£21,000 Mobile broadband bill for costomer roaming in Alps

derry

£21,000 Mobile broadband bill for costomer roaming in Alps whilke on skiing holidy in switzeralnd

he downloaded a few movies like top gear etc

full details last articale from this link

http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?C=2&ID=444044


moral of the story if you go on holiday dont use your 3 or Vodoa phone or O2 wireless 3G internet service.

I think it costs something like 10 cent a meg in europe and maybe €2 euro a meg outside europe

A movie like top gear could cost you hundred or even thousands to down laod while abroad

That will shake you up a bit

Derry

Random

Mobile broadband makes skiing holidays more expensive
Finally, one consumer with a bright future in telecoms consultancy has conducted comprehensive research which proves beyond all doubt that mobile broadband makes skiing holidays more expensive, by downloading £22,000-worth of TV content while abroad.

Will Pierce assumed he could access mobile broadband using his £25 Vodafone data card in Meribel, France without incurring unexpected costs, reports the Daily Mail.

On returning to Blighty he suffered a bad case of bill shock –known in medical circles as cardiac arrest – when he was presented with a £21,716 bill.

"I never imagined it would cost so much to watch a few TV programmes," said Pierce, in the report.

Pierce explained that the children were too young to head out by themselves, and the apartment they were renting had no English-language TV channels.

So he did what any unimaginative, boring parent would do, and downloaded episodes of Top Gear on his laptop.

"There's no warning when you log on how much it will cost a minute or a counter on the screen telling you what it is costing. If you ran up such a bill on your credit card while overseas you'd get a call checking that it is you who is spending so much," said the 42-year-old.

Vodafone insisted initially on charging the full amount, but has since backed down.

"Such bills are exceptionally rare and we have an investigation under way," said a spokeswoman.

It will no doubt be a tricky investigation, since anyone who goes abroad on a skiing holiday and still makes an active decision to watch Jeremy Clarkson is a scientific anomaly.

This is the article

Will Pierce assumed he could access mobile broadband using his £25 Vodafone data card in Meribel, France without incurring unexpected costs, reports the Daily Mail.

It's his own fault, end of story.

"There's no warning when you log on how much it will cost a minute or a counter on the screen telling you what it is costing. If you ran up such a bill on your credit card while overseas you'd get a call checking that it is you who is spending so much," said the 42-year-old.

Check the price of a service before you sign up. Fair enough point re CCard but at the same time if they (in the case of a CCard) don't contact you then you're still in the same position.

It will no doubt be a tricky investigation, since anyone who goes abroad on a skiing holiday and still makes an active decision to watch Jeremy Clarkson is a scientific anomaly.

LOL

Beaucoupfish

Top Gear is contrived ****. Serves him right ha ha ha!

zekiel

With o2 roaming in spain it costs around €8 per mb... first hand experience and it hurt! :mad:

Jonathan

Serves him right.

Richard Dower

Muppet.

Don't they have Net access in the Alps at hotels?

lostexpectation

Random wrote: »

This is the article



It's his own fault, end of story.

probably, but he's not going to have to pay it all...so

godskitchen

reports the Daily Mail.

Enough said.

His own fault.

Top Gear of all things? I love cars and once upon a time liked TG but come on, it has not been fresh/good since 2003.

KTRIC

Idiot. These stories tend to pop up every now and again. The person is question always tries to make out he's being hard done by.

Jumpy

He is hard done by. Its local bandwidth. The only effort the local company has to do is feed the logs back to the owning provider. The costs for doing so are astronomical for something that costs the local provider and owning provider a few cents.

jor el

Everyone with a mobile phone (and even a lot of people without one) knows that it costs extra to use your phone while abroad. You'd have to be an idiot to think the the mobile broadband is any different. He isn't hard done by, he's a fool, who deserves to have to pay the full amount.

WezzyB

I've gone to Austria skiing for the past few years and have been able to use the 1gb data and voice minutes from my Three Ireland package to surf away during downtime, not that I had that much, on Three's sister network in Austria.

Imagine he could have bought 2000 £10 DVDs for the price of downloading Top Gear , then again there are lots of other things you could have done with that money.

bobbbb

This should never be allowed to happen.
It should be law that whenever you go say 25% over your average bill for data that your provider has to cut you off or call you for permission in order to keep charging you after that.

jimmii

There is no way he would have thought it would be ok to use his mobile while he was away so don't see why he would think it was different. Lucky guy if they, as it says, they don't charge him the full wack.

towel401

Jumpy wrote: »

He is hard done by. Its local bandwidth. The only effort the local company has to do is feed the logs back to the owning provider. The costs for doing so are astronomical for something that costs the local provider and owning provider a few cents.

Its ridiculous that a company is even allowed to charge such a ridiculous amount for some bandwidth. especially in the days of EU regulation to reduce roaming rates.

we all know the bandwidth is worth feck all but the phone companies have found a clever and legal way to extract huge amounts of money out of people. you basically agree to pay whatever number they write down on the bill whether or not this is the right amount because that ensures the phone network is always right and the lawyer who wrote that part of the contract is seen as doing his best for his client.

also remember this forum is filled with people working for the Telco's which is why you see a lot of sympathisers for these rip off artists especially in recession times when that 21k might delay layoffs for another 3 days. not everyone is even interested in phones or spends their time reading the complicated pricing structures mobile phone networks have.

towel401

derry wrote: »

£21,000 Mobile broadband bill for costomer roaming in Alps whilke on skiing holidy in switzeralnd

he downloaded a few movies like top gear etc

full details last articale from this link

http://www.totaltele.com/view.aspx?C=2&ID=444044


moral of the story if you go on holiday dont use your 3

3 don't charge extra for data in countries where they have a network exept 1 or 2 where they still do for political reasons

but they're still a shower of cnuts

SC024

KTRIC wrote: »

Idiot. These stories tend to pop up every now and again. The person is question always tries to make out he's being hard done by.

Still though, Them data rates are extreme... and on top of that the mobile telco's are worse than banks & The Revenue commissioners for chasing money through the court system....