I never checked the price of data before using my phone ..

colman1212

OK so I just changed over to O2 last month from meteor bill pay in order to get the nokia 5800. My bill is for 219 euro even though I'm just on the 55 euro a month option.

I got charged two months line rental for the the first month. They said this is normal although they said nothing to me about it when I signed up. Also for 9MB of internet usage (equivalent of 2 songs) I was charged 79.72. They said its 1c per kilobyte

How are they aloud to charge this kind of rate? It seems absolutly ridiculous?
And why do they charge 2 months line rental for your first month.makes no sense... what a rip off...

Sam Vimes

colman1212 wrote: »

I got charged two months line rental for the the first month. They said this is normal although they said nothing to me about it when I signed up. Also for 9MB of internet usage (equivalent of 2 songs) I was charged 79.72. They said its 1c per kilobyte

How are they aloud to charge this kind of rate? It seems absolutly ridiculous?
And why do they charge 2 months line rental for your first month.makes no sense... what a rip off...

They're allowed charge it because we live in a free economy. They could charge €1 million a byte if they wanted, no one forced you to use it without checking the prices first.

Having said that, O2 have a team called the bill shock team or similar for these kinds of things and if you plead your case they might let you off some of the money

As for charging a month in advance, loads of companies do that. You're not paying any extra, you see the benefit if and when you end your contract

colman1212

Sam Vimes wrote: »

They're allowed charge it because we live in a free economy. They could charge €1 million a byte if they wanted, no one forced you to use it without checking the prices first.

Having said that, O2 have a team called the bill shock team or similar for these kinds of things and if you plead your case they might let you off some of the money

As for charging a month in advance, loads of companies do that. You're not paying any extra, you see the benefit if and when you end your contract

So you get the money back for the extra month when you end the contract after the 12 months or something?

Stephen

Get yourself a data add-on asap. You can get 250MB for about €7.50 a month on top of your tarriff.

colman1212

Stephen wrote: »

Get yourself a data add-on asap. You can get 250MB for about €7.50 a month on top of your tarriff.

yeah I've signed up for it now. Is it actually worth trying to get onto the bill shock team. Can you literally ring up and ask to be put through to them? Has anyone had any joy with them before?

seamus

colman1212 wrote: »

So you get the money back for the extra month when you end the contract after the 12 months or something?

No, you pay your standard rate (line rental) a month in advance, but you don't pay anything when you first sign up. So at the end of your first month, you get charged your first month's rental plus your second month's rental. Caught me out this month too, but this is standard across the operators.

If/when you change operator, your final bill will only be for your calls, you won't pay line rental because you'll have already paid it.

For example, because I switched from Vodafone to O2 at the end of February, my final Vodafone bill (in March) was €7 when it normally would have been €40. My O2 bill for April is €95, which is 2 x €45 + some calls/texts. So overall my totall bills for March & April is €102 which is no different to having paid €51 in each month except that it all came in one lump.

Rsaeire

colman1212 wrote: »

OK so I just changed over to O2 last month from meteor bill pay in order to get the nokia 5800. My bill is for 219 euro even though I'm just on the 55 euro a month option.

I got charged two months line rental for the the first month. They said this is normal although they said nothing to me about it when I signed up. Also for 9MB of internet usage (equivalent of 2 songs) I was charged 79.72. They said its 1c per kilobyte

How are they aloud to charge this kind of rate? It seems absolutly ridiculous?
And why do they charge 2 months line rental for your first month.makes no sense... what a rip off...

It is ridiculous and it harks back to prices from years past. Mobile operators charge what they want and don't bother to reduce the standard data rates, as they can earn a fortune off of unsuspecting customers like yourself. I agree that a customer is responsible for their own usage, but it's not made easy for customers either; and please, nobody made any motorway analogies to make a counter point.

