Roaming charges

charles_reed

charles_reed

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Just to get the perspective right, here's a blog from an IT website.

The EU is in self-congratulatory mood today, declaring that its clampdown on mobile roaming charges means “the roaming rip-off is now coming to an end”.

While the EU has indeed made progress, we’re a long way from popping the champagne corks and declaring a famous consumer victory.

Look, for example, at the data rates. The EU’s new rules still allow mobile networks to charge up to 1 Euro (86p) per MB for data downloads when roaming. That’s £880 per GB! To put that in perspective, BT charges £15.65 per month for a 10GB data download allowance on its Option 1 package; mobile networks can theoretically charge £8,806 for the same amount of data! And I’ve yet to see any compelling evidence that the costs associated with mobile data are an order of magnitude higher than they are for fixed line providers.

You might also want to reflect on the charges for SMS text messages. While the EU has now capped the cost of text messages to 9p (down from 24p), that’s still 9p for transferring only 140 bytes (0.000133514MB) of data. That’s a princely £674 per MB.

Dr Nigel Bannister from the University of Leicester last year claimed that sending texts from a mobile phone was four times more expensive than downloading data from the Hubble Telescope, and that was based on an average text message fee of only 5p.

So while the EU can take some satisfaction from today’s price cuts, mobile data prices are literally still out of this world.

PS I pay €1/day for 5Gb a calendar month on Vodafone Greece.
 
I was eagerly awaiting the changes after the EU legislation.

Im with TMobile business, my charges have increased - they sent me a text saying check out the new terms and conditions, which I did do, and there was a comparison, I think a text may be cheaper now, but that was it.

Thier network is very patchy too - I'd estinamte 90% of all calls in the last 2 months have lost connection - all across the UK.
 
I totally agree. And here in France, as visitors (no French bank account so no contract possible) we have to pay €9 per day for 3G connection....WiFi is so tightly stitched-up with WEPs that it is almost impossible to find a connection other than Orange -- which is just as expensive as 3G.

BUT -- and it is an important BUT -- now that the framework is in place they can always move the decimal points. The principle has been established, enshrined in law, and should now be in effect. In due course, we might see more competition and lower prices. So on the whole, I do think it's worth cracking that bottle of Champagne.
 
Ah, try vodafone.

I have a £12.50/month *unlimited* access with 90p/day roaming connection charge. Have used it successfully in France for watching TV over the internet.
 
Crikey, that's interesting. But I'd have to go to the UK to buy the SIM, I suppose...then again I could probably charter a helicopter to take me back for less than I am paying SFR!

But let me be sure I've understood...£12.50 pm on a contract plus 90p per day when roaming for unlimited 3G? Does it work in Spain as well, do you know from experience?

My big reservation with Vodafone (have never been one of their customers) is stories about them helping themselves to your bank account, sometimes to the tune of thousands, that you cannot reclaim. I am very nervous about that. Or maybe that issue has been resolved?
 
Yes, that's right you pay a 90p connection charge then the rest comes off your UK contract, which in my case is £12.50p a month. Not used it in Spain but as far as I understand it the 90p connect charge is the roaming charge for Europe.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Open a special bank account and only keep a restricted amount in it.

[/ QUOTE ]That stops them taking it out, I suppose, but does it remove your liability?
 
Bouygues

[ QUOTE ]
Crikey, that's interesting. But I'd have to go to the UK to buy the SIM, I suppose...then again I could probably charter a helicopter to take me back for less than I am paying SFR!

But let me be sure I've understood...£12.50 pm on a contract plus 90p per day when roaming for unlimited 3G? Does it work in Spain as well, do you know from experience?

My big reservation with Vodafone (have never been one of their customers) is stories about them helping themselves to your bank account, sometimes to the tune of thousands, that you cannot reclaim. I am very nervous about that. Or maybe that issue has been resolved?

[/ QUOTE ]

I had a PAYG SIM with Buoygues, which gave me (across most of S France) 3G for a pre-pay of €40 for 3Gb/month.
That was last year and 3G prices have slid since then.
What one must realise, as market leader, Vodafone are going to be the most expensive, Europe-wide they probably have the most extensive coverage, which might make up for the premium you pay. The "helping themselves" is slightly mythological and comes of not reading (or understanding) contract documents.
However, roaming prices, especially for data have been obscenely high from ALL the mobile providers and I doubt that the latest curbs will make it any more worth-while.

Ironically Vodafone staff haven't yet been informed of the new post-July roaming prices - no doubt intensive research is going on in the corridors of power to see how the legislation can be circumvented.

The truth is that mobile providers are on a hiding to nothing - airtime is on the way to becoming a commodity (unless various national government find a way of interfering with market-forces - after all France Telecom is still de-facto nationalised) and price will rule, no amount of fancy marketing, even abetted by a gullible public, can reverse that trend.

Incidentally that was from their telesales - who have lots of offers, whereas the shops only have standard tariffs and a dearth of know-how.

