MoneySavingExpert.com — A British chef sailing the Greek islands racked up a bill for more than £8,000 after her phone inadvertently connected to a Turkish mobile network for just 40 minutes.
Lesley Riach, 49, from Edinburgh, returned home from a two-week trip with friends in June to a phone call from her mobile provider, Utility Warehouse, in which she was told: “This isn’t what you want to hear – your bill is £8,348.41.”
Greece is a member of the European Union, so following an EU rule change in mid-June British mobile users there now aren’t subject to roaming charges – and at the time Lesley travelled in early June, Utility Warehouse had already scrapped roaming charges in Greece.
While she was sailing, Lesley says she stayed within the Greek islands and went “nowhere near” the Turkish mainland. But she was billed for connecting to a Turkish network – whose signal was transmitted apparently from Turkey or a passing boat – and using 455MB of data.
Having complained to the ombudsman, Lesley’s been told the charges were “valid” and she will have to pay – though her bill’s been cut to £1,000 and she has been offered a repayment plan.
Under EU regulations, your mobile roaming bill is normally capped at €50 even when roaming outside Europe. But having racked up a roaming bill of about €50 on a previous trip to Turkey, Lesley contacted Utility Warehouse and asked it to remove her cap.
Mobile phones will connect to the ‘strongest network available
Lesley’s case was investigated by Ombudsman Services, which found that Utility Warehouse had charged her for using 455MB of data in a 40-minute period on a Turkish network.
Ombudsman Services said that mobile phones will connect to the strongest network available, and users should be careful using their phone close to a border.
It told us: “A mobile device unless set in manual network selection mode is designed to connect a customer to the strongest mobile network available. If while out at sea the Turkish network was stronger than the Greek network, the phone would cross networks.”
It said it was possible Lesley’s phone “could have connected to a network from a boat, which passed by the yacht that [she] was travelling on”.
But it added: “Given the short period that this data use did occur over, we consider it is most likely that the phone itself connected to a Turkish network when the yacht sailed to the east of Naxos and on to the east of Mykonos. This point in the sea is equidistant from both the Greek mainland and Turkish mainland.”
Ombudsman Services concluded: “As [Lesley] was at sea while the data was used and there is no evidence to suggest [she] connected to a Greek network, the ombudsman considers the charges on the account to be valid, as it is clear [her] handset connected to a Turkish network.”
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