MSE News: iPhone users still hit by surprise data roaming charges

NFH

Roland_Sausage wrote: »

Regardless, I am now back in the UK and having checked my unbilled usage with Three, it is showing call and text charges, but £0.00. Therefore it must have been an SMS I received and some glitch caused the phone to show it as an iMessage.

Get your father to check his bill and his iPhone. If it was SMS, then it should be itemised on his bill and his iPhone should show a green text bubble rather than a blue one.

PurplePow

I have never had any problems with my iPhone travelling abroad to the US and Egypt, always turning 3G and data roaming off and only using free wifi.

However, since upgrading to IOS 6, I have over shot my 250MB data allowance for the past couple of months adding around £5 to my bill. I rarely used to use upwards of 100MB so I'm completely confused as to where this leak is coming from! I use wifi at home and at work so I actually don't connect to 3G very often. I've now took to switching off 3G and data roaming until this problem is solved.

J_B

My last visit abroad was the first two weeks of October this year.

I just switch off data roaming, not the other two options in there and have *never* had a problem

Can you just remind me how to check which OS I am on - I'm on the last one before they !!!!!!ed up the maps - maybe there's a glitch with a newer OS than the one that I have?

Safeya

My daughter's HTC Cha Cha phone used to data roam on the 3g network randomly at night while lying on her desk.. we worked out that it was caused by some of her apps that would every now and then 'talk' to the network and send information out. This happened even when the phone had access to wifi and with data roaming switched off.

This was with Orange PAYG - her credit would go to zero without her using the phone. They only agreed to refund half of her credit on both occasions - and then she changed phones to a iphone 3G.

Then one helpful customer service person told me she could turn off 3g data services at her end so now my daughter's phone can only use wifi or make phone calls.

Maybe this might be one option for other people - to request their phone provider turn off 3G data before they go abroad and then get it switched on again when they come back?

alanfcox

This was the reply that I got from o2 when I complained about the problem - you can see that o2 confirm that there is a technical fault with the phone.

Hello Alan

Thanks for replying with your correct details.

There's a technical fault in the iPhone. Even though, you switch off
your roaming, it'll automatically get turned on whether you access free
Wi-Fi or not, you'll still get charged. The email feature of this Phone
can use data even when the data is turned off. You can avoid this in
future by switching the email retrieval mode to 'Manual' rather than
'Automatic'. There are may other applications that override the Data
Roaming block.

The reason these applications manage to do so is because these Apps are
developed by developers and they can programme them to override the
feature for functionality.
The only way to completely stop roaming charges while abroad is to
delete the APN. To avoid these charges in future, please follow the
steps below:
- from your home screen tap settings
- tap general
- tap network
- tap cellular data network
- tap APN and either delete completely or delete co.uk so that the
settings are incomplete.
Once the settings have been changed your iPhone will no longer be able
to connect to idata.co.uk.
When you want to access internet again in the UK, simply repeat the
steps above and re-enter the correct APN, idata.co.uk.

I hope this helps. If there's anything else, please email me or visit
our online help centre:


Regards
Yeshwant
O2 Customer Service
Telef�nica O2 UK Limited, Registered in England No 1743099. Registered
Office: 260 Bath Road, Slough, Berkshire SL1 4DX.

klint

My advice is not to rely on phone settings, but turn data roaming off from your network provider. With some, if not all, networks you can log into your account settings on your provider's website and turn data roaming off. Then your network will refuse any connection attempts while roaming. And take a screenshot of your account settings, so that if you do get charged you can show them that it was their error for allowing to connect, not yours.

jaynepossible

Has everyone remembered to turn off the imessages, if this is left on, it will automatically turn your data, and data roaming back on. (all three should be off before travel data, data roaming and imessages.)

NiftyDigits

What a pain. So glad that I did not jump on the ridiculous Apple bandwagon.
None of these silly problems with my BlackBerry, not matter where I am in the world.
Sorry about the diversion.

NFH

jaynepossible wrote: »

Has everyone remembered to turn off the imessages, if this is left on, it will automatically turn your data, and data roaming back on. (all three should be off before travel data, data roaming and imessages.)

This is not true. Having iMessage on does not cause data roaming to be turned on and it only uses data if a data connection is available. Turning iMessage off and on does cause a potentially chargeable text to be sent to a Vodafone UK number, so it's best to leave this setting alone. In fact iMessage is a very cost effective way to send texts when abroad as it is free internationally as well as nationally, as it bypasses the chargeable SMS system by using IP.

Pedro7-11

What a huge inconvenience.

I've been on an O2 contract for years and use an iPhone 4, unlike others here I never experienced this problem until I updated to ios6.

The issue here lies with apple and O2 to resolve.

As a long haul flight attendant I stay in different countries around the. World six times a month. I never have data roaming switched on (even in the UK) it's permanently off. This should be sufficient to do what it is designed to do - stop any data roaming.

When travel as frequently as I do, I don't want to switch off: location services, notifications, 3G, change mail settings etc each and every time and then have to turn the, all back on again each time I return home. That's ludicrous.

Thankfully I've only been charged a few pence each month and each time ice spoken to O2 they've refunded them. This doesn't however resolve the problem.