HOW A RESTAURANT SEARCH GOBBLED MY DATA
Using data roaming to find a restaurant on Google maps was Pat Coleman’s downfall on a recent holiday in Chicago.
Pat, a bill-pay customer, never strayed outside of his contracted plan at home and does not stream sport or movies.
‘Apparently, I never switched off my data roaming, which I didn’t know was on as I never use it,’ he said.
When he received the ‘whopping bill’ of €1,750 Pat said he couldn’t pay it. He got regular phone calls from a debt collection agency. But eventually his provider, Three, agreed to settle for €400.
Pat feels aggrieved that Three didn’t contact him when his usage hit alarming heights. He did receive a text saying he had reached his €50 limit and asking did he want to continue. He ‘opted to do so, thinking nothing of it as I wasn’t going to be using my phone for the rest of my holiday’. It was a costly mistake. ‘The provider should be made contact you when there’s very high activity on your phone,’ he added.
Three said it ‘makes every effort to ensure that customers can manage their roaming charges when abroad. We send an “advice of charge” SMS, which advises of rates. We also apply a data roaming cap and notify the customer when the cap has been reached. This restricts internet usage so that no further data charges can be incurred, unless the customer removes the cap.’ With regard to high roaming bills: ‘Three deals with these on a case-by-case basis.’