Friday Puzzle Time! (aka EU Roaming Data Charges)
Posted by Dylan Beattie on 17 January 2014 • permalinkI’m going to France. I want to be able to use my phone for data when I’m out there, so I’m investigating the cheapest way to do this. My phone is on Orange, who are now owned by EE, so I wander over to http://explore.ee.co.uk/roaming/orange/france and have a look.
(I should mention here that I’m generally really happy with Orange. The reception’s good. Their network doesn’t randomly drop calls or send me text messages 12 hours late, and Orange Wednesdays are awesome.)
Anyway. Here’s their data options:
Before we even get into the chaos of daily limits and terms and conditions, notice how the EU 100MB daily bundle gives you 100MB for £3, whilst the EU Data 500MB bundle gives you 500Mb for a hundred and fifty pounds? Same data but the bundle offers “93% saving on standard rates” – which is such a huge discount as to be really quite unsettling. If someone tried to sell you a MacBook for £50, you’d be a bit suspicious, right?
So I tried to work out what that catch might be – using EE’s website; Orange’s EU Mobile Internet Daily Bundles T&Cs, and a phone call to Orange customer services. Here’s what I found.
| My Question | Website | T&Cs | Customer Services (referring to an internal T&C document dated Dec 15th 2013) |
| What happens if I go over 100MB in a single day? | “This bundle reoccurs up to 10 times until midnight of that same day (local time), each time the bundle reoccurs you will be charged an additional bundle fee and recieve additional bundle allowance. If you exceed the reoccuring bundle limit you’ll be charged 45.9p/MB.”” (Does this mean I get ten bundles per day? Or one bundle per day, for up to ten days?) | “Any data used above the amount in your bundle, will be charged at our standard data roaming rate of 45.9p per MB. So, for example, if you have the £1 per day bundle and use more than your 20MB you will be charged an additional £1 for every additional 20MB you use up to 200MB (as the bundle reoccurs ten times). Any data usage in excess of 200MB will then be charged at our standard data roaming rate of 45.9p per MB.” (that sounds to me like you get ten bundles per day – otherwise it would just say “if you use more than 20Mb you’ll pay standard rates for the rest of the day” – no?) | Customer services advised me that bundles only work once per day – so when you reach 100MB, you’ll pay normal roaming charges until midnight, and you’ll get another 100MB bundle the next day. |
| How many times can I use the bundle in a single day? | See above. | “A daily bundle will last until midnight (local time of the country you purchased the bundle in) on the day you made the purchase, or until you have used up your data allowance, whichever comes first in time. Once you’ve purchased a bundle, you will be opted in for the bundle to reoccur up to ten times” Doesn’t say if that’s ten times per day, or ten times per trip, or per billing period, or what. | Just once – see above. You can’t use two daily bundles in the same day. |
| How many days does it last for? | Really unclear whether it’s ten bundles per day – for as many days as you like – or whether it’s one bundle per day, for up to ten days. And no indication of whether that ten day limit is per trip or per billing period or what. | See above. | Customer services said there’s no limit – if I went to France for fifty days, I’d get fifty bundles. One per day, for the duration of my trip. |
| How much does it cost once I exceed my bundle limit? | “If you exceed the reoccuring bundle limit you’ll be charged 45.9p/MB.” | “Any data used above the amount in your bundle, will be charged at our standard data roaming rate of 45.9p per MB.” | £3.70 per MB. Though I was advised that information might be out of date. |
| What does the “ten bundle” limit actually mean? | Unclear | Unclear | No idea. Neither of the advisors I spoke to could tell me what the “up to 10 times” limit actually meant. |
So, let’s spin those various answers into some possible phone bills, bearing in mind nobody can actually give me a definitive answer. Imagine we’re going to France from Feb 1st to Feb 16th, and we’re going to use 25Mb/day most days on e-mail and Facebook and the like, and 250Mb on Fridays, ‘cos we’re watching snowboarding videos on YouTube.
- With 1 EU100 bundle per day, unlimited days – that’d cost us £185.70
- At 1 EU100 bundle per day, up to 10 days – would cost us £270.98
- The EU500 plan? Given our 500MB quota runs out halfway through our trip, we’d pay £322.13
- If the chap on the phone was right about £3.70/MB, we’d be looking at £1,110 in excess data charges for our two nights of YouTube, and a total bill of £1,158.
And on top of all that, whoever wrote their (legally binding?) terms & conditions cannot spell ‘receive’ or ‘recurring’.
No wonder I have a headache.
UPDATE: So when I texted EU100 to 2088 to activate the bundle, it failed… I rang them (again), and apparently there’s already a bundle on there. It’s been on there since February 2013. Will it run out? “No, sir”. Is there any kind of limit on how many days I get? “No, sir.”
So that’s an hour of research and phone calls to work out that nobody knows for sure what the bundle is, but it’s probably safe to assume it *doesn’t* run out because I’ve already got one and it’s been active for nearly a year.
O_o
