Orange Slaps Student With £8000 Mobile Broadband Bill

[mobaholic]

For those needing a warning, see here.

[ganjbakhash]

For those needing a warning, see here.

OMG!!!!  This ridicules at the both ends. The guy should confirm international rates before use. And for Orange its too much expensive! Anyway its a good caution for any one who is planing to use like that.

[andy]

One ridiculous thing is that the EU has mandated that mobile networks institute a bill shock system that will prevent things going beyond either a default level (maybe £50) or one which the customer has consented to in advance.

This is due to become compulsory in the fairly near future - I can't be bothered to check the date right now - but perhaps the various companies' actions in leaving it until almost the very last moment might be viewed as touched by cynicism

[mobaholic]

Agreed andy.  The relevant date is given in the sentence:-

"However, the EU has already instructed mobile operators last year to put in place some mechanism by March 2010 that could prevent users from getting these “bill shocks”.

[petkow]

Also the thing that annoys me about this particular case is that they have so very 'kindly' allowed the poor student two years to pay it off in as well as a 50% reduction. The fact was that the student was using a SIM from Orange UK (part of France Telecom) on the Orange FR home network. It's the old "taking money out of your left pocket to put in the right pocket" trick. If say the student had run off to Thailand, USA, India etc. you might have understood that at the end of the day, if the home network has to pay an unrelated network for someones stupid mistake, the home network will always be out of pocket, and so will certainly attempt to recoup it from the customer. (Admitedly there is a huge margin even in there, as whole sale 'network-to-network' rates are a complex business).

However in this particular case, everything is within the same company. That data would likely cost Orange UK precisely nothing, as the different divisions of Orange are likely to work out these things on a largely reciprocal basis. I think that 50% reduction should be more like a 90% reduction. Let him pay 800 quid for his error, but why still sqeeze him dry for 4000 quid! That is sheer greed!

[andy]

Yes, I thought it will be in March, but was lazy about finding out the exact day

edit:that's because I hadn't read the second page of this, which says 1st March

I think Orange should be dragged up before the regulators and asked to explain whether and why they are leaving it until the very last minute

[andy]

by the way, I have an iPhone SIM (unused), and in the leaflet it says a couple of times you might want to switch on data roaming before going aboard

I told a friend who just got an iPhone on Vodafone to make sure to turn it off

[petkow]

I think Orange should be dragged up before the regulators and asked to explain whether and why they are leaving it until the very last minute

Its perfectly clear to me! There is nothing that the networks love more than these "bill-shock" stories! As long as they can get these within the law, they will quite happily not enforce this.

By the way, I wonder how many people realise they can put voluntary credit limits on their accounts. I have one of my contract SIM's set at 10 pounds! Basically, I never want it to go over the inclusive allowance.