MSE News: Holidaymaker sailing Greek islands charged £8,000 after her mobile used...

Former_MSE_Callum

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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ballyblack

she deliberately removed all caps on her phone usage,:eek: so tough!!

Ian011

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.

Doc_N

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.

System

When I'm on my yacht, I sometimes run out of champagne.

Caddyman

Heng_Leng wrote: »

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!

pmduk

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.

Castle

Heng_Leng wrote: »

When I'm on my yacht, I sometimes run out of champagne.

Then buy another yacht:)

redux

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.)

phillw

This is the kind of case that would be good to escalate to the European courts.

pmduk

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.