Incorrect Virgin roaming charges are a scandal!

wendyrmason

Don't believe the Virgin website charges listed for the Isle of Man...
in fact, don't believe their staff either. I phoned Virgin, before travelling to ask about charges to avoid a large bill.

I was sold a (£5.00) 250MB data roaming pass and was told calls would cost 24p a minute and texts 1p each.
Once home I found I had been charged 8p a text and £1.80 for a 53 sec call. Also the 250 MB pass was untouched and I had been charged full data roaming charges.

I have just argued with them for an hour to get the charges waived. They did finally accept the charges were wrong but were pretty unapologetic even when speaking to a Supervisor. Presumably they have been overcharging everyone who went over for the TT races and will have made a small fortune, which is scandalous. Few people will bother to challenge these charges as, to be quite honest, I lost the will to live after the first half hour of arguing with them.

I'm now ditching Virgin for TPO (The Peoples Operator) in the hope that they have Customer service that doesn't see their job as arguing with the customer.

Frozen_up_north

Three include IOM and Channel Is in their EU (free) roaming from 15th June. https://www.threemicrosites.co.uk/euregulation/nonessentialplan

That link is for their "advanced" SIM only plan.

miscy

O2 are also at it it seems and people on O2 should be aware of this. It seems since the change in EU charges from July this year O2 upgraded their systems however made a massvie blunder at the same time. Anyone using O2 travel in non EU but inclusive O2 destinations (UAE, South Africa etc) are now being charged for RECEIVING calls as well. As you may know recieving calls in O2 travel destinations is free up to 120 minutes per day, and I used this without many issues for a year until this July when suddenly the 4.99 charge started appearing for each day even though I made no outgoing calls, sent any sms or used any data.

To add to their stupidity (and stress to me) when contacting O2 customer service, they would spend almost 30 mins arguing that the charges are correct, BECAUSE on their screen it actually shows that in those destinations the 4.99 charge will be triggered by "receieving calls" despite the official O2 website clearly showing to the contrary. After call number 6 I managed to get one of these "advisors" to scroll to their own website and see where they were going wrong (and the fact that I had been using it like that way for a year without any issue). They admitted they had the wrong info on their system and that they would raise the issue - no **** sherlock I said. Anyway the escalation never happened and long story short eventually after many more useless calls and online chats where I was not really getting anywhere I discovered Resolver. After only two days of loging my complaint via resolver I finally got a decent response.



I also now have charges credited back and a compensation amount, however the issue is still ongoing and I believe that its related to a system change during the EU charges change - possibly. I have a direct line to a Capita guy who will keep nulling any incorrect charges until O2 resolve the issue.



I believe many more people may have fallen victim to this and are not aware so I hope they can read this and take action if required. The O2 webite O2 travel section clearly explains everything but sadly the O2 advisors are unaware, O2 service has really slipped over the last couple of years unfortunatley.