb costs £8.