Data Roaming charges while abroad

joeysmum

I visited Spain for 48 hours at the beginning of December and have been charged £308 + VAT for data roaming charges. This is extortionate in my opinion. I had an added bolt on for £3 which gave me 30mb per day. I have just received my phone bill with no breakdown of the data charges - is there anything I can do. I did have 3g off and data roaming off on my phone - although I did check weather flights etc for about half hour a day, perhaps a little more but no more than that. The total usages was 602 mb. Anyone got any ideas????:(

johnnyreggae

The real experts will be along later but to help them can you confirm phone & UK network eg iphone & Orange (this combination seems the most frequent source of threads similar to this - try scrolling down and reading a few - they're easily found)

grumbler

joeysmum wrote: »

I visited Spain for 48 hours at the beginning of December and have been charged £308 + VAT for data roaming charges. This is extortionate in my opinion. I had an added bolt on for £3 which gave me 30mb per day. I have just received my phone bill with no breakdown of the data charges - is there anything I can do.

Demand breakdown.

I did have 3g off and data roaming off on my phone - although I did check weather flights etc for about half hour a day, perhaps a little more but no more than that.

It doesn't matter for how long you used the phone. If data is switched off it holds it's urges for, say, updating and starts doing this as soon as you switch the data on. You should have switched automatic updating and synchronisation off as well.

The total usages was 602 mb. Anyone got any ideas????:(

Well, 600Mb for 1 hour on 3g is possible. It's just 1.33Mbps. Any chance it was iPhone? If my memory doesn't fail me S3 was know to use data excessively too.

joeysmum

yes to iphone and orange! Can they really expect me to pay it!

DUTR

joeysmum wrote: »

yes to iphone and orange! Can they really expect me to pay it!

They can expect you to pay it, but in your defence, whilst 600mb is possible, it is more unlikely, since the data usage should not differ too much from your average UK data usage.

joeysmum

while the usual phone bill is £27! I have never been over the included allowance on my phone. The unusual thing was that I kept getting texts saying that I had used 5mb, 10mb, 15mb etc up to 50 mb when I landed. This was after I had added the travel bundle on to the phone. The day after I received two texts saying I had used 75 mb then one for 100 mb.

was that correct then?

joeysmum

Anyone know why they won't give me a breakdown of the usage while abroad? Apparently it was connected to something but no idea what when I had turned off the phone and data roaming off? Help!!

Jon_01

They get sent the raw billing info from the network in Spain that you used. This is just your phone IMSI, and the time/date it connected plus the total usage of data.

They can ask the Spanish network for more info (but no network logs what you looked at, just the usage), but that info could take months to come from them...

Silk

The data should be capped @ 50 euro unless you agreed to use more data etc

Rather than explain read this
http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/phones/2012/05/eu-mobile-data-roaming-costs-to-fall

grumbler

Silk wrote: »

The data should be capped @ 50 euro unless you agreed to use more data etc ...

AFAIK, it doesn't necessarily have to be more.

joeysmum wrote: »

... I had an added bolt on for £3 which gave me 30mb per day....

joeysmum

apparently I agreed to take the cap off in August last year when I went abroad last. Do I have any grounds to appeal against this if that was done before a cap was introduced in October last year.