Roaming charges whilst data roaming turned off

[bcracknell]

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? 

[atommyk]

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. 

[Gurj]

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.

[atommyk]

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

[jellybean]

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. 

[Rjam92]

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. 

[atommyk]

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? 

[atommyk]

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.

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[JonathanB]

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

[atommyk]

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

[TiffanyMCM]

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