Voice mails while overseas - how can they get away with this?

ilo

Hi everyone,

I took a month's trip overseas with my O2 contract mobile, and got a nasty bill upon returning! The bill was around £100 for the trip, despite extremely low usage.

Upon enquiry, the O2 customer service agent told me that a lot of 60p calls with a 6-second duration is because of people calling me and then hanging up upon the voice mail greeting.

The astonishing thing was that she told me this story, with a tone that suggests she is either really thinking, or pretending so, 'it's part of your service - what's wrong?'

How could it be that mobile telecoms companies these days can get away with this? Could they also get away with blue murder? I mean, there wasn't exactly a voice mail that was delivered anywhere, right? I mean, there was no message, there was nothing to be delivered.

When I presented the case to a friend, he had the same experience with Vodafone, and tipped me - 'always turn off your voicemail when you go abroad, unless you're planning to pay a lot to use it'. Yeah, what next - do a little hop-dance, rubbing belly 3 times, for some other rip-off that your contracted mobile phone company is going to pull on you?

I understand that some technical difficulty may present costs to O2, but it's not my problem - there was no service. So why do I have to pay for it??

I'd like to know what you all think. Thanks for reading.

jhp

Its one of the many hidden charges that abound in Phones and Broadband.

See: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/bbphone/article.html?in_article_id=421349&in_page_id=182&ct=5

DonnyDave

Message from Martin on mobile roaming here.

If that is correct, then it is "standard practice" that once your phone has registered with a foreign network, the call is directed over there, even if the phone has since been turned off. When it times out and routes to voicemail, it makes another international call in the opposite direction back to the UK, hence you get charged for two legs. Why on earth the home network cannot just terminate the call to the mobile phone and forward to voicemail itself, I can only assume is just another excuse for poorly regulation telecoms companies to do as they please.

See this page on O2's website for pay monthly customers calling from abroad.

At the bottom, after all the advice of turning on your voicemail, it says.................

Message retrieval is charged at the rate for a call back to the UK.

To save cost you may want to divert all calls to Voicemail 901.
Either use your mobile phone's menu or key: *21*901# send.
Then all your calls will be answered by Voicemail 901.
Remember to do this before you go.

"To save cost" it says. Not a warning of how the charges work, but it doesn't explain where this "cost" may be incurred.

espresso

ilo wrote: »

I'd like to know what you all think. Thanks for reading.

Sorry to say it but you have been charged for your ignorance regarding international roaming costs. It's not just O2, they all do it as they are charged to use the foreign operators networks both to make and receive calls. You obviously won't get caught by this again but you could have checked O2's roaming charges/travelling info on their website.

jnm21

I don't think that was necessary - it isn't exactly stated in the T&C's ("If you don't answer the phone while abroad, we'll fleece you").

I must say this was a very good experience with T-mobile - called them from the bus to Dublin (this side of the boarder obviously) to cancel my voicemail, due to going to Athens - they were very helpful in cancelling it, checking it & finding out why it wasn't off. They also timed it to come back on when I got home!

BexTech

I know Virgin Mobile used to tell you this info, T-Mobile did too.

I make sure voicemail is switched off when going abroad, but then my voicemail is switched off 99.9& of the time anyway.

When you find if operators when roaming charge a minimum charge of one minute.

If are abroad and someone calls your mobile, and you answer you pay for receiving the call.

If you have voicemail switched on and someone calls and you don't answer in time or it's switched off or out of coverage, the call has been routed from the UK to where you are abroad, the overseas network then tries to contact your phone but can't so sends the call back to the UK for the voicemail.

So you get charged for at least one minute receiving the call and then one minute for making a call back to the UK.

Just remember not to use voicemail.

I can switch my voicemail on and off as I like, this is on Virgin, but also could on T-mobile, you just have to ask them to set it so you can control it.

Voicemail is just a money making scheme, hence I very rarely use it, the only time I use it is if I know I'm expecting an important call on my mobile but can't have my phone on, and that might be once every 2 years.

redux

Do one or more of these:

Subscribe to My Europe or International Traveller Service for cheaper rates, if you aren't already

Switch off the voicemail (when in the UK, dial 1760 to turn off, and later 1750 to turn it back on), or answer the phone more often

Subscribe to My Europe Extra, costing £10 a month, then in over 30 European countries, incoming calls are free, outgoing 25p/min.

Or forward incoming calls to another number, like a local or global SIM card. If you're on O2's ITS, European US & Canadian mobiles cost 17p/min