topic Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off in Network

Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

bcracknell — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 16:16:06 GMT

I was on holiday in the US last month and had data roaming turned off before I even left the UK. At no point did I turn my data roaming on. Three texted me randomly at 3 points during my trip saying hello and welcome to the USA, outlining the costs associated with using my phone whilst in the USA. These texts were not telling me I was using my data, just letting me know I could. I've just received my bill to find I've been charged 3x £5 plus VAT for roaming services whilst in the USA. I can see on my bill that these supposed usages were really tiny amounts of data, <10MB. When I tried to dispute these charges, stating that I had my date roaming turned off the entire time, I was told there was no way the system could be incorrect. However, clearly, the system is wrong if I can be charged tiny amounts of data usage whilst my data roaming is turned off. Please can you advise what I can do in this situation?

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

MZone — Tue, 12 Sep 2023 17:22:43 GMT

I had the same issue. Data roaming switched off but tiny amounts of data shown as been used and got charged 2 days of £2 EU roaming charges. I went on live chat and they opened up a case and l was refunded. Think I did get 1 message to say my 24 hours has started and that’s what prompted me to check my bill.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

SimonL — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 09:26:47 GMT

I had the same thing. Had definitely turned off data roaming on my Three SIM before I left the UK but on arriving in Luxembourg got a text welcoming me to the country and describing data usage costs. Wasn't clear whether I was being charged or not so the next day I 'turned off' the Three SIM as I was using an eSim for travelling.

My bill has just arrived and shows data usage of 0.0009Mb on the first 2 days and a single Daily Roaming Charge of £1.67 + VAT.

Not a lot of money but clearly something is wrong with Three's roaming and billing system if they're charging when roaming is disabled on the phone. 0.0009Mb is a tiny amount of data, maybe that's needed for the phone to connect to the foreign network and confirm roaming is turned off. If that's the case then that small amount of data needs to be free.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

Gurj — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 13:44:35 GMT

Had the same issue while roaming with Data Roaming always off.

Several daily charges in USA during business and leisure trips in last few months and also on business trip to Germany. I turned Data roamign off on my iPhone 14 Pro Max, but didn't turn the primary SIM off since I wanted to receive (but not send) texts, since many services use text for login auth codes.
Before a few months ago I wasn't seeing this issue.
It has also happened on my wifes and 2 x grown up kids phones for our latest holiday in the USA we just returned from.

Three online chat support was not useful and just re-iterated Billing system is correct, so I asked them to raise a support request 9which will take 48 hrs to respond).

I've worked in mobile comms as a SW architect and the like for many years so am confident about phone settings but wonder if iPhone software might be an issue here, since in each case I was noted as using 0.9KB for the entire day of a roaming data charge only. I wonder if there is some message being sent by the iPhone over data periodically which bypasses the roaming setting (i.e. uses the wrong data path).

What phones have other being using when seeing this issue?

Once I get a response to the support case I'll share the update here.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

atommyk — Sun, 01 Oct 2023 16:50:05 GMT

iPhone 14 pro over here. Maybe similar issue on recent trip to Portugal but definitely now happening in Austria. Data as you’ve said about 1kb, once a day between 02:40-02:50 am (definitely asleep then) and data usage from GPRS so I do wonder also whether this is iPhone software or three SIM checking in only.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

Gurj — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 20:16:22 GMT

The support case was immediately closed with text:
"closing case as there were no billing error found please manage customer expectations as per the notes mentioned in the interaction."

This actually feels quite rude and there was no opportunity for me to challenge, re-open or respond other than getting back in touch with Three Support. I'll do that again when I have enough time to go through the process.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

Gurj — Mon, 02 Oct 2023 20:19:56 GMT

One other additional interesting fact is that my daughters iPhone 14 Pro didn't show this issue although my wife and son's did like my phone. We all have Three SIMs on the same monthly contract and all turned off data roaming in the USA.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

atommyk — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 06:15:03 GMT

That is indeed bizarre. I think Three's system itself doesn't really know what it's doing - my latest interrogation of the data usage shows some of these GPRS snippets as included and some not.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

Gurj — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 20:58:00 GMT

I have confirmed with my daughter that she didn't upgrade to iOS17 until the 19th Sept and then she also started getting the text messages about roaming charges after that date, while we were still in Florida.
This suggests the issue might be more to do with iOS17 bugs. I have raised an Apple support ticket and not sure if it will ever get looked at (my last one wasn't) but it's done.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

atommyk — Tue, 03 Oct 2023 21:08:35 GMT

Interesting. Keep us posted on what that support ticket yields, I've been on iOS17 since it's been launched.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

jellybean — Wed, 04 Oct 2023 22:13:54 GMT

I had the same issue. I was in the USA for 11 days in Sept and had roaming turned off, but got hit for roaming charges on 3 days without changing any of my settings. I have an iPhone 14 pro, and at least one of the days was prior to me upgrading to iOS 17. The data usage showed as 0.9KB on two of the days, and 1.9KB and 3.9KB on the third.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

