Death by O2 Data Roaming Charges

Lame Lantern

Hi folks, wondering if anybody could give me some advice here.

I have my niece on my o2 bill pay plan (nominally paid by the company, in practice paid by myself). She was going abroad for training in Canada for two weeks and got on to O2 to ask about getting a payment addon to cover data roaming abroad. The customer service rep then called me (the billpayer) and told me it wasn't worth buying.

Checking the bill online, she's been charged on average €20 a day for data use! It's reading 3MB of use per day (though my niece insists it's far less than that, it must be that 3MB is the minimum charge). I've now called them up, yelled at them, and got them to put a €40 monthly recurring charge on the account that covers 250mb of data use abroad, nowhere near the almost €150 bill that I'm already left with.

My question is, who do I yell at to get them to waive the data use charges I'm being left with for the 5 days prior?

I know a lot of people say "the law is on their side and they're bastards" but in my experience if you make enough noise and issue enough threats there's always some wiggle room (especially when it comes to a corporate account). Anybody have any experience? It's absolutely outrageous that while covered for a subscription plan, 1mb of data is worth about 30c while without it they were charging €8.

cookie1977

Well personally I dont think yelling at them will do much good as in general you might want the front line staff on your side rather than against you.

Call them back and explain that you weren't aware of the high costs of data charges and that if you'd known about the roaming data add-on you'd have chosen it from the get go. Ask them is there any lee way for removing/reducing the charges as until now you've been very happy with O2's service but this has left a sour taste in your mouth. Tell them you'll have to consider other networks when upgrading next time as O2 have let you down when they didn't clearly inform you of the options for data roaming available to you.

Maybe ask O2 to disable data on your neices account and tell her to find free wifi if she must use data while roaming. Would she consider paying the data roaming costs you/she's incurred?

Lame Lantern

Thanks for the response!

And yeah, "yelling at them" was my internet tough guy way of saying "gently but insistently ask the staff to help me out."

My niece needs to use the internet in a non-wifi zone for work unfortunately. We're also exploring getting expenses back from the embassy if possible. She's also offered to pay the roaming costs but I don't think either of us should have to.

I'll give them a call on Monday when I know how much data was used in total.

cookie1977

Let us know how you get on.

RangeR

Data roaming is extortionate in any country. Your niece would be better off getting a local PAYG SIM and top up as needed. Generally speaking, you can get about 1GB in the region of €15 to €30 equivalent in most countries.

McGrath5

As RangeR has stated, get her to simply purchase a local sim when she is abroad next, less hassle and gives you the piece of mind that there will be no future bill shock issues.