Personally, I always use local SIMs, up till now roaming charges have been exploitatively high and I gave up contract-phones when I retired in 2000 and ONLY use PAYG.
 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Open a special bank account and only keep a restricted amount in it.

[/ QUOTE ]That stops them taking it out, I suppose, but does it remove your liability?

[/ QUOTE ]I've thinking through the suggestion of using an account I seldom use just for a Vodafone contract....as I said above, I have heard real horror stories of Vodafone taking many, many thousands out of peoples accounts. The idea of using an account with little in it sounds attractive but:-

a) Does the liability end if the account has insufficient funds?
b) If a bona fide DDM tries to collect more than is in the account, do banks treat that as going overdrawn, and charge £35 or whatever, or does it just bounce harmlessly?

Suppose Vodafone or whoever billed, say, £3000 against an account that only has, say, £100 in it then at worst case you lose your £100, get billed £35 for the unauthorised attempt to take out funds and still owe Vodafone £2900 -- with the danger of another £35 charge every time the Vodafone system tries to collect.

I've never been in this position and I cancelled almost all my DDMs and STOs over a decade ago so I am very out of touch with today's practice.
 
Re: Bouygues

That's vastly cheaper than I am paying now. According to my NetMeter I am using up to 200MB per day so that is €40 for 15 days. Much cheaper than SFR at €9 per day! OTOH, as I don't have a French bank account things get very complicated for online or telesales. For example, as I am registered as a foreign user, SFR will not let me recharge the daily 3G via their website - I have to go and buy special vouchers from an SFR boutique. I have relatives over here but I hate dragging others into my affairs especially when money is involved in any way. I might bear the cost for a week or so; if we decide seriously to live in France then I'll open a French bank account.

Many thanks for the information.

By the way, for anyone following this thread, the big problem with the SFR offer is that you either have a timed connection (a certain number of hours) or an unlimited daily connection. I have become accustomed to leaving the computer on so that emails come straight in which would cost a fortune on a timed scheme. OTOH if you are prepared to get online and do what needs to be done quickly then it isn't too expensive.
 
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Open a special bank account and only keep a restricted amount in it.

[/ QUOTE ]That stops them taking it out, I suppose, but does it remove your liability?

[/ QUOTE ]I've thinking through the suggestion of using an account I seldom use just for a Vodafone contract....as I said above, I have heard real horror stories of Vodafone taking many, many thousands out of peoples accounts. The idea of using an account with little in it sounds attractive but:-

a) Does the liability end if the account has insufficient funds?

No - Vodafone have a very competent credit-control department and that's been covered.


b) If a bona fide DDM tries to collect more than is in the account, do banks treat that as going overdrawn, and charge £35 or whatever, or does it just bounce harmlessly?


depends on the bank and country - if you do that in France you're guilty of a criminal action


Suppose Vodafone or whoever billed, say, £3000 against an account that only has, say, £100 in it then at worst case you lose your £100, get billed £35 for the unauthorised attempt to take out funds and still owe Vodafone £2900 -- with the danger of another £35 charge every time the Vodafone system tries to collect.

Surely, the solution is quite simple - don't enter into open-ended contracts..

In the case of mobile telecoms it's totally unnecessary


I've never been in this position and I cancelled almost all my DDMs and STOs over a decade ago so I am very out of touch with today's practice.

[/ QUOTE ]
 
Re: Bouygues

If you do open a French AC, have a look at Credit Agricole.

They're not sophisticated, but have minimum of sneaky, small-print charges and don't try and chisel you on foreign transactions - I used to always get mid-market or better rates, even if clearing took 5 days.

The Maestro debit has a €300 daily limit, but it just needs a phone call to your branch to collect up to the account credit.

They've also got the largest branch network in France (I believe they're now the largest bank in France) and are in nearly all rural areas AND you still have your friendly bank manager - Beatrice and I used to take it in turns to take each other to lunch!!

SFR is, of course, part of Vodafone, Orange part of France Telecom, leaving only Bouygues as the family-owned (even if their share structure borders on illegal) interloper trying harder.

TIM sells on time - brought up on analogue modems I have no problem with minimising time on line - but Vodafone are now entirely on volume. Trouble is, when out of 3G footprint, GPRS is unbelievably slow (even if x3 to speed of analogue modem) and time charging becomes a case of adding insult to injury
 
Re: Bouygues

That's a good recommendation, thank you. I have a few legal/admin issues to sort out before deciding that we ought to settle in France and there is no point in opening accounts, unless we are going to stay. France has become quite a complicated place to settle in following the latest social security regulations. It's very easy if you are retired, or if you are going to work for an existing French company, but otherwise it is not straightforward. I think they got fed up with so many impecunious rosbifs buying up rural property and then falling back on state aid.

I didn't know that SFR was Vodafone. Explains why my SFR 3G dongle has (English language) Vodafone lite software (which crashes Vista at least once a day). I bought Mrs L a Bouygues phone last summer from a supermarket. It time expired after a week. Now we have Virgin (France) PAYG SIMs in the phones and the SFR dongle. Well, we are muddling through but it isn't ideal.
 
