O2 Charges

[peralta]

This may be of interest to anyone who has an O2 contract - I just received my latest bill and saw that I had been charged £1.99 a day for the five days I was in Germany last week even though I know that I turned data roaming off.
It turns out that under new conditions that started on 7 April if you send a single text or make a single phone call you will automatically be charged £1.99 a day.

[Riley Blue]

According to O2,

"As a Pay Monthly customer you'll pay just £1.99 a day to get all the data, minutes and texts you need in Europe.

O2 Travel is free to add to your account. You only pay £1.99 for each day you use it in Europe.

When you use data, make calls or send texts between countries In Europe the £1.99 daily charge will be triggered. Receiving calls and texts will not trigger the O2 Travel daily charge. You're then free to use the full benefits of O2 Travel for the remainder of the day with an inclusive daily allowance of 120 minutes and 120 texts. There's no upper usage limit with data however data speeds may vary. The daily charge and allowances apply from midnight to midnight UK time."

I.e. you shouldn't be paying for the days you don't use it.

https://www.o2.co.uk/shop/international/using-phon...

[peralta]

Yes, that's true but what has changed is that previously a text message cost around 12 p and now a single text message will trigger the £1.99 a day charge even if that's the only thing you do on the phone.

The terms and charges changed on April 7th with virtually no publicity that I'm aware of.

[marshalla]

peralta said:

Yes, that's true but what has changed is that previously a text message cost around 12 p and now a single text message will trigger the £1.99 a day charge even if that's the only thing you do on the phone.

The terms and charges changed on April 7th with virtually no publicity that I'm aware of.

How does that fit with the EU Roaming Tariffs rule ?

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/roam...
http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/phone/mobile-phones/...

[peralta]

Previously, O2 had an add-on that you could use for data roaming if you were overseas but you had to switch your phone to data roaming to use it. If you just made calls or sent texts without switching on the data roaming they were charged at the normal rates ( a few pence for a txt etc) but now, even if you have data roaming switched off and make a single text or call you will be charged £1.99 a day. OK, if you want to send lots of texts or make a lot of calls it might save you money but if you're an occasional user,it's suddenly got a lot more expensive.

[bad company]

That's a dreadful policy and as already said not well publicized.

[essayer]

Iirc Vodafone euro traveller is the same, except £3

[tex200]

You can simply opt out of o2 travel and pay for your actual usage if you like.

[Riley Blue]

tex200 said:

You can simply opt out of o2 travel and pay for your actual usage if you like.

The opt-in and opt-out instructions are next to each other on the O2 website:

"Text O2TRAVEL to 23336 to activate O2 Travel. It can take up to 24 hours to be applied to your account.

To opt out of O2 Travel text NOTRAVEL to 23336. You wil then be charged our standard roaming rates. This can take up to 24 hours to be applied to your account."

[The Moose]

£1.99 a day is, in my opinion, fantastic.

So useful when you head to the continent and want to actually use your phone without being arse-raped for a byte of data as was the old days!

[rsv gone!]

The Moose said:

£1.99 a day is, in my opinion, fantastic.

So useful when you head to the continent and want to actually use your phone without being arse-raped for a byte of data as was the old days!

+1

It was a check-box when I set up my new contract. It certainly wasn't hidden.

I opted for it, for the above reason.

[bloomen]

At least it's better than American pay as you go policies. You get a day's charge if someone calls or texts YOU there which I found pretty mind bending.

[Mosman]

Yes, that's the £1.99 for O2 travel. Personally when I'm travelling in Europe it's a good option for me as I use a lot of data - however if you are making a single call and or send a single text then it's probably not good value (especially with the reduced roaming costs that have just been imposed).

I was hoping that O2 would give in with roaming costs as Three (and now Tesco) and to a certain extent EE too (as they have contracts that include roaming). However it looks like they are going to stick with it until the end next year.

Of course by then we will have probably voted to leave the EU and they phone companies will have a free hand to charge us international rates for travel in Europe

[oyster]

rsv gone! said:

The Moose said:

£1.99 a day is, in my opinion, fantastic.

So useful when you head to the continent and want to actually use your phone without being arse-raped for a byte of data as was the old days!

+1

It was a check-box when I set up my new contract. It certainly wasn't hidden.

I opted for it, for the above reason.

You're alright Jack!

What about the OP who's now being charged £9.95 for sending 5 text messages when previously he'd pay only 60p?

[Rosscow]

oyster said:

rsv gone! said:

The Moose said:

£1.99 a day is, in my opinion, fantastic.

So useful when you head to the continent and want to actually use your phone without being arse-raped for a byte of data as was the old days!

+1

It was a check-box when I set up my new contract. It certainly wasn't hidden.

I opted for it, for the above reason.

You're alright Jack!

What about the OP who's now being charged £9.95 for sending 5 text messages when previously he'd pay only 60p?

OP could have opted out?

I also agree, £1.99 for 2 hours of calls, 120 texts and unlimited data in Europe is fantastic. We'll be going to France for 16 nights in July/August, to know that I'm not going to spend more than £32 in total to keep in contact with work/family etc. for the entire holiday is pretty good in my opinion.

