A British tourist returned from a trip to Turkey to find a deeply unpleasant surprise waiting for her – a phone bill from O2 to the tune of an eye-watering £12,300.
Londoner Patricia Al was landed with the seriously hefty charges after she began downloading two episodes of BBC comedy show My Family from iTunes over hotel WiFi. Unfortunately, the connection cut out, but as Patricia’s phone was connected to the computer while charging, it took over downloading via her data connection automatically.
The download left property consultant Patricia with charges of £5,156.97 for one episode and £5,453.80 for the other, along with additional charges for smaller data bundles she used during the trip.
Speaking to ITV, Patricia explained: “Every day I would plug my phone into my laptop to charge, set up the downloading on the hotel Wi-Fi and go off for a swim.”
“I had no idea what had happened until I got a message from O2 on my last day of my holiday, saying my phone may have been stolen, because my bill was so large. I had a look online at my bill, and I couldn’t believe my eyes – it was more than £12,000.”
O2 claims that Patricia was contacted when her bill reached £5,701.86, and maintain that the bill is so large because Ms. Al opted out of the 50mb roaming data cap the company offers.
In a statement O2 said:
“Our O2 Travel service caps this usage and we advise customers to think carefully before they ask us to remove it,” said the service provider in a statement.
“We would also advise customers to be careful when using their mobile phone as a modem for their laptop while overseas.
“If your hotel WiFi signal drops out, the data charges will be carried over the overseas mobile phone network and as a result be added to your mobile phone bill.
O2 has since reduced the bill by £6,644.97, leaving Al with a remaining bill of almost £6,000.
