O2 Roaming: People leave you voicemail - YOU get charged!! €1.00!!

eskimo · 09-09-2007 12:15am #1

I arrived home today after 12 days in france and spain to discover my O2 pay-monthly bill at almost €100 for that time. €18.00 of this is people leaving ME voicemail!!! This has got to be the most ridiculously unfair charge in existence.

When roaming in the EU, O2 will charge you €1.00 everytime someone rings your phone and they get your answering machine.

Unless of course, you were one of the few already aware of this ludicrous charge, in which case you can have your voicemail service dissabled before you jet off to wherever you're going. Isn't that just so nice of them?

Be very aware of this before you fly away on your hols. I'm sure you don't want to experience the nasty surprise I had today.

P.S. Surely it would make better business sense if the stingy bastards covered the charge of this voicemail-leaving themselves in a bid to avoid irate, disappointed and pissed-off customers such as myself.

Random · 09-09-2007 1:08am

I was on the phone to Meteor before I went away and the agent said this was also the case with them. Can anyone confirm?

I don't like being charged for it myself either ... do Vodafone do it?

HiredGun · 09-09-2007 1:13am

The reason for this is that when somebody phones you when you are abroad the call goes to, let's say France and when you reject it, it goes back to your voicemail box in Ireland. That means that when someone leaves a voicemail that call has gone abroad and back. It sounds ridiculous but its true. That's why almost all networks, not just O2, charge you for it. The only way to avoid it is to switch of voicemail for the duration of your holiday and you have to do that before you leave.

Random · 09-09-2007 1:18am

Do the rates come under that of the new EU roaming agreement?

HiredGun · 09-09-2007 1:23am

You are basically receiving a call and making a call back home. I haven't verified this but I guess within the EU you probably pay 29ct + 59ct = 88ct per minute.

atgate · 09-09-2007 3:38am

I was with Vodafone for 10 years and they never did this to me. I moved to o2 and they warned me it would happen but when I came back from a week in Spain there were no charges.....

so Vodafone don't charge on billpay while o2 say they do but only do sometimes.

Confusing!

flywheel · 09-09-2007 9:30am

atgate wrote:

I was with Vodafone for 10 years and they never did this to me. I moved to o2 and they warned me it would happen but when I came back from a week in Spain there were no charges.....

so Vodafone don't charge on billpay while o2 say they do but only do sometimes.

Confusing!

sorry but Vodafone do, and I've the bills to prove it

moral of the story for anyone concerned... if you don't want pay for roaming calls abroad... divert ALL calls (not just if unreachable, not answered etc. but ALL calls) directly to your voicemail...

atgate · 09-09-2007 1:32pm

DubWireless wrote:

sorry but Vodafone do, and I've the bills to prove it

moral of the story for anyone concerned... if you don't want pay for roaming calls abroad... divert ALL calls (not just if unreachable, not answered etc. but ALL calls) directly to your voicemail...

Dubwireless, I agree.

With Vodafone if I diverted my all my calls I wasn't charged, however, o2 say that even if you have diverted all calls to voicemail and your phone is switched off they will still charge you for roaming for receiving voicemail (the actual act of someone leaving a message, not you picking it up) - crazy I know - they said the only way to avoid this was to cancel all diverts and switch the phone off....

Make sense? Doesn't to me.

little nell · 09-09-2007 1:45pm

I also got a shocking 02 bill when I came home from a month in Australia . The bill was 980 eu. and if that was not bad enough the next bill was 360eu. as we stopped off in hong kong for 4 days on the way back.Expensive lesson ,will not bring bill phone on holls again

chrislad · 09-09-2007 1:58pm

You're paying for the diverts. Just cancel all diverts before leaving the country. This is the same for Meteor, O2 and Vodafone. Don't know about Three. Don't really care about Three to be honest!

culabula · 09-09-2007 3:55pm

You will not be charged for voicemail if you set up an UNconditional divert using star hash commands (as opposed to using menu diverts wich are conditional).

This is what I have in my phonebook: Divert ON -**21*+353865xxxxxx#
Divert OFF: ##21#

Thus you may turn on and off quickly and at will: no calls will leave the island of Ireland and instead will go directly to your voicemail.

culabula · 09-09-2007 3:56pm

little nell wrote:

I also got a shocking 02 bill when I came home from a month in Australia . The bill was 980 eu. and if that was not bad enough the next bill was 360eu. as we stopped off in hong kong for 4 days on the way back.Expensive lesson ,will not bring bill phone on holls again

Here is one person who would have been MUCH better off with 3!

HiredGun · 09-09-2007 4:32pm

culabula wrote:

Here is one person who would have been MUCH better off with 3!

True, Hong Kong and Australia happen to be countries 3 is active in. The problem often is that beyond the main cities they don't have a network in most countries. Their roaming rates are commendable but the Roaming Like Home slogan suggests more than it actually is. In many other countries some of the other networks offer better rates.

culabula · 09-09-2007 4:46pm

HiredGun wrote:

True, Hong Kong and Australia happen to be countries 3 is active in. The problem often is that beyond the main cities they don't have a network in most countries. Their roaming rates are commendable but the Roaming Like Home slogan suggests more than it actually is. In many other countries some of the other networks offer better rates.

I would have thought that in Hong Kong, you wouldn't have needed much of a network -and I'm sure it's pretty hot there. What you describe probably applies to Australia pretty much but my experience of 3 Italy, even in rural outposts has been excellent, not to mention pretty terrific coverage throughout much of the United Kingdom.

The slogan is actually '3 Like Home' and is exactly as it describes itself. To incur no penalties for incoming calls and the ability to use your bundle as though you were at home, should be a paradigm for those networks who have partner networks abroad but the extra perk of using data without outrageous charges abroad and at home*, where 3 is available is, if anything, almost too good to be true -but true it is!

*present difficulties excepted

HiredGun · 09-09-2007 5:37pm

Culabula: point taken. Where you have 3 coverage you basically have the ideal solution as a roamer.

In Hong Kong their network is excellent and most of the calls are made in cities anyway. So I don't want to give the impression that I don't value their 3 Like Home offering. What is good is that when in the EU you fall off the 3 network you will only pay 39ct.

The reason why I decided not to go with 3, however, was exactly because of roaming and their international call rates.

I travel extensively, also to countries where 3 are not present. And then you'll find that their roaming portfolio is pretty limited still. You wouldn't be able to roam in certain countries I go to (Finland), or they don't have data roaming enabled (many countries). Not being able to access my email or read the news on my phone is a big thing for me.

And outside of the EU you still pay high rates. I'll be in the US for two weeks soon: I'll be paying 59ct p/m on O2 whilst 3 charges 1.75e p/m.

Phoning abroad from Ireland is still very expensive too.

O2 Roaming: People leave you voicemail - YOU get charged!! €1.00!!

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