£1700 Orange phone bill

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Holy smokes.

I'm with Orange on a contract with a couple other phones, until last month I never have used the Internet and in the last month have done the odd bit of surfing....


To my shock I have received a bill for £1700 for April and so far £200 for may. This is because in total in April around 500mb was downloaded and orange charge.... £2.50 per MB.

I've phoned orange explained that, 1. This is outrageous, 2. I have not downloaded that amount on the phone, i've just checked hotmail and a few websites 3. I can only get 2g here so 500mb browsing websites would have taken me quite a while. 4. Why was I not alerted at anypoint of the high usage. 5. Reminding them the bills on the phones are £250 average per month that would be instantly cancelled.

They seem pretty reasonable and are looking into it and are going to inform me tomorrow. I've found from searching today many similar posts elsewhere where people have just got their money back as the jump from £0 a month to over £1500 is so dramatic, so hoping it will be that easy without have to involve Citizens Advice Bureau and letter writing etc.

Anyone else have a similar experience?

 

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Your average phone bill is £250 a month who are you ringing? aliens on Mars lol. Only thing you can do is contest it but if that is what you used and you don't have an internet price plan then they can charge you that as it's in the t&c but hopefully they will see common sense and drop the charge to something more reasonable.

 

long story, just have a 4 phones that others use in a side-line type business.

Yeah, the fine print means that I do have to pay. It's just discretion that seems to be how people are getting refunded and it's not like the bill is £20-£30 and a slap on the wrist/lesson learned type of affair this is big money. It's a bit like forgetting to put the phone down for a month after ringing a cousin in austrailia and getting a 2k bill.

From looking about it looks like the EU is getting involved in preventing this kind of thing happening because of all the horror stories like this one. I saw one article of £8000 bill and another for 34,000 euros after i-player automatically downloaded someones episode of tv from a mobile whilst in germany!

 

One day using the net will be the same as using the electricity.. all inclusive, all included.. without the fat sting in the tail for actually using it in more than one place *shock horror*

I dream of that day... lol

 

I used to do that with vodafone, however, other than the basic contract all calls between the business phones 20mins (if i remember correctly) or less were free.

 

I remember the days of dial up before BT surftime my bills used to be over £300 a month in total hours,
BT surftime came along .. woosh ... £300 a month to £24 flat rate, how could they justify charging the original?
There was no change in the delivery technology wise.

 

My bill was quite as large, but i was informed by o2 that they were owed £280 from my old mobile broadband contract one month, done a bit of research online though and found out that mobile companies usually run something called 'bill shock' to deal with shocking bills! i.e you have regular £30 per month bills and then you suddenly find yourself with a £500 one to pay, if you talk to them nicely they will write it off and tell you to watch your usage, o2 did for me anyways, but they'll only do it once

 

not a good idea to phone pr0n chatlines on your mobile JK

 

You didn't use them abroad at all during the month of the high bill did you? Data and call rates can shoot up massivley in those cases.

 

When i want to america with work orange said that my minites would carry over there but when i got back they hit me with 800 quid bill, rang up and "they said Sorry that isnt the case" so i had to pay it

 

I have been charged £20 extra for having received 4 x £5 each short code messages by unknowns, and I was already screaming and my face was red. If I had to pay £1700 I really don't know what on earth is going to happen!

The trouble with Mobile Internet is that all these phones have buttons that opens up Internet and they are in places where you tend to accidentally press all the time. Unless you lock your phone keys which I know a lot of people don't, you could have accidentally pressed the "My 3" button and accessing the Internet.

If i don't plan to use Internet on the phone I tend to create some fake APN/AP's and select them as my default, and give it some fake DNS addresses etc. That way even when the buttons are pressed it just comes back and says error.

For now I have got an unlimited internet price plan (obviously subject to fair usage 2GB etc), but I'd still switch to Wifi mode wherever I can.

 

My girlfriend was once told that her bill was so high because she'd been using the phone abroad, actually suggested she was calling them from Spain. She was standing in Basildon high street.....

 

Last summer I was on holiday "down south" (in England i might add) and I needed to make use of the internet for work purposes (some holilday)...

Not having Wi-Fi in the friend's house i was staying in, I used work's Vodafone mobile as a 3G dongle. It worked great. unfortunately, it was £4.95 / MB....

luckily work absorbed the 250-odd quid bill, but my oh my I couldn't believe it was that much - especially when they let you contract 500MB for £7 a month!

 

Forgot to reply. All was sorted I phone them again and they saw sense. Pays to keep on at them.