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MSE News: Holidaymaker sailing Greek islands charged £8,000 after her mobile used...
Former_MSE_Callum
Posts: 696 Forumite
A British holidaymaker visiting the Greek islands on a yacht was told she'd racked up a bill for more than £8,000 after her mobile phone inadvertently connected to a Turkish mobile network for just 40 minutes...
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'Holidaymaker sailing Greek islands charged £8,000 after her mobile used Turkish network for 40 minutes'
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'Holidaymaker sailing Greek islands charged £8,000 after her mobile used Turkish network for 40 minutes'
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Comments
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she deliberately removed all caps on her phone usage,:eek: so tough!!0
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Usage of a phone for forty minutes costs more than buying a car or 9 oz. of gold? This is a rip off. With the purchase of a car you get years to pay it off too.
The delivery of 455 MB of data is unlikely to have cost the host network much more than 455 pence. Markup to 8300 quid is criminal.
Where is that markup? Is it in the rates charged to UW by the Turkish network or in the rate charged to the customer by UW? This detail is important.0 -
It's impossible for Utility Warehouse to justify this charge except on the basis that 'It's legal, you can't stop us, we don't care.'.
And the moral (apart from being extra careful near borders and on ships, including cruise ships even near EU ports) - Utility Warehouse is not the sort of company you want any dealings with. No big household name to bother about protecting from reputational damage, so we'll do just as we please and you can *** off.0 -
When I'm on my yacht, I sometimes run out of champagne.0
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When I'm on my yacht, I sometimes run out of champagne.
That is so funny, probably one of the funniest posts I've read for ages, so thank you for cheering me up! :rotfl:
On a more relevant note though, my iphone is always in airplane mode when I'm abroad. I don't holiday in Europe anymore anyway, it's usually the US or Caribbean, where I use hotel wifi as much as possible on facetime or messaging apps. Anywhere else, it's in airplane mode. Tough if people want to get hold of me!0 -
I believe Utility Warehouse piggyback on the EE network. Had she been an EE customer she could have paid just £5 for that data.
I think it's it's a warning about using your phone for treaming music whilst abroad. it's data-hungry. You're not watching the screen for warning nessages.
This whole item is a list of what not to do whilst travelling. She was incredibly lucky with her adjudicator at the ombudsman.0 -
Other network roaming charges in Turkey:
EE contract: Travel Data Pass add-on, 500 MB per day for £5
EE payg: Zone A add-on 100 MB for 24 hours, £7
O2 contract: O2 Travel add-on, £3.99 a day
O2 payg: no add-on available, £6 per MB
Three: £3 a MB, £5 a day Data Passport option on contract
Vodafone contract: in Roam-free zone, same as at home
Vodafone payg: in Europe zone, bundle or non-bundle use same as at home
giffgaff: 20p per MB
Clearly the Utility Warehouse charges under discussion are 1000 or more times higher than many of these.
If EE can charge its own retail customers £5 a day for this use, how much is it charging wholesale the mvno brands that live on it.
This surely shows people the merits of checking prices before going abroad - some payg customers would be well off switching to other payg brands for a trip to Turkey - and especially of having manual control of roaming network near certain borders (e.g. also Hungary/Serbia, etc.)0 -
This is the kind of case that would be good to escalate to the European courts.0
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To be fair, the EU have already put safeguards into place for customers. This person thought she knew brtter and turned off every safeguard. You can only protect people so far without becoming a nanny state.
Given that our Governments since the 80s have all embraced the market economy with open arms, I suspect their response will be along the lines of caveat emptor, whilst tutting at the costs involved for any passing journos.0
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