€6000 O2 phone bill-roaming charges

T

tml

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Hi my brother has spent the last few weeks working in switzerland and has just been told by o2 that his phone bill is €6000.

Apparently he downloaded an album off iTunes and this is what has cost so much - he thought he was connected to the wifi network but wasnt so it was the data roaming charges that are so expensive.

In fairness to o2 they said it seems ridiculous that one transaction can cost so much and they are going to look into it but I am just wondering if this has ever happened anyone else. There is just absolutely no way he can afford to pay this bill. He is on a plan with o2 that normally costs €60 a month!!

Thanks
 
Tml - I am very sorry to hear this your brother must be so worried.

This is something that is so easily done and people would need to be very careful especially if they are on bill pay to ensure that they are connected to the wi-fi network when on the internet and not to their service provider.

It happened to my friend a few weeks past, she has vodafone wifi in the house but when she was using her wifi enabled phone she accidently went on to vodafone live. At the end of the month she noticed her high bill and became aware of her mistake when she contacted vodafone. In fairness to them they refunded her the money and they also disconnected vodafone live from her phone so she wouldn't make the same mistake in the future.

I am not sure about your brother I hope for his sake O2 are lenient with him, he was roaming and they are very specific terms and conditions attached to this.
 
Was there not an agreement by the mobile phone service providers to cap the spending on data charges while roaming? Once spending reached the limit, the customer had to authorise ongoing charges (so at least was aware of what was being spent).

Here's some info from O2's site on it:

[broken link removed]

Did your brother get the warning texts at any stage? Did he authorise ongoing data roaming?
 
Never heard the likes of it.

O2 would be within their rights to pursue this, as claiming ignorance about whether or not he was using wifi is irrelevant.

However I can't see them doing this, but your brother better be prepared for the biggest bill he ever had.

Let us know the outcome.
 
Thanks for the replies, to answer some of the questions no he never received any warning texts about his data usage until the damage was already done and he got a txt telling him his data usage had been restricted. he rang them as soon as he got home this morning to find out what was happening. Like that he expected a bill of a few hundred euro but not 6 grand!!

Apparently the data roaming cap only applies to EU countries and not Switzerland.

I will let you know when o2 get back to him next week, as I said before there is no way he can pay the bill, he is 22 and lives at home, just finishing off his apprenticeship so literally hasnt a penny!!
 
Just an update on this, o2 have agreed to write off 90% off the bill so he has to pay €600 now instead of €6000 - thats the most expensive album he has ever bought!!
 
tml said:
Just an update on this, o2 have agreed to write off 90% off the bill so he has to pay €600 now instead of €6000 - thats the most expensive album he has ever bought!!
Click to expand...


Great result tml, but I find the fact that any phone company could ever have justified charging the initial 6k for what was effectively a phonecall of an hour or so within Europe incredible. Even 600 is an awful lot of dosh.
 
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