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

pmduk

redux wrote: »

Personally, I'm surprised there wasn't a further credit limit for usage, but I'm also surprised that someone wants to spend half an hour watching video on a phone while sat on a boat on the Aegean.

Apparently she was streaming music, but in view of the data used I suspect it was Youtube music videos. But, of course, your points stand.

A network only knows in retrospect what has been used whilst roaming, they don't receive real-time figures from the roaming network so credit limits don't work.

redux

pmduk wrote: »

A network only knows in retrospect what has been used whilst roaming, they don't receive real-time figures from the roaming network so credit limits don't work.

At this rate of use in a single session, probably not.

A friend was cut off at a few hundred quid of calls a few years ago, and borrowed mine to get it reset.

esuhl

redux wrote: »

Instead of indulging in some moralising based on guesses and assumptions, let's stick with some actual facts.

...

None of these measures will be effective against someone who voluntarily disregards them.

Personally, I'm surprised there wasn't a further credit limit for usage, but I'm also surprised that someone wants to spend half an hour watching video on a phone while sat on a boat on the Aegean.

That sounds awfully like moralising and victim-blaming based on guesses and assumptions... None of us have all the facts, anyway.

Most phones are set to connect automatically to networks. Most people don't know that you can specify the network manually. Most people don't consider the possibility of their phone roaming to a different territory's network to the one they are in. Most people wouldn't know how to convert the cost-per-megabye price into the cost of watching a 10 minute YouTube video at 720p.

Over £8,300 for less than a CDs-worth of data?! There's no way anyone in their right mind would knowingly agree to that!

It sounds like the woman was happy with the charges she had been paying, and the only way to continue to do so over £50 was to remove all bars. She had no other choice.

Her phone presumably changed networks automatically and, as she was still in the EU, did not realise that she was connecting to a non-EU network.

Sure, I am aware of these risks, but the average person is not, and nor should they need to be. The networks and the devices themselves should be designed in a way that puts people in control of their spending.

The network should block non-EU-roaming data connections by default, making it painfully clear to anyone wanting to unblock them that they may need to sell their house to afford the bill. If the woman was only intending to use data roaming in the EU, why had the network enabled non-EU data roaming?!

These problems happen so often, and (aside from good old EU law) there aren't sufficient safeguards in place to stop people running up insane bills without realising.

Why did the ombudsman find that the charges were fair and valid, and then insist that she's not liable for them...? It sounds like an implicit agreement that such charges with insufficient warnings are unfair. Presumably she hadn't asked for non-EU data roaming to be enabled, and Utility Warehouse were negligent in their duty of explaining how ludicrous such charges would be.

As the law stands, the charges are fair. So either the networks or the law needs to change to ensure that people don't ignorantly fall foul of this kind of insane profiteering yet again.

redux

esuhl wrote: »

Sure, I am aware of these risks, but the average person is not, and nor should they need to be. The networks and the devices themselves should be designed in a way that puts people in control of their spending.

The network should block non-EU-roaming data connections by default, making it painfully clear to anyone wanting to unblock them that they may need to sell their house to afford the bill. If the woman was only intending to use data roaming in the EU, why had the network enabled non-EU data roaming?!

As already said, networks and devices are designed that way.

As for blocking, why?

There are several hundred networks in a couple of hundred territories around the world.

Why should we be suddenly blocked from using most of them, over 20 years after mobile phones started roaming, and over 15 since data use was possible?

Some networks allow switching off data from within the account; of course you'd need separate access to switch it back on. The phone can be set to data use off. Data use can be set per application, including restricting background use if desired, funnily enough in the data usage section of the menu.

Someone might be on a trip around the world, and want family and friends want to track them. A marker point with GPS position every 10 minutes might cost say £1 a month. Adding some messages, text email without images every couple of days, check once in the evening, might double that. Or occasionally actually talking via VoIP on a data connection might be cheaper than call rates.

It isn't a problem, except for very occasionally people doing daft things because they didn't bother to check. Don't block millions because of a few hundred.

Besides all that, I suspect someone who wants to use 15 GB or more per month while roaming in Europe may eventually come up against roaming fair use policies, but I haven't checked this as I never will.

pmduk

The default for roaming should be off, and usually is. If you turn it on it's up to you to know what the costs are. End of. Most networks have many pages on their websites devoted to roaming advice

mobilejunkie

esuhl wrote: »

Most phones are set to connect automatically to networks. Most people don't know that you can specify the network manually. Most people don't consider the possibility of their phone roaming to a different territory's network to the one they are in. Most people wouldn't know how to convert the cost-per-megabye price into the cost of watching a 10 minute YouTube video at 720p.

NOW I know why I'm glad I'm not a "most".

buglawton

pmduk wrote: »

I don't think phones contain the technology to know which deals any network has at a particular given time. The user knows this and can turn roaming on and off at will and as we know of old will always blame everybody else for their mistakes.

The phone doesn't have the tech, I'd expect to be able to go into my Three account and adjust the settings on a kind of budgeting control panel. Rather like the way I can tell my credit card company which countries I plan to use my card in, for security.
Three controls whether I connect to a certain foreign network, presumably.
Which is why I was asking which network might offer this.

zagfles

pmduk wrote: »

Apparently she was streaming music, but in view of the data used I suspect it was Youtube music videos. But, of course, your points stand.

A network only knows in retrospect what has been used whilst roaming, they don't receive real-time figures from the roaming network so credit limits don't work.

So how does the €50 cap work then? How does PAYG work?

pmduk

The networks can only providesomuch, the technology on the habndsets has to be able to support it. They're designed to lock on to the trongest signal that will allow them to register. (As an aside it's why some iphones have issues changing networks when roaming, and returning to the UK).

pmduk

zagfles wrote: »

So how does the €50 cap work then? How does PAYG work?

Phone calls will usually be processed via the UK, data may be OKed at the beginning of a session but the full cost won't be known until later.