Mobile operators in their defense state "well, we have data add-ons that are available, just in case", but if they simply reduced their standard data prices, customers wouldn't need to ensure they had a data add-on "just in case".

Sam Vimes

colman1212 wrote: »

yeah I've signed up for it now. Is it actually worth trying to get onto the bill shock team. Can you literally ring up and ask to be put through to them? Has anyone had any joy with them before?

Yes it is worth it. They often call people unsolicited and offer to reduce the bill. My friend used the internet on his phone knowing the cost full well and spent a good bit and they called him up and let him off half of it

colman1212

Sam Vimes wrote: »

Yes it is worth it. They often call people unsolicited and offer to reduce the bill. My friend used the internet on his phone knowing the cost full well and spent a good bit and they called him up and let him off half of it

Yeah I gave them a buzz there, they said they'll pass it onto the team that deals with that kind of stuff but they doubt they wil do anything.
I got the spend alerts put on my account anyway so thats handy.
Thanks for the help. I''ll let you know if they give me any reduction...

colman1212

yeah they took 40 euro off the bill. cut the internet bill in half. better than nothing anyways!
Thanks for the help guys!!

zacseph

Yeah - i'd email them aswell - vodafone also have a bill shock policy - the basics of it is usually to refund overpriced data charges the first time it happens if the customer wasn't aware of the prices... you could always lie in the email and say you told the guy in store you'd be using data and he said nothing about iit... a blatant lie, but they're unlikely to check (doubt they even can) - fight fire with fire!! :P
If you do get it back tho, they probably won't do it a second time, so i'd make sure you're still not connecting the same way / have a bundle to cover it...

Random

1. The pro-rate billing is a standard thing by all networks. I would agree it's really not explained correctly in stores.

2. Not a single bit of sympathy in relation to the data charges. Check the price of a service before you use it.

Davy

Random wrote: »

2. Not a single bit of sympathy in relation to the data charges. Check the price of a service before you use it.

How many times in the last month alone has their been a thread like this. Seems to be getting worse and worse as more people start to use data on their phones. You would think that people are more careful with their money is harder economic times like these. I think fare play to the networks for taking a good approach to this. They never get anything good said about them :cool:

ardmacha

Perhaps, but they could charge less too. O2 pepaid customers don't really have to worry because the 99c a day thing protects against a big bill for a bit of casual usage. Yet their bill customers, who should be treated at least as well, can get these big bills for a modest enough amount of data.

Random

ardmacha wrote: »

Perhaps, but they could charge less too. O2 pepaid customers don't really have to worry because the 99c a day thing protects against a big bill for a bit of casual usage. Yet their bill customers, who should be treated at least as well, can get these big bills for a modest enough amount of data.

Then check the prices before you use it or get a data addon. It's very simple.

flywheel

yeah, i'd be a bit more sympathetic having seen several massive bills from people over the years due to data usage. several due to operator billing cock-ups but most due to poor customer service, in particular at sign-up (i.e. not mentioning/highlighting data package options or the differences e.g. between Live! and ISP)...

even for the informed, data roaming is now the new bill monster, i see it hitting a lot of iPhone users at present...

i'm still of the opinion operators don't do enough to educate / highlight or clearly explain data packages / billing to their consumers...

Rsaeire

DubWireless wrote: »

yeah, i'd be a bit more sympathetic having seen several massive bills from people over the years due to data usage. several due to operator billing cock-ups but most due to poor customer service, in particular at sign-up (i.e. not mentioning/highlighting data package options or the differences e.g. between Live! and ISP)...

even for the informed, data roaming is now the new bill monster, i see it hitting a lot of iPhone users at present...

i'm still of the opinion operators don't do enough to educate / highlight or clearly explain data packages / billing to their consumers...

And this is why billing is at the top, or very near the top, of all customer care queries.

Random

Don't get me wrong. If someone is told one thing or misinformed then the operator should be refunding the money.

If someone makes no effort to check the price before going away though - tough IMO.