Welcome back from holiday... here’s your £21k mobile phone bill
AN NHS worker returned from a family holiday to a mobile phone bill of nearly £22,000 despite having her data usage blocked.
Shannon Mills, 19, had braced herself to pay £300 to make video calls and use social media on her break in Turkey.
But when the final bill came in, it was for £21,819.
She normally pays £25 a month for her mobile service but contacted O2 before the trip to arrange a holiday deal of £120 for every 30 megabytes of data used.
However, a few days into the break, which began on July 9, she received a text saying she had spent £2,808 on data.
‘I was totally freaking out, it was a massive shock,’ she said.
I wanted to use Facetime, Facebook and things like that. I thought I would come home with a £300 bill.
‘I thought the text was a joke. I thought somehow my dad was winding me up.’
Miss Mills, from Dundee, turned off the data-roaming function, which allows mobile internet use abroad, and thought that would be the end of it. ‘ But I started getting texts every day saying I’d used another £ 1,300 worth, another £300 worth,’ she said.
‘When it got to £4,000 I phoned them again but I wasn’t getting anywhere so my dad spoke to them and O2 said they had blocked any data use.
‘I thought that was it,’ said Miss Mills. ‘I had a big phone bill but I’d deal with it when I got home.
‘It wasn’t until when we were relaxing at the pool waiting to leave that my dad said I should check again. I did and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.’
She added: ‘ My dad was hysterical – he couldn’t stop laughing but eventually he didn’t see the funny side. It was a really bad feeling but if I didn’t start laughing, I would have cried.’
Miss Mills, who returned home last week, said: ‘I don’t understand why, if they say they have blocked the data, I was still being charged.
‘I couldn’t use any data after they’d said they blocked it, so I don’t know where the bills were coming from.’ She added: ‘Next time I go away, I’ll not be using my phone.’
Miss Mills and her father, Kevin, have contacted the phone company to try to get to the bottom of the problem. O2 said it would be looking into the case.
The firm claims to have simplified its roaming charges, capping data usage in many holiday destinations, including Turkey, at £40.
Customers can use up to 50MB of data without additional charges, but after reaching that limit, they must contact O2 to increase their spending limit to £120, granting them a 200MB allowance.
Customers wanting to remove the data cap completely must get in touch once more to request it, after which they are charged £6 per megabyte of data.
In May, the Daily Mail reported shock bills for holidaymakers for using their mobile in Europe – with the average overseas stay incurring extra charges of £61. Tourists are being stung with surprise demands on their return despite an EU-wide cap on internet roaming fees of £36 a month.
Experts say the measure is ‘insufficient’ – because there are no restrictions on calls, texts and listening to voicemails. One in six travellers even paid £100 or more on top of their normal bill last time they visited the continent, a study found.
Under 35s were the most likely to be hit with bumper demands, with those between 18 and 34 paying an average of £72 more.
Many were paying higher bills because of simple mistakes.
A fifth forgot to turn off their mobile’s data roaming function upon arrival, while one in seven did not switch off voicemail messaging. This exposed them to fees, as some networks impose a charge for receiving a message – even if it is not picked up.