Just spent the last half-hour conversing on IM with an O2 person trying to determine whether I can use my Pay-as-You-Go Blackberry Curve 9300 web access facility whilst on hols in france and whether there would be any additional charge above and beyond the £5 a month bolt-on charge for UK web access. At times I felt I could have had a more productive and shorter conversation with wet wallpaper.

I was told the following:-

Yes I could get web access via 3-G whilst aboard. That this would be subject to a data limit of 10MB per trip and that it would free-of charge i.e. within the existing £5 a month charge for UK access.

I was also told that I may b able to get free web access via local wi-fi hotspots whilst abroad.

I notice that thre are at least two FON related wi-fi hotspots local to my place of visit, but I couldn't get a definitive answer from 02 about whether I could get the reciprocal wi-fi access through FON - I have signed-up to BT FON thru by home landline BT homehub.

I'm not particularly convinced by the answers I was given and wonder whether anybody on here has got the SP.

Nick

Edited 2 October, 201114 yr by Clunkclick

There are loads of free wifi access points in France and they are nothing to do with any sort of UK contract.

I don't know if any ARE related to any FON agreements though.

I dont know of ANY UK data tariffs that will include any data abroad.

Even just trying can cost you a packet as most charge roaming in 10mb blocks for what ever they can rip you off of. Vodafone I've heard charge £10 just for connecting in some parts of the world, and then charge per minute!

I dont know of ANY UK data tariffs that will include any data abroad.

Even just trying can cost you a packet as most charge roaming in 10mb blocks for what ever they can rip you off of. Vodafone I've heard charge £10 just for connecting in some parts of the world, and then charge per minute!

I got a bit suspicious when the O2 person initially asked me how much credit I had on the phone (relevance ???) and this was heightened when she couldn't provide a link to the Terms and Conditions supporting her assertion regarding a free data allowance of 10 MB. O2 barstewards !

Incidentally, I couldn't find reference in the on-line T & Cs applicable to Blackberries to an overseas data allowance - though other PAYG phones on 02 can get one. I think I-phone users on O2 were also complaining about this on the forums.

The Gite advertisement said they have wi-fi, but I suppose out-of-season it will probably be turned off.

GPRS and GSM it is then.

02 and Blackberry are bloody useless bureaucracies. 02 have been around 20+ years and RIM slightly longer. You'd have though that after that length of time they'd have managed to commercially and technically faciliated seamless roaming at reasonable charges through at leasy Europe. Another shining example of don't worry multinationals can do it better than government. Yea.

Nick

Edited 3 October, 201114 yr by Clunkclick

Just spent another hour (I can't believe it) on the phone telling the credit card companies that I may be using my card abroad in the next two weeks. Should have taken 10 minutes - it would have done 30 years ago.

The HSBC call centre is located somewhere in asia by the sound of the accents. They seem to have taken their procedure manual from the best practice guide of the Indian Civil Service. Their watchwords seem to be :-

It is your duty to complicate a simple issue by refering incoming callers to half-a-dozen operatives rather one; make sure you keep the caller holding on the line between referals for as long as possible;always render your service on the worst grade of telephone connection you can find and make sure that only the operatives with the least intelligible english skills and fastest rate of delivery deal with telephone callers and, the best one of all, make all calls the subject of referral to the fraud department - shades of Sir Humphrey Appleby there - "How can HB pencils be a security issue. It depends what you do with them Bernard".

How they stay in business (Apart from thieving from the customers accounts) has got to be an issue worthy of David Attenborough TV series.

I can just see the in-depth investigative journalist shock horror presentation with "HSBC ? How did it get here ? Did it come from Mars ? Will it survive ?" . . . .

Nick

Edited 3 October, 201114 yr by Clunkclick

They seem to have taken their procedure manual from the best practice guide of the Indian Civil Service.

Going slightly OT, I can remember the first time I went to India and was amazed (or should that be gobsmacked) at the number of people that were needed to check every passport.

I seem to recall that about 15 people had to look, confirm that same look and then stamp the passport that confirmed that all the preceding people had looked and re-looked at the passport/visa etc.

There was probably a further person that needed to check the passport had been stamped correctly as well but I can't remember if anyone needed to re-verify that last step!

Just spent another hour (I can't believe it) on the phone telling the credit card companies that I may be using my card abroad in the next two weeks. Should have taken 10 minutes - it would have done 30 years ago.

I never bother phoning my bank, and have never had an issue using credit/debit cards abroad. I once made a 900 euro purchase, went straight through after tapping my pin number into the machine in spain.

For the phone, data charges can be very high and are typically around £5 per mb depending on uk network. When I am in france I use a French 3G PAYG sim card on orange that I top-up by buying prepay cards. I also have a spanish 3G card on Yoigo for use in Spain.

I'm here now. Quite windy overnight ! All I can hear at the moment is the roar of Mirage jet engines overhead as one of the frennch military plane owners do their training over the bay.

Anyway, O2 were as good as their word.I've got a 3G connection.Obviously can access the web. However,when I tried streaming a You Tube video, it packed up half way through and whenever I've attempted to stream anything after that I got an error message saying the connections blocked. Presume then that my 10 Mb data allowance is exhausted. Outstanding work O2.

