Every now and again a new story about international roaming charges comes to my attention. Recently I could not help overhearing some English people in a restaurant talking about the experience one of their daughters had following loss of her phone. Seemingly the daughter had been travelling in Spain and had taken an overnight bus to a new destination. After she had set out, she found she didn’t have her phone with her. She thought that she had probably packed it in her rucksack by mistake (it has been with several items she did pack) and as it would have been very difficult to get to the bag while travelling left it at that and fell asleep. The next morning she found that her phone was indeed missing and duly reported it to her network operator. Under their rules, the same as those applied by most operators, she was liable for any calls made before she reported its loss. This turned out to be some £27,000. At that price presumably this was for data download, rather than voice. Unfortunately I didn’t hear then end of the story as I was interrupted by the waiter at that point, so I don’t know if the operator did the honourable thing and waived the bill or not. I also don’t know when it occurred; the people recounting the tale were speaking as if it was recent, but they were doing so some months after the EC mandatory limit on bills for data downloads were introduced. Continue reading “Bill Shock”