The roaming rip-off is over? Pull the other one

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

The EU is in self-congratulatory mood today, declaring that its clampdown on mobile roaming charges means “the roaming rip-off is now coming to an end”.

While the EU has indeed made progress, we’re a long way from popping the champagne corks and declaring a famous consumer victory.

Look, for example, at the data rates. The EU’s new rules still allow mobile networks to charge up to 1 Euro (86p) per MB for data downloads when roaming. That’s £880 per GB! To put that in perspective, BT charges £15.65 per month for a 10GB data download allowance on its Option 1 package; mobile networks can theoretically charge £8,806 for the same amount of data! And I’ve yet to see any compelling evidence that the costs associated with mobile data are an order of magnitude higher than they are for fixed line providers.

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How did Vodafone slash a £31,000 bill to £229?

Wednesday, July 9th, 2008

You may remember our story from earlier this week, when a customer of Vodafone-owned Yes Telecom got home from holiday to find a £31,000 phone bill on the mat, all because he’d downloaded an episode of Prison Break and a couple of songs whilst laying on the beach in Portugal.

Vodafone might have thought it was a nice piece of face-saving PR to cut the poor chap’s bill down to £229, but as PC Pro forum member Amnesia10 rightly commented on the article, “From £31,000 to £229!!!!  How could it afford to write this off?  If it were a genuine cost it would not write it off so easily.”

Quite. So we asked Vodafone how it managed to wipe more than 99% off the bill? A company spokesperson assured us that Vodafone did take a financial hit on the write-off. How much? She wouldn’t say.

Anyone want to bet it’s £229?

Update: Vodafone says the bill was actually from last September and new measures put in place since then would have prevented our intrepid Prison Break fan from running up such a colossal bill.