[Mosman]

Vodafone are the latest to announce that their monthly contracts will include European roaming (voice, text and data). Data will be capped at 4GB (I assume that means 4GB/month whilst roaming).

Knowing my luck as an O2 customer they will try and milk the last few quid out of me for roaming until it's abolished - although I've always thought that once a couple of the companies give up on roaming they all will (will be interesting to see what happens now with the holiday season approaching).

[//j17]

marshalla said:

How does that fit with the EU Roaming Tariffs rule ?

https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/roam...
http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/phone/mobile-phones/...

Probably fits and is them trying to screw customers around it.

Your contract package is (usually) specific to the UK, so you might get unlimited calls and text messages, and 1Gb of data every month - in the UK. If you travel outside the UK you used to fall out of this and have to pay for any calls/text/data at their base rate plus a roaming fee (so about 3p for a text message plus a 9p romaing charge to give you 12p). If that was still the case with the new roaming rules that same text message would only cost you the basic 3p.

What O2 have done is offered another service that lets you take your contract package overseas, so it's not a roaming charge - it just makes up the shortfall in lost roaming revenue by screwing customers like the OP by opting them in by default!

Personally I'd phone them up an complain that you never opted in and that can you have a PAC code so you can switch to 3 who offer them same thing but for free.

[essayer]

After a week in the Canary Islands I got a text from Three saying I'd saved £933 due to their 'feel at home' package
I may have live streamed a football match because the hotel wifi was too slow

[//j17]

Rosscow said:

OP could have opted out?

Yes - if they knew they had been opted in in the first place! This was a terms change that automatically opted them in to.

Rosscow said:

I also agree, £1.99 for 2 hours of calls, 120 texts and unlimited data in Europe is fantastic. We'll be going to France for 16 nights in July/August, to know that I'm not going to spend more than £32 in total to keep in contact with work/family etc. for the entire holiday is pretty good in my opinion.

Is it? It may be but have you done the math for your situation?

Looking on the O2 website to call the UK from France will cost you 3.6p per-min, so just on calls you'd need to be spending more than 55min on calls EVERY DAY you make ANY calls to be making a saving. Data will cost you 4.3p per-MB so just on data you need to be getting through at least 46MB of data EVERY DAY you use ANY data to be saving.

I'm guessing here but most accomodation has free WiFi these days and if you had to connect and do anything hard-core you'd do it from your hotel/villa and so be using the WiFi. This means data's probably just going to be picking up email on your phone and the odd bit of browsing. Call-wise maybe you have to join a daily 15-min stand-up call and the odd call outside that, but they will only be say 5min/day as people know you're on holiday and don't want to bother you more than necessary. So that's ~20min of calls (72p/day) which means you need to get through at least 30MB of data (£1.29) EVERY DAY you make ANY calls or use ANY data to save.

If you just have that 15min stand-up call and spend all day in the villa pool so on the WiFi using the traveller package you'll pay £1.99. Off the package you'd only have spent 54p.

[Rosscow]

//j17 said:

Rosscow said:

OP could have opted out?

Yes - if they knew they had been opted in in the first place! This was a terms change that automatically opted them in to.

Rosscow said:

I also agree, £1.99 for 2 hours of calls, 120 texts and unlimited data in Europe is fantastic. We'll be going to France for 16 nights in July/August, to know that I'm not going to spend more than £32 in total to keep in contact with work/family etc. for the entire holiday is pretty good in my opinion.

Is it? It may be but have you done the math for your situation?

Looking on the O2 website to call the UK from France will cost you 3.6p per-min, so just on calls you'd need to be spending more than 55min on calls EVERY DAY you make ANY calls to be making a saving. Data will cost you 4.3p per-MB so just on data you need to be getting through at least 46MB of data EVERY DAY you use ANY data to be saving.

I'm guessing here but most accomodation has free WiFi these days and if you had to connect and do anything hard-core you'd do it from your hotel/villa and so be using the WiFi. This means data's probably just going to be picking up email on your phone and the odd bit of browsing. Call-wise maybe you have to join a daily 15-min stand-up call and the odd call outside that, but they will only be say 5min/day as people know you're on holiday and don't want to bother you more than necessary. So that's ~20min of calls (72p/day) which means you need to get through at least 30MB of data (£1.29) EVERY DAY you make ANY calls or use ANY data to save.

If you just have that 15min stand-up call and spend all day in the villa pool so on the WiFi using the traveller package you'll pay £1.99. Off the package you'd only have spent 54p.

We're camping, so no wi-fi! And it's a family business, so I need to stay tuned in to what's going on.

£30 for staying connected as much as you like with things at home seems decent enough for me - probably less as I'll no doubt go a few days without using it at all.

I'd rather not have the hassle of figuring out how long I need to be on the phone for before O2 Travel is worth it - it's the cost of an ice cream per day.

As for not knowing - when I went last year, O2 sent me a text when we arrived in France explaining exactly how it worked.

Edited by Rosscow on Friday 6th May 14:15