This post is all about how to avoid a $2000 mobile phone bill
This post just goes to show, despite your best planning to prevent things going wrong, they can, and will. This is the Black Swan event which is a very interesting topic in and of itself.
After the absolute debacle of 2009, where I returned home to an AUD$2200 phone bill (around USD$2000) – read more about that by clicking here – I was determined not to come home to a big phone bill again.
I did a lot of research and wrote a post about the various plans available for our Australian readers.
Since I am on Telstra (for those international readers, Telstra is the ants-pants, rolled-gold mobile phone carrier in Australia. More expensive, but very fast 3G everywhere), I signed on to their $160 for 60MB of overseas data plan. You can read a comparison of the plans here.
I thought that for 2 weeks, 60MB would be plenty of data, given we were staying in one place and had Wifi. Last year, I used around 200M, and was constantly on Twitter and Google Maps.
Before I left, I reset my iPhone data usage stats to 0MB. I turned all my email data push and app push notifications off. This meant data would only be downloaded when I specifically asked an app to do so.
When I got home I’d used 61MB according to my iPhone, so I expected excess usage charges for 1MB.
When I got my bill for AUD$1900, it would be fair to say I was shocked.
My SMS and calls added up to AUD$400 (Note to Telstra: you NEED an international call and sms pack like the one Optus offers), my month-and-a-bio of international roaming was $200, so Telstra was telling me I used $1300 (around USD$1100) of excess data (around 130MB). No way.
When I looked at the bill, the data usage had been reconciled into minutes/seconds, with some calls showing 394 minutes. Clearly something was awry.
I rang Telstra, telling them that I thought the bill was erroneous, and if they couldn’t reconcile the bill into data (bits and bytes, not minutes and seconds), then I clearly couldn’t confirm the accuracy of their bill. They told me this was all they received from the overseas carriers.
Honestly, in the year 2010, telcos, who are at the cutting edge of technology, can’t get their billing systems into the year 2010? Shocking it is.
Happily, Telstra saw the folly of the situation and wrote a significant portion of the bill off. Compare this to Vodafone who operate a global network – at least when I got their bill it was unified and in MB so was clear to see what I was using (Google Maps) and how much time/data I used (unfortunately, Vodafone’s Australian network is average in terms of coverage).
Despite your best intentions to protect yourself, you may still get a hefty bill. So, how do you mitigate this, and what are the lessons here.
- Option 1 (good): I highly recommend getting a Vodafone SIM card and adding overseas data roaming if your local Vodafone offers it. For Australians, they offer $200 for 120MB or $329 for 200MB. Get the cheapest monthly SIM you can, about a month before you leave, and add the data component about 1 week before you go. You may have to pay a $300 bond for the roaming (returned to you when you pay you bill). Vodafone’s roaming between countries (Germany->France, France->Spain and so on) is seamless and the benefit is you get a bill that’s likely to be accurate.
- Option 2 (best): This is by far the most cost effective option. Go into an SFR (Vodafone France) and get a prepaid SIM; the SIMs usually come with €5-10 of credit for SMS and calls. Get them to add data. It’s not publicised, but they have a product where you can add data for 20 days; the data is unlimited! Be aware that they need to activate the data for that SIM, so make sure you do it all at the one shop at the same time. I can’t stress this enough. Speaking a bit of French will help you a lot (check out Coffee Break French for 80 free lessons).
I like the second option best, as you pre-pay for everything and can get help when you’re there. With unlimited data, you’ll be able to go crazy. Of course, if you want to keep using your home SIM card, take an old phone you can make calls and SMS from.
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