The article below was culled from Today's Guardian (Page 18)
You may be more reluctant to look for a Roaming 3g card after reading it.
Myke:
French customers charged tens of thousands of euros for mobile internet
Orange says the three men had failed to understand the conditions of the 'unlimited' 3G package they had signed up to
* Lizzy Davies in Paris
* guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 18 November 2009 17.25 GMT
Opening your bills is rarely a pleasant experience. But mild irritation turned to incredulity for three French mobile internet users when they were confronted with charges running to tens of thousands of euros.
The customers, who had all signed up for an "unlimited" 3G internet package offered by Orange, were stunned to receive monthly bills ordering them to pay huge sums of money.
Jean Spadaro, a hospital doctor from Fontainebleau near Paris, today said he had been charged almost 160,000 euros (£143,000) by the France Telecom-owned phone giant for four weeks' use in May.
His case came to light after two other Orange clients, cafe owner Eric Gernez and insurance executive Christophe Aupy-Fargues, made public their complaints earlier this week. Having also been impressed by the offer of unlimited access, they had been left with bills for 46,000 euros and 39,500 euros respectively, they said.
When Gernez and Spadaro contacted Orange about their astronomical bills they were told they had failed to understand the basics of the internet package: that, while it was unlimited in terms of time, anything downloaded beyond one gigabyte would be charged.
The customers insisted this was not explained to them properly when they signed their contracts. Spadaro, who after months of negotiations has avoided paying almost all the money, also claimed Orange failed to inform him that the amount he owed was rising steeply during the period in question. "How is it that I never received any warning or alert as to the size of the bill?," he asked on French radio today.The cause of the other case stemmed from roaming charges, the fees incurred by using the service abroad. Aupy-Fargues admitted his card was being used by a colleague in Spain, but insisted he had not been told that it would be so expensive.
"If we had known that the unlimited package didn't apply outside France he wouldn't have taken the 3G with him," he said. A spokesman for Orange said the user had been repeatedly warned of the rising bill.
Gernez, who lives in the village of Petite-Foret near the Belgian border, may also have fallen victim to the roaming fees by accidentally connecting to the foreign network from France.
Laurent Vitoux, France Telecom's regional director, said the company was in a 'constructive dialogue' with the customer. "It's obviously not about fleecing a customer," he said.added
