Horrendous Orange mobile bill - Any advice

newty428

Not looking for sympathy, but any advice would be good.
I took a 2 year contract out with Orange in September 2010 for my now 12 year old son. His bills are usually around £25.00 per month. Checked my bank ac yesterday and I was over £500 o/d. When I checked what had happened I saw that Orange had taken out almost £475.00. When I called them they said that he had used 53 kilobytes (?) in Turkey. He had been to Cyprus with his friends family for 10 days. They said that Turkcell charge £8 per kilobyte. I asked if they could see that a bill was usually around £25 p/m would there not be an alert if it went over a certain amount? He said over £500.
I am devastated, as is my son. The guy said that he was really unlucky as he hadn't actually accessed the internet all that much, it was just the expense of it all. I asked if I could pay the money back over a few months. Christmas is round the corner, mortgage to pay etc, its wiped out my salary. They weren't willing to help. I've tried to send an email to Orange customer services but it came back that they are not receiving emails, to call.
Is there anything I can do about this??
Thank you

Silk

Is there any way you can check to see if he received a welcome text from Turkcell when he arrived giving notice of what the charges were ?

MikeWhite

newty428 wrote: »

They said that Turkcell charge £8 per kilobyte.

For clarity, it is £8 per megabyte.
Mike

balmk

I know it's too little too late, but you are responsible for checking roaming costs before you take your phone abroad. Orange rates for Turkey are here:

http://www.orange.co.uk/roaming/turkey/

For the avoidance of confusion it is £8 per megabyte, rather than £8 per kilobyte.

There is no cap on charges outside the EU unfortunately, hence the big bill.

If you have given your son a smartphone (e.g. iphone), it will be set to reguarly use data unless it is manually switched off, so it is likely that he has run up the cost without even knowing it.

Had you proactively checked your bills, you may have been able to put the amount in dispute before payment was taken.

newty428

I knew I had got the terminology wrong! Thanks for clarifying!
Will ask him when he gets home from his part time job he now has to pay off the bill!

newty428

In all these years I had never even set my account up. I have never checked the bills before, which was obviously not the right thing to do. My mistake. But how can they let it get that bad??? It was an honest mistake. Does anyone have any experience in being able to pay back over a couple of months??

Guys_Dad

53 MegaBytes (Mb) seems to be the amount used. Now that is 10% of the most common data package in the UK, so I am not surprised.

The fault lies in not setting the data roaming off in the UK. Mobiles have been around long enough for "I didn't know" to be a very thin excuse. We cover ourselves for medical and travel insurance when we go abroad, take all sort of other precautions, yet there are still people who fall into this trap every week.

The position is that the money is owed. In fairness, you are not disputing this. You might be lucky in getting a goodwill reduction if you persevere, but that's down to Orange.

One point, though. If he had been in the Greek part of Turkey and had run up his charges on a Greek Cypriot network, then he would have had his data roaming capped at £44 as the EU limit would have applied.

Check that out.

balmk

newty428 wrote: »

In all these years I had never even set my account up. I have never checked the bills before, which was obviously not the right thing to do. My mistake. But how can they let it get that bad??? It was an honest mistake. Does anyone have any experience in being able to pay back over a couple of months??

From my experience, once the money has been taken it is difficult to set up a repayment plan as they already have the money.

You could try asking them if they would put a bundle on retrospectively (see the bottom of the page here: http://www.orange.co.uk/roaming/turkey/) as this would take teh cost right down. For example, if all of the data was used in one month, ask them to put an appropriate bundle on.

Del_Astra

newty428 wrote: »

I knew I had got the terminology wrong! Thanks for clarifying!
Will ask him when he gets home from his part time job he now has to pay off the bill!

Well done, you / your lad deserves credit for taking this approach. At least he is learning a leason as well.

It might be possible to get a roaming bundle applied retrospectively. You will need to phone Orange and discuss, you won't get if you don't ask, phone see if they can do anything to apply a bundle after the event.

newty428

I have had to terminate his phone contract now, he will be getting £10 per month PAYG for emergencies only.
I honestly have no idea about mobile phones, roaming etc. I make calls and text from my phone only.
Its been a real harsh lesson to learn, especially my son whose account I have just cleared out and whose Christmas list has been ripped up. It really was an innocent mistake on both our parts.

Herongull

I know it is hard, but it could easily have been thousands of £ :eek:

There have been other people on this board who have lost over £2,000 from a child going on holiday outside the EU with a contract smartphone.

Once anyone leaves the EU, if they have a smartphone and don't ensure data roaming is switched off, the bills will be massive.

Another big financial risk is if the phone is lost or stolen - thieves can run up bills of hundreds or thousands of £ in few hours on a stolen phone, which you are liable for until you or your son notices that the phone has been lost and you report it missing.

Will your company let you put a cap (maximum amount) on the monthly spend? So do and some don't. This will give you some protection (but not complete protection) in future.

It is great to hear that your son is playing his part (part-time job) in helping pay off this debt. He sounds a responsible boy.

It has been known for phone companies to let you have a retrospective data bundle for holidays abroad, but they don't have to, and given they have already taken the money, they may not want to.

When the contract runs out, consider moving to PAYG - it is very cheap and minimal risk. For example, for £10 per month Giffgaff (PAYG, so the phone can't run up more than you've actually put on it) gives you a massive number of calls, texts, and data.

If you are a light-medium user, you get free monthly bundles from Ovivo, also PAYG (but you have to be over 18 for Ovivo, so no good for your son).