14 
A supposedly “faulty” iPhone landed a man in severe financial trouble, after the phone racked up an astonishing £19k data bill — and network Orange tried to take the money from the bloke’s account.
Chris Bovis realised he’d been cut off, so phoned Orange for an explanation. That was when he discovered the network had tried to bill him £8,900 for exceeding his data allowance. His bank had rather unsurprisingly refused the transaction, so Orange blocked his number. Orange also told Chris his next bill would be around the £10,000 level.
The actual source of the problem is a little vague. Chris said the iPhone was even downloading data while switched off, with Apple employees agreeing it was broken in same way and replacing the phone. Orange eventually caved in and agreed to reduce his bill to £300, before completely giving up and writing off the entire amount. [Evening Standard]
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Providing this story is true. How the hell does a phone carry on “downloading data” when it’s switched off?
Also… What data did it download? Was the Phone itself downloading the entire encyclopedia Britannica? In every language…. Even braille…..
Also, since Apple admit the phone was faulty does Orange have a case for recovering the incurred costs against them?
i imagine some app opened a connection on the network which then started clocking data, but when the phone shut off the network failed to close the port and kept counting..
I had a fight like this with Vodafone, they charged me £90 for data, even though i was in another country to my phone and the phone was off for the 2 weeks i was away.. they said that my IMEI was logged as recording the data but when i went into the branch the guy behind the till showed me the full log and all the IMEI numbers 00000000000 even the ones where i did use data.. but voda would not budge, in the end i paid it and walked away from the contract. i will never have a data limited account again as i will never trust the system that logs usage..
Why on earth would you cave in that situation??
mate, 6 months of fighting, they had already taken the money as it was a DD and thats when i started looking into it. i was getting nothing and when i called them they would say the same thing over and over.. “it can not be our system that makes errors”
they suggested i install the app and monitor my use.. I pointed out that my use had been like 500mb every month for 1.5 years and this one month spike shows that there is an issue.. but nothing, i wrote to them and had nothing, £90 is cheaper than a solicitor letter .. and even if i won i would get £90+costs but what a waste of life..
Thanks for clearing up the “downloading data whilst switched off” however doesn’t that make the phone not at fault but the service provider? I know i’m splitting hairs now lol.
I would have thought (and as suggested) The IMEI log of the device would be shown as switched off therefore this supposed open port for looping data should have disabled.
An oversight by orange perhaps? And Voda it seems….
i guess its up to the phone to send the close command? Vodas IMEI log was amazingly non helpful, it was all pretty much blank and logged things that never happened all over the show.. it would need to be worked over to link it all up correctly and the fact it recorded so many things as 000000000 rather than my actual IMEI was a joke..
Fair enough. Though I think you can submit a small claims court submission online these days at not great expense – and I’ve heard that big companies often don’t defend themselves so you win a CCJ by default.
Also, did the ombudsman not have anything to say on the matter?
Either way, I feel for you. Tough luck.
The Ombudsman said i have to offer them the chance to investigate the issue.. i did but i never chased it after that.. might look into that small claims thing though..
http://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk
I’ve not used it myself, just heard about it. Do let us know how you get on if you choose to proceed with this route.
He was probably holding it wrong
Uh huh…My “faulty” phone must’ve just remembered to “download” the entire series of ‘Bouncy Blonde Babes in HD’ even while it was “switched off” next to my bed.
Your honour.
By default, data contracts should have pre-agreed limits, after which you simply get temporarily cut-off until you contact the provider and agree more (or not). It’s incredibly cynical for companies to continue to allow this to happen, and all for naught as well – seriously, who do they think *isn’t* going to query an £8.9K phone bill ? And when it’s publicised, it’s the company who look like dicks either way.
no amount of data is worth 10k.. FFS.. mobile data needs to be sorted this is just f**king stupid.. and really irresponsible of the Orange, no one can really drop a 10K phone bill, they should auto limit to £100 and then cut the account.. then only unlock at user request.. so stupid..
Mobile providers should do what banks and Credit card companies do, if there is unusual activity on your account they call you to check if it is legitimate, of course they won’t do this without legislation forcing them to.
They didn’t believe him initially as it would mean a iPhone with decent reception.
LOL!
Isn’t it about time mobile providers users to set upper caps on mins, texts and data for this very reason!!
So at what point was his bill £19,000? I read that as his bank refused to pay £8,900 – at which point the balance is still £8,900 – then he was told it would be £10,000 at the next bill (in other words it would have increased by £1100).
i guess it crossed over 2 billing periods, cos all phone contacts fail to run 1st to 1st.. cos that would be simple.. so they bill you 2 weeks from this month and 2 weeks from the next, making hard to track what happens when.. its just greed being smart to stop you questioning when they over charge you..
Sure, I appreciate that. But my point is he was never (it would appear to me at least) faced with the prospect of paying £19,000 in total.
oh i c, i assume the wording is wrong and that bill 1 was 9k and bill 2 was 10K.. other wise how?
Once again, while their contract data limits might be behind the times a little (1GB max), O2 have the right idea – hit your data limit (with SMS reminders at 80% and 100%) and you’re throttled back to 15kb/s (effectively GPRS speeds) until either your contract ticks over to the next month or you add a data bolt on.
No massive bills, end of.
vodafone: If you go over your monthly allowance, you’ll automatically be charged £5 for every 250MB of extra UK internet you use.
so £8900 = 448000 MB of data (one month) = 14833 MB a day = 14.8 GB a day.
sounds like icloud may have been trying to download his music collection continuously or maybe another media app re-downloading a certain movie or something.
I manage to use about 1.5GB a day as I don’t have a broadband connection at home, and this is enough for me to watch a few TV shows for 2 – 3 hours and a bit of browsing. p.s. I don’t have TV either.
just relised he is on orange which is 25MB for £1 so he downloaded 222500 MB = 7416 MB a day = 7.4 GB a day
im not great at this sort of Maths but lets say he has an iphone and 100% 3g reception.. could he physically download 7gb in a day?
I think 7gb in a 24 hour period would be possible. With some of the “better quality” 3G masts around…. I can clock some really decent speeds on my local o2 mast.
fair enough.. what about taking into account, life (travel to work, being at work, travel home, Eating, sleeping, social interaction, home wifi?) its a lot of time to spend on the phone, i bet being connected that long would drain the power as well? then to do that every day solid.. i bets its hard to do, to generate that level of use?? i dont know.. just asking
Most definitely. The best speeds I’ve seen (in the middle of Durham so quite close to a store for the network) have been a little over 15Mb which with some rough maths comes to 6.5 GB an hour.
More usual speeds I often see are around 6-7Mb which is still 2.7 GB an hour.
thanks.. its good to know..
19,000… well I have been a victim of this type of thing before. I went just over 200 meg over my limit and got charged over 200 pounds, the phone may have been faulty but the real problem is the providers just totally taking the pi$$