£491 for less than 5 seconds of roaming

[jarramono]

This week I got a £491 bill for using 80MB abroad. I was well within my allowance, but apparently Three charges £6 per MB in some countries, for every single bit, regardless of your allowance.
I didn't check my spending cap before travelling because I'm carefeul of never going over my allowance. I assumed it was £0 but apparently it is £999999 by default.
Did anybody else got ripped off like this?
This surely goes against the Trade (Mobile Roaming) Regulations 2023 as abusive or anomalous usage https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2023/214/part/2/made

[JonathanB]

Hi @jarramono,

I'm sorry to hear you've received such a high bill. I'll do my best to help figure this out.

It's best to check the rates for your destination(s) on our website, this way you can see whether your allowances can be used under Go Roam. For non Go Roam destinations charges are per MB for data. We appreciate that this can be very expensive, so we'd recommend avoiding or limiting data use in these destinations, buying a Data Passport which gives unlimited data for £5 per day, or making use of a local SIM.

If you've not been to any non Go Roam destinations, then you may have connected to a roaming network for an airline, ship, ferry, or cruise liner as these have £6 per MB charges. It's best to switch data roaming off in your phone settings while travelling.

I appreciate the above doesn't help with the bill at hand though. I'll send you a PM to help you get in touch with some colleagues can look into this further. We operate a worldwide data roaming limit which defaults to £45 per month, so it's odd that this hasn't kicked in. I think that's the best angle to check this out from.

To view your private messages on the community, click on your avatar image in the top right of any community page, then "Messages".

In terms of the legislation it looks like you've quoted from where it states: "Nothing in this part - restricts a British provider from imposing conditions on the use of its mobile phone service to prevent abusive or anomalous usage by the customers of an overseas provider." This is in reference to customers of overseas networks visiting the UK and connecting to UK networks. When abuse is mentioned in that context it means breaching fair usage of the network in a way that may be detrimental to other users. For example using some sort of personal account with free or discounted roaming to visit the UK but use a large amount of data for commercial business purposes in such a way that it congests the network for everyone else.

With data speeds the unit of measurement is Mbps (Megabits per second) whereas volumes are in MB (Megabytes) so the calculations aren't correct, there's 8 Mb per MB.

I'm not trying to downplay your complaint with these last two points but I do need to correct or clarify incorrect information posted on the community. The team I'll refer you onto next will look into what's happened and do their best to help.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[jarramono]

Hi Jonathan,

Thank you for taking the time to look into my problem and the information I posted. You are the first person from Three tackled the real problem (the £45 cap not kicking in https://www.three.co.uk/support/roaming-and-international/roaming/managing-roaming-costs ) which gives me hopes that it isn't the company's intention to be doing this sort of things.

I did talk with the Social Media Team yesterday and they created Query #230726101185228. On Monday I called regular customer support created and they created Query #230724101178826 which came back yesterday saying "bill recalculated and no problems found"

Sorry about missreading that legislation and the speed measurements. Nevertheless, this still means that you can burn £500 in 10 seconds at 4G, and I don't think your regular customares are aware of that. Can't imagine who wouldn't prefer to get no service at all instead of paying that.

I get that all phone companies have cheeky traps like that and you need to stay competitive. A sort of "Haha you consumed all your spend cap instantly, pay more attention next time! ;)" but when instead of £45 its £490 it stops being funny. I need to pay rent and I've been having an anxiety attack for the last 4 days.

I hope this issue gets solved soon because it's draining my health.

[JonathanB]

Hi @jarramono,

Glad to hear you managed to get in touch with the team. I'm sure they'll take ownership and get this sorted out as best as they can.

No worries in terms of the info regarding legislation and speeds, as I said before it's not to detract from your main point at all, and I do quite agree the data charges can accumulate exceptionally fast with today's mobile technology.

I can't access your account directly or disclose information about it over the community, but I'll certainly check in with the team about your case to make sure it's going in the right direction.

Thanks,
Jonathan

[Henensk]

It had happened exactly the same way to me.  Traveling on Irish Ferry two weeks ago suddenly I got a text message while I was walking in the duty-free shop "you almost used up your credit allowance" and one second later "From 3: You have reached your spend cap limit so you will not be able to use any out of allowance services in the UK or make calls, send texts or access data when you roam abroad.". 😞 

I set up £30 spending limit previous day just to cover the two weeks holiday roaming costs....

If I were you I would cancel direct debit and refuse to pay this insane high bill. This is daytime robbery to charge £6/Mb internet anywhere and anytime around the world. Where is this rule written when we sign the contract with the provider??

[jarramono]

I'd refuse to pay the bill but by the time I found out about it the money was already gone.

The most frustrating thing is calling the billing customer setvice and them talking like these were perfectly reasonable prices that anybody would be willing to pay. You tell them about the £45 worldwide roaming cap on te contract and they just change the subject. Luckily you had a cap set up, or you could be looking at a 5 digit debt with them.

Still have not heard anything from the escalated social support team and I'm getting desparate to get my money back.

I imagine there must be other victims of the same glitch and it will have the same resolution as this https://www.irishtimes.com/technology/2023/01/12/three-ireland-fined-2400-for-overcharging-1600-cust... If they try to get away with it because of some hole in the UK regulation that the EU doesn't have then it will be even bigger news.