Five grand bill for two days roaming in Aussie

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juha

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#10393 20-Nov-2006 09:05

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/913861A72EEA93B8CC257229000DE42E

Guigou went to the shop which supplied the Vodem and got a partial printout of the Australian usage. It showed a bill of $87 for unspecified time on October 25, then $2,000 for 69MB of usage later that day. Usage on October 26 was shown at 36MB for 24 minutes ($1,079), and 46MB for $1,346.

O U C H.

Juha

johnr

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#53009 20-Nov-2006 09:13

I wonder why she did not action a manual network selection to Vodafone OZ

juha

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#53010 20-Nov-2006 09:16

Story says she connected to a Vodafone partner by mistake.

Juha

johnr

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#53011 20-Nov-2006 09:20

juha: Story says she connected to a Vodafone partner by mistake.

On the vodem software the carrier you are connected to is displyed all the time

easy mistake though

sbiddle

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#53012 20-Nov-2006 09:54

It would have been $1600 even if she had been on Vodafone. Reading the story it appears here gripe is also the fact she used nowhere near the amount of data billed for.

johnr

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#53015 20-Nov-2006 10:19

I wonder if they read the roaming welcome message advising to use Vodafone OZ

$1600 is alot easier to stomach than $5000

freitasm

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#53047 20-Nov-2006 16:35

johnr: $1600 is alot easier to stomach than $5000

I call this... There's no way $1600 for data is easier. I think it's an absurd amount of money charged for roaming data - and $10/MB on a Vodafone network is too much. Supplying the data to a roaming user cost just a bit more - processing power to store the usage and forward for later payment from the originating Vodafone subsidiary.

It should be the same as New Zealand plan, or at least the same as a local plan.

It's a shame Vodafone and Telecom (less) promote roaming that much, people should be aware of how much data costs, how much data they use and how to find alternatives - such as hotel broadband, hotspot services, etc.

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juha

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#53049 20-Nov-2006 16:41

freitasm: It's a shame Vodafone and Telecom (less) promote roaming that much, people should be aware of how much data costs, how much data they use and how to find alternatives - such as hotel broadband, hotspot services, etc.

Oh oh... this reminds me of the direct mail piece that Telecom sent me, to promote their Australian data roaming. "Great," I thought, that'll be really useful but then they said it would be charged at the casual rate. This is... $8 per MB.

Juha

juha

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#53053 20-Nov-2006 17:42

Forgot:

Guigou has been a Vodafone customer for more than five years.

The story doesn't say if she got any pens! Aaacckk!

Juha

nzbnw

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#53055 20-Nov-2006 17:46

juha: Forgot:

Guigou has been a Vodafone customer for more than five years.

The story doesn't say if she got any pens! Aaacckk!

With a bill like that, she might want more than a box full

!!

nzbnw

AaronRong

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#53894 27-Nov-2006 22:19

thats too much ......

Frankei

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#54512 2-Dec-2006 22:18

I'm not surprised to be honest...
Not with the sad fact that the person has to pay $5000 for 151Mb but rather that she was also charged $87 for an unspecified time

Speaking from experience with the testing of 3G before quiet sometime before it went public; the only thing that I can say is that the billing system sucks the big kahuna
The main problems were that the software I was given with it although updated constantly it never failed to suck. it would keep track of your data transferee but at random times you just reset; the same would happen at their end and sometimes data would be counted two or three times. Which meant if you used 10Mb they could have counted it as anything from 10 - 40Mb
Thats what you get when you let The French write software like that

About the only good thing I could say about it is that I was getting 700 odd Kb on it instead of 128 or 256 Kb on my ADSL connection and that I didn't have to pay a single cent for it or the data... So I rather happily racked up the downloads on it

But since it went public they took away my baby ;'( But that was some time ago now; probably going onto over 2 years ago actually

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NicolaIgusa

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#54976 8-Dec-2006 10:22

Hi there,

We’ve been looking into this issue and have discovered that the charges Stephanie Guigou was billed were caused by an issue with one of our overseas network partners.

The partner network incorrectly charged Vodafone New Zealand for the data usage of our customers while they were roaming. We have identified the customers that were affected (including Stephanie) and all affected customers will be credited back the overcharged amount.

We are working with the partner network to work through this issue to ensure it does not happen again.

Nicola Igusa
Vodafone External Communications

juha

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#54977 8-Dec-2006 10:49

That's good news, Nic.

How about lowering the steep roaming charges though? With high-speed 3G devices, $10-$30 per megabyte is downright dangerous.

Juha