Consumer group warns mobile users to check roaming tariffs after customer gets €20,000 bill

A CONSUMER association has warned mobile phone users to check with their operators about costs of calls, texts and internet if they plan to go abroad, especially outside the European Union.

IRACHE, based in the northern region of Navarra, says customers should obtain information about prices in writing on headed paper or via email from the company before going away.

This summer alone, the consumer group has already received 'dozens' of complaints from mobile phone users after the shock of seeing their post-holiday bills.

On one occasion, a customer got a bill for €20,000 for the month.

IRACHE stresses that in all EU member States, a 'default' tariff is set, which may not exceed 19 cents a minute for making or five cents for receiving calls, six cents for sending text messages and 20 cents for each megabyte of internet data downloaded.

This is the maximum that can be charged when a customer of an EU country travels to another one of the 28, but does not preclude local operators charging a fortune when consumers travel outside the Union.

And 'not all phone companies' respect the maximum tariff, IRACHE reveals.

Although the European Parliament agreed to scrap roaming tariffs for mobiles by the end of this year, mass pressure from phone operators means they will not now be axed until June 2017, according to the consumer group.

Elsewhere in the world, mobile bills can reach as much as €50 or €100 a day just for having the phone in internet mode, even if the customer does not use it.

And the Navarra association says one of its members took out a mobile phone package which allowed her to make affordable calls from abroad via her existing operator, and two weeks after her four-day visit to Andorra, she began to receive text messages from her provider warning that she had exceeded her data limit.

This was followed by a bill for €20,000.

IRACHE took on her case, and managed to get the bill reduced to €255 – still far more than the customer was expecting – since the company admitted the package it had sold her did not apply in the Pyrénéen principality between France and Spain.

Obtaining tariffs in writing before going away – even within the EU, given the legal limits which apply – means the customer can calculate his or her costs and make a claim if a bill for more than this is received.