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Painter and decorator Chris Wilson got a bit of a shock when he came to pay his latest mobile bill, with the kind lady from Orange giving him advance warning something bad was about to happen — then asking for £6,875 to settle his monthly bill.
According to the BBC, Wilson says he only downloaded one TV programme during the billed month, which was 43 minutes long. His explanation went: “I rung up to pay my bill and the lady said she wanted to warn me that the month’s bill was going to be slightly higher than normal. Then she told me how much it was going to be – £6,875. I nearly had a heart attack.”
The network claims he actually downloaded over 9GB of data, despite only having a 750MB allowance, and has provided him with an itemised bill outlining his media streaming times and dates. Given that you can buy an Orange SIM and 1GB of data for £30 a month, that does seem like a rather unfair bit of profiteering from Orange, regardless of whether he did or didn’t stream that much content.
Wilson denies downloading that much stuff, but Orange is still threatening to cut him off unless he magics up the money, although it has taken £2,500 off the bill, leaving him to find just over £4k. [BBC]
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So he’s been charged ~£1.22/MB for each of the additional ~8,250MB.
In this instance while granted the maximum available included data allowance is painfully low, I MUCH prefer O2′s method – hit your limit and throttle you back to about 15kb/s, with texts informing you at ~80% and 100% of your allowance.
Yeah it really has to be the responsibility of Orange and the man to inform him he is over and being charged at a higher rate. If they did inform him a few times and he just carried on the bill is fair.
I’m sure they’ll cut it down to a reasonable amount and put a payment plan in for him, the bad PR is enough of a motivator.
He would’ve have been given information when signing up to the service that there was a data limit and the cost of using the services over that limit – even if not verbally it would be in his contract. Once Orange have done that it is his responsibility as the user to monitor his data use and ensure he stays within the terms of his contract.
Orange have already offered him a 30%+ reduction but he is still refusing to pay because it was so unfair for them to charge him for the services he used.
If you read the full article on the BBC you will find out it has happened before and they did warn him and waived the bill the 1st time… He then did it again.
The man is obv BSing to get his way out of it… but yes the chargers are stupid, i would make him pay £500 quid though.
exactly, the guy is blatantly taking the piss! he should have been more responsible when downloading GBs of porn
And then when you think of how much money it actually cost Orange to supply him with that quantity of data, I’d still say £500 is still ridiculously unreasonable…
Given that as an EE customer he could be on a 4G tariff and only pay £66 for the first 8GB as inclusive data, they are shafting him more than a little.
However, if the warnings were sent in good time with the means to view and assess his data allowance throughout the month, then especially as this isn’t his first offence, he deserves it wholeheartedly.
But don’t they charge £3.25 per GB over the allowance? So that should be ~£30 for 9GB of data… or have I completely missed the boat here?
I think they’re data bundles. IE you prepay for 1gb data.
That’s one feature of my S3 I’m very happy with – once I reach the data limit I programme into the phone, it cuts off mobile data after that point.
You mean feature of ICS – the fact it’s on S3 is purely coincidental
An EU directive came into force on the 1st of July that required the networks to warn customers when they were approaching €50 on their bill. It also placed limits on how much networks could charge for data at the top end. However, that only applies to data roaming within the EU, not domestic data charges.
So it would seem that Britain lags behind the EU in this regard.
If it comes into force in the EU it applies here just as equally as any other EU member state. The only exceptions allowed are where the national laws exceed the EU ones e.g. the EU laws on warranties aren’t applicable in the UK because the existing laws go beyond the EU directives.
It already has come into force, but like I said it only applies to data roaming charges, which were a particular issue common to most of Europe.
http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-12-316_en.htm
My point is that Britain are yet to introduce similar legislation to cap domestic data charges, which can also be ruinously expensive.
That doesn’t really matter to the carrier since even if we haven’t introduced local legislation the EU directive is still binding to the companies. It just means that it has to go direct to an EU court which is an expensive hassle but still as all these companies are operating in the EU they have to abide by EU legislation even if it hasn’t passed into local law.
Its actually a tricky scenario where EU laws pass but haven’t been adopted into localised legislation yet. Technically from what I have been told it doesn’t matter unless there is a law contradicting it. But practically its really difficult to locally enforce laws if it hasn’t been moved into local law yet.
Read the press release. It’s clearly specific to roaming charges only. It makes no mention of domestic data charges (i.e. charges originating from your contracted ‘home’ network), in the UK or anywhere else. Home data charges are simply outside the scope of this regulation.
Sorry thought you meant domestic law not domestic roaming. Although it is worth noting that the UK definition of roaming is slightly different from that in other nations since we handle our networks slightly different.
Thinks to take away from this:-
1.Oranges’s charges for data over your allowance are inexcusably high.
2.All clients will have been warned about these charges in their contract.
