Charges for connecting to "maritime" networks without consent - how do they get away with this?

Bricks

Recently whilst on a ferry from the UK to Ireland I received a data roaming charge, which turned out to be due to my phone connecting to a maritime satellite network whilst at sea. I had my data roaming turned on, because I was on the way to Ireland.

Luckily it was capped at £10 because I have a spending cap on my account (with 3UK).

A bit of googling shows this is not a new problem.

As far as I can see this is effectively a scam - allow people's phones to automatically connect to an extremely expensive network, without asking or notifying them, and then charge as much as you can.

I don't see any reasonable justification for this. There is no-one who would want to connect to such a network without explicit consent. If it's possible for my network provider to cap my spending at a certain amount, there must be a mechanism for them to say to the maritime network provider, stop connecting to & charging this phone. So they should be able to stop it outright.

Has it ever been challenged, legally or otherwise?

la531983

Given you can turn data roaming off its not a scam whatsoever. Simply turn it off until you get to within a mile or so of the destination. 

DullGreyGuy

Why do you think it needs explicit consent when not asking for the same in "other" countries? It's no more or less a scam than Country A being cheaper/more expensive than Country B. There are plenty of people on the south coast below the cliffs who find their phone connects to a French network if their roaming is turned on. 

You have full control already, you can turn off roaming in virtually all modern mobiles and you say you have that functionality and chose to connect to any network that isnt UK based. I'd suggest using the tools you already have is a much more sensible approach than trying to create a multinational agreement on a new way of mobiles to work to give a prompt to accept if the charge is going to be above ¥ per minute/GB/Txt

Bricks

la531983 said:

Given you can turn data roaming off its not a scam whatsoever. Simply turn it off until you get to within a mile or so of the destination. 

How are we supposed to know that this is necessary, or that such networks exist in the first place.

It doesn't seem an unreasonable expectation that if you are travelling from the UK to the EU then your data roaming will start when you get within range of the EU country's networks.

Where should people learn that 1 mile, rather than 2 or 12 or 0 miles from shore is the safe distance?

la531983

Bricks said:

la531983 said:

Given you can turn data roaming off its not a scam whatsoever. Simply turn it off until you get to within a mile or so of the destination. 

It doesn't seem an unreasonable expectation that if you are travelling from the UK to the EU then your data roaming will start when you get within range of the EU country's networks.

Well now you know that isn't the case so you won't get caught out next time. 

I left the data switched on a flight once. It charged me a fiver for a few MB. I didn't do it again. 

DullGreyGuy

Bricks said:

la531983 said:

Given you can turn data roaming off its not a scam whatsoever. Simply turn it off until you get to within a mile or so of the destination. 

How are we supposed to know that this is necessary, or that such networks exist in the first place.

It doesn't seem an unreasonable expectation that if you are travelling from the UK to the EU then your data roaming will start when you get within range of the EU country's networks.

Where should people learn that 1 mile, rather than 2 or 12 or 0 miles from shore is the safe distance?

But as mentioned, you can be in the UK and pickup a non-UK network in certain places. As you're not even leaving the UK you may no idea if using a French network is included in your plan or not. Hence the safe option is always to have Roaming turned off until such time as you actively want to use a non-UK network. 

If you didn't realise that boats make it possible to make/receive calls from mobiles whilst at sea then it's a bit of an education for you and not too expensive a one given your cap. Plenty of people get rude wakeup calls when travelling and not realising that not everything is the same as in the UK and many for far more than £10. An ex-colleague didn't realise his US hire car only covered $50,000 of third party claims and ended up having to pay out a 6 figure sum after hitting a pedestrian. 

Bricks

OK. So we think a good approach to this is to charge consumers a potentially large amount of money for not happening to know about the possibility of something happening. It's their fault and the charge will teach them a lesson.

Another approach would be to make these services at sea something you actively opt in to. Why would this not be a better approach?

Bricks

DullGreyGuy said:

I'd suggest using the tools you already have is a much more sensible approach than trying to create a multinational agreement on a new way of mobiles to work to give a prompt to accept if the charge is going to be above ¥ per minute/GB/Txt

Does my provider (3 UK as it happens) not have the ability to set things up so that my SIM will not connect to certain networks abroad?

Why would we need a "multinational agreement"?

Bricks

Here's some info on the Irish Ferries website (yes I should have read the entire website including small print and all FAQs before boarding the ferry, then I would have been warned about these charges, and it's all my own fault)

Looks like people from certain countries already have it set up that it needs to be actively activated.

And my operator did not advise me of the rates by text message.

Neil_Jones

There's only a finite amount the network can be responsible for..  The rest of it is the customer's responsibility.

It used to be a case of "do your own homework" before you had to use the offering.

These days that seems to have dropped by the wayside in favour of the provider doing the homework for you - and even then the customer still won't pay the slightest bit of attention to it...

Number of posts we see on here about all kinds of weird and wonderful "situations", 90% of which are documented in T&Cs and normal ways of working.. but still they post.

PHK

Bricks said:

Recently whilst on a ferry from the UK to Ireland I received a data roaming charge, which turned out to be due to my phone connecting to a maritime satellite network whilst at sea. I had my data roaming turned on, because I was on the way to Ireland.

Luckily it was capped at £10 because I have a spending cap on my account (with 3UK).

A bit of googling shows this is not a new problem.

As far as I can see this is effectively a scam - allow people's phones to automatically connect to an extremely expensive network, without asking or notifying them, and then charge as much as you can.

I don't see any reasonable justification for this. There is no-one who would want to connect to such a network without explicit consent. If it's possible for my network provider to cap my spending at a certain amount, there must be a mechanism for them to say to the maritime network provider, stop connecting to & charging this phone. So they should be able to stop it outright.

Has it ever been challenged, legally or otherwise?

I don't understand this . Data roaming was turned on so that you would automatically connect outside the UK. But when it did connect you were surprised.

In your situation I would have wondered how I had a connection when I wasn't in the UK or Ireland.

I think most people would be aware that use outside of the UK incurs a charge and would check what the charge for use at sea would be.

I'm afraid this is one you'll need to write off as down to experience.