EU says roaming case is soooo last month Vodafone, O2, and T-Mobile will likely breathe a sigh of relief today after European Union anti-trust authorities decided to close their long-running investigation into alleged excessive charges for international calls. The European commission confirmed yesterday that it will take no further action over formal charges it issued …
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So about ten years ago i got my first shocker of a bill based on roaming costs.
The EU have finally sorted it out.
Now i have shocking bills over data rates while in europe... another 10 years? Yeah if we're lucky! Thanks so much for all those muppets in Brussels, i know my vote to establish this was worth it, oh wait, no-one ever asked me about it..
Bunch of arse!
Jeremy - don't blame the "muppets" in Brussels! The commission wanted to abolish roaming charges altogether it was the *national* governments that insisted on maintaining the high charges which have little or nothing to do with the licences issued by the governments to national carriers and as such the result of lobbying by the telcos.
Just received a letter from my provider informing of the change which at the same time include a doubling of the SMS charges... So the cheapest thing is still getting a pre-paid card in the country you're in. :-(
Looks like you guys are screwed. AT&T hasn't punished me at all (well, not much). Of course, when I go to the UK or Europe, I get a pre-paid since most of my calls there are local and would involve both roaming and international long distance. But calls home are SMS and Skype. "I'm back in the hotel room, call me" "It's two o'clock in the fucking morning and you woke me up" Oh well, the joys of 27 years of marriage.
Seeing as thought they have capped roaming charges for calls, what about SMS text messaging?! Considering this is usually 40p per text with most networks, and text messages are more popular than calls these days, especially from abroad when are they doing to cap these?!
It does not cost a network anywhere near 40p to send a text from abroad, I mean god it barely costs a few pence to send one in the UK, so why cant texts from abroad be capped at 0p to receive (just incase the networks try that one next) and 15p to send them... The UK SMS charges should be no more than 6p to send them, if it costs a network 1p per text even 2p thats still a hefty profit!!
Whilst on a short holiday in Austria, I made a huge mistake of making a GPRS connection over Bluetooth, to check my emails. It took me about 20m to get about 50 emails, (48 junk, as usual) reply to two, and disconnect. Shortly after my return, I was greeted by a bill of £600 for data...
(And no, none of the emails contained attachments) well I called Vodafone with WTF query, they told me that it was quite possible that windows or my AV decided to download some updates in the background.
A cost of my holiday has tripled at the result ;-(
Sounds like the UK is paying quite a bit more for roaming than most of Europe. On the other hand, last time I checked the prices for an account for a GSM modem Vodafone UK was the cheapest I could find with a WORLDWIDE rate of something like £45 for 'unlimited' use, in reality it was limited to around 1GB a month but connected 24/7 was OK. Couldnt find anything in the small print to suggest the worldwide rate was anything other than genuine.
Cheers
Anyone out there noticed the exchange rate Ofcom is applying to the new maximium roaming charges, it makes an airport Bureau de Change generous.
49cents according to ofcom is 38 pence....1.289... worse way it should be 34 pence.Similar situation with the 24 cent recieving charge. Now I do not know the amount of volume there is between UK and Europe but it would appear 10 % of it is extra profit for the mobile phone operators. Nice to know OFCOM still are keeping the title of Rip Off UK alive.
I think I can beat everyone in excess charges, Vodafone charge £1.50 if you are unwise enough to press the recieve button when ther voicemail calls you to tell you you have a message. I have regularly been charged this for 1 second call. Vodafone say ... up to 4 th level of complaints protocol... I am recieving a call and making one.... in one second ! How have they got away with this for so long?
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