3.This customer had a large overage bill cancelled previously at which time orange explained to him when and why he had racked up these charges.
4.He has then proceeded to do exactly the same thing again, but appears surprised that they won’t waive the bill this time.
I got stung by Orange in a similar fashion. I was waiting for them to connect my broadband but needed internet access as I was freelancing from home at the time. I paid for a dongle and 1GB of data, which was more than enough for my work purposes. I used Orange’s own data manager to monitor how much of my allowance I was using.
So imagine my surprise when I got stung for an additional £40 the next month. Naturally, their data monitoring software has a habit of breaking and not monitoring your usage correctly.
Seems legit.
Sounds like he’s just stupid and second time round is just arguing they charge too much, always a valid defence against paying for something you use.
Since he’s a painter and decorator, I expect several of his customers will consider this a valid argument when they get his bill in future.
N4 update?
Only major annoyance so far is that despite having various mini-usb leads,chargers etc that do fit the N4, only the official lead seems to charge it as all the others seem to charge/not charge constantly, thus rendering them useless. This means I’m currently carrying the ‘original’ lead around so I can charge in the car via a mini-usb cigarette lighter in the car, then take the lead out and plug into the original adapter to charge at home…..pain as I guess I’ll have to buy a ‘original’ car adapter. Also mulling over what case to get and further NFC activities I can set up
Hmm, not noticed that with mine. I generally use the charger from my Nexus 7 and whatever of my many cables are to hand.
Have you seen anything about N4 wireless charging, car chargers, etc? Makes me laugh even the ‘bumper’ case is out of stock
yeah, I ordered the bumper and am waiting. Nothing at all on the official charger but there are several alternatives.
Does anyone know when N4 might be available in UK? Google is missing sales out!
god only knows. I got mine, Julian got his (finally) MHatti3000 is on his second (first was faulty).
I really hope this was not an advert campaign by Google to promote N4 and then sell for higher price just before Xmas
So he downloaded 9GB in 43 minutes on a 3G phone?
Good point. I can’t download that my router. But it is with Talkbawk… And I’ve heard they still use carrier pigeons at peak times…
No, he downloaded a 43 minute-long TV programme. Which was 9GB big (what the hell was it, some 4k extravaganza?!) and definitely took longer than 43 minutes to download.
He probably had his phone tethered and didn’t realise he was downloading other stuff in the background.
He’s still a moron for not listening after Orange’s first warning to him in April.
Aaaaahhhh… well that at least makes more sense.
A lot can be said for things like 3G Watchdog. A bit of common sense goes a long way too.
No, they claim he downloaded 9GB over the month, he claims he downloaded a 43 Minute long TV show.
Ok, so this guy is a tool and knew the rules.. however this does not make the rules right. Mobile data is almost as big a “legal Theft” as insurance.
Its a con, it must be bought in line and stuff like this is just the phone company being irresponsible, they know from an average bill that this is a spike and when it happens they should lock it out until they get permission from the user to carry on or something like that. how so they warrant such high price for data when most places now give free wifi.. bloody stupid.
Why wasn’t he just cut off?
If I get close to my unlimited limit (unlimited before the 1GB cap came in so I’m still on 3GB) I get a text warning me that I’m close and if I hit it O2 shuts it off until my next billing date. No over charging. No nasty surprise. Perfect. And if I feel I need extra then arrange for a bolt-on or to take off the limits after being warned over the extra cost.
The guy was stupid for thinking that a high def 47 min TV stream was well within his allocated data. But mobile service providers need to allow for this stupidity and set strict limits.
Personally he deserves to have the bill around his neck so he can be a warning to anyone who tries to do it again.
He’s obviously clever enough to get the media involved to try and get a ‘goodwill’ knock off rate.
One of the reasons I like my Three network because it automatically cuts me off once I’ve reached the data allowance, YAAAAAAAAAAY!
You have a data allowance on Three? Surely just pay for the one plan.
I was planning for the one plan but I don’t use much of it and went for Sim300 instead.
I’d just tell them I’m not paying, they cannot legally do anything. Stories about debt collectors and court and going to prison is all just to put fear into you and make you pay up.
All you do is let it go to court, they realize how dumb it is, side with you and then the law gets changed when the case has gone public.
This sort of faceless, automated charging needs to stop. It’s as if how much people are charged is completely beyond the control of the company.
Companies seem to be able to remove themselves from all accountability these days when it comes to issues, throwing low paid call centre staff at customers, staff who have no power to rectify the situation and who simply act as sponges for customer’s anger.
It’s bad for the mental health of call centre staff, it’s bad for customers and their rights as customers, but bloody brilliant for companies.
This is why I’m so glad I moved to 3 when I got my iP5! 28GB of data this month, and not a penny over my £36p/m