Vodafone

Just for the record . . . .

When we left the UK in 2003, we supposedly sorted ourselves out with a Vodafone contract and mobile connect thing. We read the articles on doing so in YM and PBO. Our requirement (away from the UK for the foreseeable) was clearly explained in the shop and we were told the price would be (whatever) (acceptable, paperwork confirmed so far as we could see). We left the UK. We then found (got across to St Vaast) that we could not use the device, we had to make endless phone calls to Vf to get it so. We continued, we used it. Meanwhile Vf were siphoning money from our account based on the amount of time, roaming, (not data) we were using it for. The result was that they took over £2,000 from the account. We were frantic, we had difficulty contacting them, we were worried sick. Every time we managed to speak to them we got (a) a different story/explanation/definition of what our contract basis was and (b) a promise to set things right, reimburse the wrongly taken money. It took three and a half months until we finally managed to get through to someone in authority and we got the money back.

When we got to Spain we really needed to get back online. Realistically, the only option (then) was Vf Spain. We were vary wary indeed, as you'd imagine. We examined the 'small print' minutely. We set up a separate bank account that only had the defined monthly contract amount transferred each month. Vf Spain then started doing the exact same thing as Vf UK, overcharging and wrongly charging. They couldn't extract the dosh, but the supposed amount we 'owed' them grew exponentially. With the added language difficulty. Queueing in Vf shops; we've done it for hours at a time. We got 'legal' communications from them, demands. They kept telling us to phone them for free and did not 'understand' that you cannot call from a computer. They said they had tried to phone us and couldn't get through . . . (same). Again, after months, we kept going into the same Vf shop in Marbella so many times, they gave us the 'secret' address of their office in Malaga and we got on the train/bus and went in person. You can imagine. We finally got the contract lifted and most of the 'outstanding' written off. Not all, which was not fair, but did at least release us from Vf's terrible clutches.

It is difficult, because they're the market leaders, to avoid the bl**dy company, but please be very very careful using them. They clearly have an international corporate policy of milking 'customers' for everything they can screw, of being difficult, evasive and disingenuous when it comes to complaints and mistake rectification.
Of course, most (all?) of the mobile comms companies can create the exact same problems for 'travellers'. Big bills. Wrong bills. Money stolen. But Vodafone . . . they are terrible to the nth degree. /forums/images/graemlins/mad.gif
FWIW also for the record for the last year and more we've had a mobile internet contract with SFR France. There have been problems, but relatively minor. Service, etc. has been ok.

But SFR is, we understand, owned by Vodafone . . . /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif

[edit]
We were also recommended Credit Agricole Britline, but got better response/etc from Societe Generale. No problems (other than the usual . . ) so far. Maybe they're keen to keep as many customers and their money happy after that employee lost so much of it!
 
Re: Vodafone

[ QUOTE ]

We were also recommended Credit Agricole Britline, but got better response/etc from Societe Generale.

[/ QUOTE ] Did you find out what the 'Britline' thing was about? I speak fluent French so I don't need an English phone service. Is there anything else, other than language, do you know, that makes it particularly suitable for Brits or UK residents?

SG is in a pickle but the retail banking side is as safe as .... houses?
 
banks

The CA Britline was/is recommended for Brits without a (permanent, verifiable)(?) French address, as well as the English aspect. Seemed ok when we investigated, plus we called in on a CA branch in Narbonne, again ok. However, we got an 'introduction' to the SG branch manager in Moissac and in France (as elsewhere) this counts. They don't appear to have as many branches as CA or Caisse Epagne, but never been a problem.
Also from the banking PoV we investigated getting a French official status document (I forget the title) usually given to itinerant 'residents' without a fixed residence and got the forms but in the end this wasn't necessary.
I am aware the French banks in general have a reputation for being expensive, laying on the 'extras' charges etc, but again we haven't especially noticed so. Maybe we're not as on the ball as we should be!
Having a Carte Bleu is really helpful, most petrol stations are carte-bancaire-only out of hours, or always, and the machines don't like anything other than French cartes. Before we got one, seriously running out of essence nearing Calais on a Sunday afternoon, we resorted to asking people to use their cards in return for cash!
Sorry for prompting for any thread drift.
 
Re: banks

Ah, that does sound very interesting....I can use my usual UK address. Funny thing about France...they don't seem to go for machines that take banknotes. In Italy almost all machines take banknotes and most larger supermarkets have auto-checkouts where you can pay in cash. Works fine. Then again, Italy has always been a cash-oriented society. I'll contact Britline next week.
 
Re: Bouygues

[ QUOTE ]
I had a PAYG SIM with Buoygues, which gave me (across most of S France) 3G for a pre-pay of €40 for 3Gb/month.

[/ QUOTE ]

Hi Charles,

I wonder if you have a link for this - or do they keep it a secret /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

It would seem to change the whole face of French Mobile Broadband, and I'm sure it would be of interest to many.

Cheers

Richard
 
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