Trick me once, shame on me, trick me twice, shame on you. Having said that, it goes without saying that one ought to take responsibility and the necessary pro-active steps in order to ensure that one does not return to an insane phone bill because you forgot to turn off data roaming on your exotic holiday. This is what happened to Patricia Al who hails from southwest London, after she failed to follow the required steps prior to making her way to Turkey.
Patricia basically opted out of the 50MB data roaming limit, and also the £120 ($195 USD) overseas spending cap that O2, her carrier, placed there in the first place in order to avoid any kind of unwanted and unpleasant experiences. Upon returning home, you can expect the shock of her life when she picked up a tab from O2 that amounted to a whopping £12,520.87, with the bulk of that hailing from international data roaming.
Apparently, Patricia made use of her handset to download two half-hour episodes of the BBC One comedy My Family over the hotel’s Wi-Fi network, making this one of the most expensive comedies that she would have watched in her entire life, and then some. Apparently, the hotel’s Wi-Fi was down as she downloaded the TV shows, and hence, her smartphone’s data plan took over – without requiring any input from her.
In the end, each episode cost her more than £5,000 in terms of data roaming, with another £2,500 worth of roaming charges in all. O2 did credit £6,644.97 as a goodwill gesture into her account, but she had to pony up the rest of the cash to settle the bill herself. Best to learn from other peoples’ mistakes, right?
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