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? 

[MZone]

I have experienced this myself on iPhone 14 Pro Max whilst in Spain. Luckily I got the £2 a day roaming charges refunded via live chat for the 3 days it triggered using the tiniest amount of data. Appears to happen when you switch your phone on after it’s been switched off or when your phone dies so you plug it into charge and then it switches itself on. Very odd and never experienced this issue on any other network. Think roaming should just be free in the EU and then they wouldn’t have to worry about this issue as much. 

[IBR17XVII]

I have set my spend cap to zero & removed roaming from my account so I'm hoping that should be enough.

I still need to receive texts so taking the SIM out would be a last resort.

[LisaJH]

Pleased to have found this thread! Just had another bill from Three where they have charged me for roaming when roaming was turned off on my phone. Spoke to the Billing department and the only solution offered was to put a "zero spending cap" on my account so that I cannot be charged for roaming when abroad. How can they charge me when roaming is switched off? We have 2 iphones, one on Three and one on EE. The settings on both identical. EE did not charge my husband for roaming but Three did charge me. This has happened a couple of times in the past 12 months (we travel a lot,) and I had put it down to issues with the e-sims we were using but it just can't be the case. It seems the only way to avoid roaming charges with Three is to switch the device off. 

[IBR17XVII]

Let's not forget either that 3 effectively forced the roaming charge on me by removing my old contract that had roaming included.

@JonathanBI would like your confirmation that if I have a zero spend cap & international roaming is removed from my account that I will not be charged.

[LL63]

So sick of this issue. Landed in Spain 17/4 with roaming off (have screenshot). Did not use until following morning. Happy to pay for it when I use it but not when I don’t. Has happened on other occasions & raise the issue via webchat charge is refunded. Not this time. Received v curt msg from them this morning saying they’d looked into it & there was no issue & case closed. No opportunity to respond. 
Seriously thinking about leaving 3 as don’t have hours to sort out issues that shouldn’t be happening in the first place. 

[MZone]

Try sending them a Tweet. Find you get a better response from the social media team 😉

[portobello]

That's what they do, send you a message saying they are looking into it and then maybe one minute later send another saying there are no issues, They know there are big issues but they don't care. Go through the Ombudsman, They soon change their minds when they are involved.

[atommyk]

Clearly we all need to take some time and write 1) formal complaints and at the same time 2) to the ombudsman complaining about these business practices. 

[markieboy7]

I think I posted my story a week ago when got charged £7.24 for roaming in South Korea even though sim removed and phone off when we arrived, then put in Korean SIM for 2 weeks. they refunded me but still said I had used data ? today wife bill shows £26.88 roaming the day we arrived. Two grown up kids with us but not billed yet so that should be interesting. all our phones had sims removed and off. Cant actually speak to someone in the UK to make sense of this just get someone in an Indian call centre that has no idea what to say. Even more confusing is why my roaming supposedly cut off at £7.24 but my wife went on until £26.88 ? if we had our three sims in and roaming on this would have continued until it reached our limit? cant believe the number of similar issues on here and the fact this is still happening.

[apadley1337]

This is a very different issue. Most of the posters here are saying they had their SIM in their phone but the settings were such that roaming was turned off; so it's physically possible for there to be a bug in the iPhone software that overwrites this and/or is sending messages some other way.

In your case, there is no physical SIM in your phone so 1) How does 3 know you are in South Korea 2) How is it physically possible to send a message from your phone with no SIM in it.

I think your issue is very different to the other posters.