Mobile Phone Roaming is expensive… as one person found out to the tune of £3,800…

For a lot of people, the one essential item you pack as well as clothes, money and passport is your friend or foe – the mobile phone.

This device can be a friend or foe depending how you use it, and when travelling aboard – the costs can mount up quickly.

Within the European Economic Area, there are rules and regulations which govern the maximum cost of data, calls and texts, with prices caps that can be optionally lifted. However – beyond there – you are at the whim of a mobile phone company how much you’re going to be out of pocket.

One teenager found this out the hard way according to the Daily Mail, who racked up a bill for £3,800. This compared with a normal £50.

Apparently, the parents of the child have never heard of data roaming, or data caps – and apparently ignoring warning messages when they had reached the capped and choosing to opt out of how much they were capping their calls by.

The parents call this an outrage and the phone company extorting their child to pay a bill that she racked up on her travels.

The mother said

“She was only using it for the normal teenage stuff, updating her friends with what she was up to and this and that.”

To be honest, I wouldn’t understand what a data cap was, and I don’t think a lot of teenagers would

This is about the extortion of a 14-year-old, and Orange is completely refusing to budge on the bill.

The rates that are charged are ridiculous and I just don’t understand why another message wasn’t sent after the one that said the bill had reached £320. Why wasn’t one sent at £500 or £1,000?”

It seems it was beyond the mother or the child that using the Internet on your phone whilst aboard for this and that can cost an arm and a leg… and didn’t read the roaming part of Orange’s web site before she went on the trip.

Orange (the UK operator who supplied the handset and service) states:

“In this instance the customer received numerous text alerts which updated them on the roaming costs for the USA, and also updated them on their data usage. Once they had reached the limit of their data bundle, the customer actively opted out of our roaming data cap so that they could continue to use data, effectively removing the in-built protection from large data roaming bills.”

Those of us who travel often enough know with a mobile phone that eats data (like an iPhone, an Android Handset, a Blackberry or the singular Windows Phone user) that these phones such up data for breakfast, lunch and dinner and know to tame them by switching off data roaming as fast as possible.  And we also know that data roaming is expensive as hell – especially when it comes out of our own pockets.

Whilst I’ve been a victim of this (through my own fault and reasons – that’s a story for another time), I wound up once with £250 roaming bill for a week’s trip – and accepted it. I also learned to take precautions after that trip.  Hopefully these parents can educate themselves and their child about these this.

Kevin’s tips for saving whilst abroad with a phone:

Before you go

• Download tour guides and maps before you go. I use a mixture of TripAdvisor Offline, Lonely Planet and other tools for my iPhone – but ensure all guides and apps are up to date before you leave the tarmac.
• Check the costs before you go with your phone operator. Different countries have different roaming charges, and some may have roaming bundles that can save you money.
• Ensure your phone is switched off for data when you get on the plane (some phones allow you to enable data roaming or not)
• If needed, check your phone is unlocked so you can put your own SIM in if needed

Whilst your there

• Use Hotel WiFi/Coffee Shop/Recognised Public WiFi Hotspots if you need to data on the road.
• Consider using Skype or Facetime if you need to make calls – and do so at hotspots
• Text Messaging can be cheap, Multimedia Messaging (MMS) can often be a LOT cheaper depending on the provider.
• Avoid switching on roaming data if at all possible
• If you have to use data when out of reach of a hotspot, enable roaming, carry out the task, then disable roaming quickly to reduce your costs
• If you’re a location for more than a few days, consider buying a local mobile phone or SIM card.
• If you’re sent a message about your spending cap don’t ignore it and take it as a sign to stop using the phone – and ensure your data is off.

When you get home

• Check your billing and ensure it all adds up

And also consider do you really need your phone whilst abroad? Sometimes it’s good to leave that ball and chain behind you when you’re on your holiday…