Rjam92 — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 15:09:22 GMT

I have had the same thing happened to me, I just came back from Italy with the data roaming charged over three days, I had it turned off the whole time. I spoke over online chat and have been given credit on my account to cover the cost, they seemed to still imply it was good will and I had used my data (which I hadn't). Apparently if you log on to your account and set your daily roaming cap to £0 it should stop it happening in future, clearly something is not right with their system.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

atommyk — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 16:07:55 GMT

Surely that's not a solution if eg you might require an urgent phone call that is then blocked because you've set your roaming limit to 0, just so that you don't get charged for random 1kB packages once per day?

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

atommyk — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 09:34:34 GMT

I've just raised my issues with Three chat too. They have relatively swiftly agreed to a credit in the contested sums. However, I've also asked about how to avoid further charges once I travel next, and whether they can raise a ticket with their tech team:

sometimes customer device connect with other network while traveling and hence customer will get charge to using services, but we will help you if you having issue about this.

Was their answer. Not particularly confidence instilling that we won't be at this very point again in the near future.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

JonathanB — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 14:58:53 GMT

Hi everyone,

Sorry I've not been able to weigh in on this issue till now. It's definitely something I'd like to get investigated further. I see a lot of you are mentioning iPhone/iOS. Are you all iPhone users, anyone on Android had this issue?

Has everyone been able to check their bills? Is it always between a fraction of, or a couple of KB that shows?

Thanks,
Jonathan

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

atommyk — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 15:34:33 GMT

iPhone 14 Pro, latest iOS (updated to iOS 17 before travelling), mine showed ≤1kB.

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

TiffanyMCM — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 11:42:21 GMT

Hi @bcracknell - I had the exact same issue! Like yourself, I switched roaming off, but yet Three charged me, so I am going to raise a formal complaint that Three is not respecting the setting of customers’ devices. I am just waiting to receive and review my last 12 months bills (since I travel frequently) but my Three roaming is always off - in fact, I have another network plan overseas which gives me free roaming internationally (so I sometimes don’t even turn it on in the UK) - I’m only really with Three still because I want to keep the number and haven’t gone around to sort that, I used to like the Three products and coverage was decent, but it’s really disappointing with this latest issue and their unreliable coverage (often I don’t have full string signals when in central London).

I felt compelled write this post/ reply because I am wondering how many other customers are being incorrectly charged by Three.

@JonathanB @Could Three customer service pls provide an email address I can submit the complaint formally?
Thanks

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

TiffanyMCM — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 11:53:16 GMT

iPhone 15 pro, iOS 17.0.3

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

SimonL — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 14:48:28 GMT

I've just tested it and it's happened again.

Last time I was in Luxembourg, had Roaming disabled on the 3 SIM but was charged for 0.0019Mb of data (see below)

This time I was visiting the USA. Before leaving the UK I made certain Roaming was disabled and also turned off the 3 SIM. I thought the problem might have been the network in Luxembourg so one day while there I turned the 3 SIM on briefly to test and almost straight away got a text from 3 saying I would be charged. This then appeared on the monthly bill which shows the same 0.0019Mb (this time much more expensive than the EU!)

I'd really like to be able to receive calls whilst away but not be charged for roaming data.

I'm not sure if the problem is with 3 charging for data that wasn't used or a bug in the iPhone (I've a 14 Pro running the latest OS) which means it uses some data even when Roaming is turned off. I read somewhere that it could be Facetime/iMessage using data to register the phone number as active.

It would be great if Apple could fix the bug or 3 didn't charge for such tiny amounts of data. Maybe 3 are being charged by the overseas telecoms companies, so it isn't their fault.

Would be good to get to the bottom of this and find a solution that works.

Or 3 could bring back free roaming!!!

Re: Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

atommyk — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 15:41:40 GMT

Clearly, something has gone wrong since re-introducing roaming charges to the network. I'm so tempted to move back to IDmobile or another provider where you don't have the roaming issue, simply to not have to worry about the flipping charges for <1kB data usage that seems to occur when the SIM checks in. The only reason I switched back to Three was because the Apple watch pairing required it, but on the face of it, it's maybe more trouble than it's worth.