How a call for help to a mobile phone operator cost £6,700
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Check your contract before you travel as roaming charges while abroad can rack up horrifying bills for the unwary. A woman who used her phone for less than an hour in New York, while trying to contact her mobile company, has been hit with a bill for almost £6,700.
Hilary O’Donnell, from Nottingham, was settling into her hotel when she found that her phone would not make outgoing calls, so she tried to contact Plan.com to fix the problem. But when she returned home, she was given a bill of £6,648 for her attempts – which, she believes, was grossly excessive and unfair.
Her predicament highlights the enormous roaming charges that can be racked up if you use a mobile abroad without a cap on how much you spend, and also the sky-high fees that some companies charge for small amounts of data. O’Donnell had just arrived in New York for a five-day trip with friends when she realised her phone was not working, and assumed her service had been blocked. She was also unable to use the hotel wifi or install an e-sim, which she had planned to use during the trip to avoid high call charges. At any event, she concluded that she was not connected to Plan.com data. However, in fact, she was.
Her mistake came when she tried to contact Plan.com – an Isle of Man-based operator which specialises in business accounts – to resolve the connection problem. Unsuccessful attempts to call the firm using WhatsApp over the course of less than an hour used up some 850 megabytes of data – billed at £7.75 per MB when outside Europe.
