BILL SHOCK
Ripped off with roaming data? Read our tips on avoiding a nasty surprise when back from abroad
Bill shock over outrageous mobile phone charges when travelling abroad is one of the greatest causes of consumer anger, stress and financial loss. One in every four holidaymakers report being hit by extraordinary phone bills after a trip overseas due to roaming charges. ‘Roam Like At Home’ rules protect mobile phone customers when within the EU.
But venture any further afield and you could be in trouble over a simple mistake like forgetting to turn off roaming – or turning it on to check emails and forgetting to turn it off.
Mobile providers will warn you once usage hits €62.50 but turning roaming back on to look for a crucial email or find out where you are on Google Maps can prove very costly indeed.
Last year, a man called Patrick called Joe Duffy’s Liveline radio show on RTÉ Radio to complain about a €26,692 phone bill racked up abroad.
It wasn’t even the first time. He had previously complained about a €1,500 bill his daughter ran up.
His daughter’s bill was written off.
And his provider initially wrote off most the second sum although he was still left with a hefty bill.
Last year, we highlighted the case of reader Pat Coleman who came home to an unwelcome mobile bill of €1,750 after a trip to Chicago.
His bill was written down to €400 by Three but even that was a hefty sum and he still feels aggrieved over the episode.
When we told him the results of a new survey showing exactly how much data costs locally, he wasn’t surprised to hear the self-evident truth: locals do not in fact have to pay five figure phone bills.
The exorbitant costs we have to pay for roaming are just the teeniest fraction of what mobile firms charge locals.
When we use our mobiles here Irish data costs are about average by European standards, a new study shows.
We pay on average around $3.95 per gigabyte, exactly midway down the western European table, according to the new survey by consumer website Cable.co.uk.
The lowest costs globally are in India where locals pay just 23c (€) per gigabyte.
Australia charges ten times more at €2.20… and the bill is €11 per gigabyte in the US, according to the survey.
Yet use your mobile data in these countries and you could face a bill of ten thousand euros per gigabyte with Eir, €5k with Three and €6k with Vodafone, to use three examples.
So why are we paying so much more?
To justify these charges, mobile phone companies say they are just
passing what they are charged for data use abroad.
They point out that warning texts are sent to customers who can also avail of special roaming bundles that are much cheaper.
Some companies such as Tesco even apply further caps that have to
If mobile firms have to pay up to €10,000 per gigabyte locally for data – how can special bundles be offered for so little?
How can they swiftly write down these bills by 80 per cent or 90 per cent or even 100 per cent when challenged?
Either they are getting a very poor deal from local providers on our behalf – or they have a large profit margin.
I have been writing about consumer issues for two decades and this is the worst case of exorbitant pricing that is crying out for intervention by a watchdog.
The only thing that comes close to this life-wrecking type of bill are high mortgage rates with some banks that can also cost us tens of thousands of euros compared to the cheapest lenders.
But that sum is spread out over 30 years in many cases – and we can always shop around.
No bank would dare present a borrower with a bill for €26,700 all in one go for outrageous charges suddenly racked up in a couple of weeks. The Central Bank would not allow it.
So what is our watchdog – telecoms regulator ComReg – doing about the bill shock that has plagued mobile phone users for many years?
When we last raised this issue in 2018 a spokesman told us: ‘ComReg will be reviewing measures to prevent “bill shock” later this year through a consultation.’
At that time, I was a bit surprised that after years of outrage we were only now planning a ‘consultation’.
Yet even that did not happen. This time around – eight months later – we received a depressingly similar answer.
‘ComReg plans to issue a preliminary consultation (Call for Inputs) on bill shock in Q2 2019,’ said the spokesman.
‘This preliminary consultation will review the evidence ComReg has collected thus far on the incidence of “bill shock”, outline current measures already available to prevent it, and will discuss the need for specific bill-shock prevention measures.
‘ComReg will be seeking views from industry and consumers on the issues raised in that document.’
In the meantime, ComReg advises consumers who get caught out to cough up.
So there you have it: the reason mobile phone companies charge us so much – it is simply because they can.
And at the pace this issue is being dealt with, they will probably continue to do so for some time to come.
HOW TO AVOID BILL SHOCK
Sign up for a data bundle when venturing beyond the EU. Vodafone claims it has the best deal in the market with a bundle rate of €2.99 for Australia and the USA and €4.99 for India per day. For this, you can avail of unlimited calls and texts within their destination country and to home plus 200 megabytes of data per day. That is reasonable and beats the €19.99 for 200MB of data in the US quoted to us by Three, for example.
Comparison site Switcher.ie advises that it may be cheaper to get a local prepaid SIM card to avail of the local data rates when abroad outside the EU.
Disable mobile data networks and turn off roaming.
Download maps, check emails, and watch videos and online content only using free Wi-Fi.
Turn off automatic content downloads on apps such as WhatsApp.
Ignore any data use warnings at your peril!