Roaming Charges.....Again

As always, data roaming charges are back in the travel news again after a British teenager left her parents facing a bill of £2,907 when she used her mother’s mobile phone on a family holiday to stay in touch with friends online

The girl, from Greater Manchester, used the mobile, which is registered in her mother’s name, during a break in the Turkish beach resort.

She claims she only used it to check social media websites such as Facebook, but managed to download 630 MB of data – racking up a bill of almost £3,000 in the process.

The case highlights just how expensive overseas mobile phone use can be, particularly outside the European Union. Unless users purchase a “Data Bundle”, Orange charges £8 per MB for data use in Turkey, meaning just a few minutes’ browsing can cost a small fortune. Bundles reduce the cost dramatically, but still make mobile use far more expensive than in Britain. An Orange bundle permitting up to 20MB use each day costs £3 per day, for example, while one permitting up to 100MB use costs £10 per day. Carissa’s father, said he had bought a data bundle before they left Britain.

“We bought one before we went away, but clearly it wasn't enough,” said the father. “The size of the bill was crazy – far more than we can afford. I've only just set up a new business with my wife.” He says the phone was cut off after the bill passed £1,000, but alleges that an Orange representative, during a telephone conversation, said there had been a mistake and reactivated it. He said it was cut again on the final day of the holiday, when the bill reached its final figure.

Orange said it sent a number of text messages to the mobile phone in question, flagging up the high data use, and initially demanded that the bill be paid in full. Later once it had been contacted by The Telegraph newspaper the firm offered to reduce the bill. 

“We know our customers want to use their phones abroad and that’s why we offer a range of bundles depending on their needs,” said an Orange spokesman. “In this instance, The customer purchased a bundle which was not big enough for her usage. As a gesture of goodwill, we've recalculated her bill with the most appropriate bundles applied.”The move should cut the bill from almost £3,000 to around £200.

As in our previous post, HERE, we always recommend that you check with your mobile provider before travelling outside the UK. returning to a bill of several hundred pounds can totally wipe out any savings carefully made when planning your trip. 

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