Orange charging me for using free wi fi abroad??

[largelugs]

Hi,

 

I returned from my honeymoon in New York and was expecting to have a larger than normal phonebill from orange. However, I was sickened to find a bill of over £500.

 

Over £400 of this was due to data charges. Whilst in the Us I only connected to the internet through free wi fi in places such as MacDonalds, Times Square, Grand Central Station and New York library. If there was no free wi fi i didn#t connect.

 

Can they charge me for using free wifi or have I mis used my phone?

 

The charges seem obscene and has put a real black cloud over the whole trip.

 

I will be contacting orange in the week but do I have a leg to stand on. If I have mis used my phone i guess i will have to pay. IS there any chance of a good will gesture from them or has anyone experienced similar problems.

 

I have looked through the orange website , including their tips on going abroad, and can't find any mention of charges for using wi fi. Having been with Orange for many years, always paying my bills on time and a being classed as a premier customer, this is the first time i feel let down by them and with my contract up in November I think it might be time to move.

[maroondevo52]

Hello and Welcome,

 

Orange have a member on this site, you could try giving them a Private Message to have a look at your thread..................

 

http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/member.php?265719-Orange-Response

 

Regards.

 

Scott.

[Human Writes]

Can they charge me for using free wifi or have I mis used my phone?.

 

The latter I'm afraid, Orange can only charge you for data transmitted across their network, they can't charge you for using free wi-fi available using American broadband through American domestic telcos.

[largelugs]

This is why i'm confused. I only ever logged in through free wifi, when it wasn't available I never went on to the browser.

[MaxxPower]

Just because you didn't open the browser doesn't mean you weren't using data. Did you turn off any Data Roaming settings on your phone?

 

What kind of handset do you have?

[buzby]

Looks as though you didn't shut down mobile data, and the handset continued to communicate via the roaming partner. ONLY when you use WiFi can you avoid these data roaming rates, as all communications bypass your home network (so they wouldn't know what to charge you, even if they could).

[tech monster]

It sounds to me like you have a blackberry. Blackberry's consume sometimes heavy amounts of data in the background even if you do not have open a browser - other smart phones also do the same. How much data is consumed really depends on what applications are installed and running in the background.

 

Next time you go abroad, or if you wish to stop your blackberry using data in the background then follow this:-

1. get to your homescreen

2. press the blackberry button

3. choose the 'manage connections' option

4. choose the 'mobile network options'

5. set data services while roaming to 'off'

6. optionally, you might want to turn off data services entirely and manually turn it on as and when you need it.

 

Hope this helps,

 

[andydd]

Hi.

 

Orange havn't charged you for using their data service, a WiFi signal is completely seperate to the phone signal, It sounds as if as suggested that your phone still connected to the provider and you ran up data chrages.

 

i dont know which phone you have but i have a Nokia N97 and I have it set up in 'destinations' which provides a prefered list of connections, the top one is my home WiFi, and the phone 'tries' to use this and I obviously am not charged, 2nd on the list is my phone provider data service, I occadsionally check which connection is active and often it seems to ignore my preferences, (i.e I am at home and it connects to the phone data package or sometimes phone and wifi).

 

So ewven if i choose a WiFi connection it still sometimes connects to the phone providers data service, luckily i have a 250mb data package and I dont go above that but I'm well aware that If I went abroad I will turn off the phone data service completely.

 

Andy