Surely, this restriction can't be technical. Its got to be either commercial or national security.

Postscript

Just got a text from O2 to the effect that I have exceeded my 10 Mb daily allowance and that if it happens again the roaming service will be diuscontinued. Like the positive non-bureaucratic thinking O2. Leads one to conclude that these devices are toys and not intended for heavy duty use.

Now,if the allowance were 100 Mb a day at least you get the equivalent of a couple of vids or 10-15 tunes, that would be usuable/useful.

Nick

Edited 7 October, 201114 yr by Clunkclick

Streaming media consumes a shed load of bandwidth at a surprising rate, the 10meg limit is good for facebook and emails and thats about it.

These restrictions are so draconian they effectively make the system unusuable,Who are the idiots that run O2 ? Give me their names !

Call-me-Dave is constantly telling us that putting taxes too high will kill the profit motive and entreprenneural zeal and consequentially retards economic growth and recovery. Well, dohhh, the same applies to prices Dave. As an example of rip-off Britain - special deal on French TV today. Renault Megane "Argosy" 4,500 Euros, drive away price.Peugoet are doing a similar deal on a people-carrier.

O2 keep on sending me texts reminding me that I'm over my data limit and need to buy another bolt-on.Does their marketing department think we're all idiots ? Google won't work now, same as You Tube, but everything else I OK. T+ssers !

- think I'll do as one of the previous posters did and buy a France Orange PAYG sim - that'll learn O2.

Must go now. Got to toss a coin to see where I'm going PM - country, town, chateaux or plage.

Postscript

Juut checked my O2 balances. Call-time was loaded-up with 23 quid before I left last (uesday. Now reads zero. So that's occured following No calls and about an hour's web usuage every day Wednesday to Saturday i.e. 5 quid a day. Also, checked my web usuage. That's showing that it still has the full monthly UK bolt-on of 500 Mb of data + 500 texts ???? So, it looks as if all my web usuage abroad has been charged against the telephone side balance. Is this right ? If so, no wonder its so expensive. Also, even though the call balance was zero and I suspect has been so since late Friday, I'm still able to use some web services e.g. This forum. Yet Google search, You Tube and, laterly Google Maps can't be reached.

Anybody care to venture an opinion as to what's occurring ?

Postscript 2

Re+topped+up with 15 quids worth. The data services seem to be restored.

Decided to turn all data services off when roaming.However, I soon discovered rhat that setting disables all web-based services, whether they charge or not.So, I've now reset it to "Prompt before charging". This seems to allow the non-charging data services to work without leaving you open to charges from the web providers that do - who are in the main streamers such as You Tube.

Postript 3

(Opped up 15 Quids Sunday eveninGg.Following that my O2 account balance was reported as 15 quids.I then set mobile network data services to "Prompt before charge. All.wouldright theen ? Or that's what I thought. As it turned-out things were far from OK.Subsequently, I accessed a couple web pages on the sunday evening - not more than 15 minutes use. No charge warning messages were reeived during this use. Next morning my balance was reported as 1.37 quids.And again with no further call or web use the balance reduced to 0.37 pence.

Any body know what's happening here ?

Not only is there this phantomm charging but if I set mobile network data servuces "OfflI then find I am unable to access my hotmail E-mail

Final

Back in the UK now. In summary, what I think happened was that in a once only attempt to stream a 50MB video (Roaming data set to on) I incurred charges of approx £36.63. This all appeared to be charged to my PAYG ordinary call allowance and not the data allowance - presumably this was the doing of the French mobile server I got the 3 G connection on (Orange France). Because I only had my handset loaded up with £23 of PAYG call-time initially,the streaming of the video stopped before it completed (Because the funds ran out, - suggests real-time data exchange between service providers) and the balance due was deducted next time I topped up. Hence the residual £1.37. I topped-up a further time and used only web browsing, e-mail and texts over 3G and GPRS/GPRS Edge depending on what was available in the locality. And thereafter got what appeared to be reasonable data charges, but even though I've concluded that BT allowed me a 10MB a day roaming data allowance, some of the data charges were still being set against the my availble call-time balance and not the data allowance.But these were relatively small compared to the streaming charge and i can only conclude that they were incurred because I exceeded my daily data allowance on a few occasions (The original texts from BT refer ?). Who knows. IMHO THE REGULATOR SHOULD DIVE INTO THIS ISSUE TO GET THESE COMPANIES TO ISSUE BETTER INFORMATION ABOUT ROAMING CHARGES AS WELL AS CAP SOME OF THEM OFF.

So the moral of the story is, DON'T DO STREAMING ON YOUR MOBILE WHEN YOU'RE ROAMING AND RESTRICTED TO 3G SERVICES UNLESS YOU ARE THE EUROPEAN CENTRAL BANK AND ARE PREPARED TO PAY CHARGES ON A SCALE EQUIVALENT TO THE GREEK BAIL-OUT.

Nick

Edited 22 October, 201114 yr by Clunkclick