data usage in the EU

[Anonymous]

2 questions here..

My account shows I have O2 travel as a free extra but it doesn't actually work. I've since paid/enrolled for the £1.99 pm travel extrato make it work.

secondly - on the same subject, O2 messaged me I had used 60% of my 1GB travel allowance for data..costing £30 approx, but my phone says i've used 250mb ? To confuse thiings even more, when i check my O2 account on line my current bill only shows approx 200mb used on the days before I signed up for the £1.99 pm travel extra.  Now maybe there are some charges outstanding - but why are O2 scaring me about usage..making me buy the travel option when in fact it says it was free..and I already had it showing on my O2 account as one of my extras ??

confused ?yesI am..

thanks

[MI5]

Overseas data use is completely independent of your UK allowances.
You should not be getting a data usage warning when out of UK.

[Anonymous]

Actually that's not true. When you turn off o2 Travel, you get a 1GB cap abroad and warnings on approaching and reaching that cap. You have to explicity increase the cap if you want more than 1GB. Yes it is separate from your UK allowance, but it's not true to say that you should not get warnings when abroad.

However from my perspective those warnings are totally disfunctional. Here is a graph of the actual data usage according to my o2 bill, versus the amount stated in the data warning text message. Obviously it's not precise down to the hour as the data billing is mostly daily, but there is a clear trend line. You can see that the warnings overstated how much data I used by a factor of more than 12. Indeed I hit my "1GB limit" after less than 80 megabytes of data. If I had not anticipated this, it could have been a huge pain, as I was driving across Europe using data for navigation.

Now most people would just think "wow, that was cheaper than I thought" when they see their bill, or would switch on o2Travel. But the problem with this is that they would normally be better off not using o2Travel. I never managed to spend 1.99 on data in any day during a ten day EU holiday. These dodgy SMS warnings therefore mis-sell consumers on o2Travel.

I am not sure where to take this next. I like O2 but I have little confidence in getting this fixed and wonder how many others are also seeing the wrong numbers.

[MI5]

To be precise, you shouldn't get warnings about your UK data allowance.

[Anonymous]

Agreed. The OP was asking about the abovementioned travel data 1GB warnings, not UK limit warnings. In my opinion, most normal users should not be buying in to o2Travel, it's cheaper to just be sensible with your use (no video streaming and don't back up your photos 'til you're on WiFi). In fact the daily cap for full speed access when you have o2Travel would make it very hard to use more than 1.99 worth of data, as I found your speeds drop to 2G after about 30 megabytes (costing £1.29). In that light it's a bit of a scam, to be honest.

[jonsie]

MY feelings too about o2 Travel.  Unless you are a heavy user of calls and texts, standard rates are far better. Data is almost unusable on Travel.

[MI5]

Indeed, many long discussions on here about it, particularly the poor data speed.

[Anonymous]

having been wrongly scared about racking up the £43 of my 1GB allowance O2travel seemed like a cheaper option..- but I was conned into this decision by the messages warning me of high usage being incorrect...

What made it worse was the £1.99 has to be for a minimum of 7 days, so you can't go back to the cheaper option, and even more worse than that was just a simple text triggered the £1.99 charge...so if that's all you did that day, that text cost £1.99.

Soon as the 7 days were over I opted out of O2travel and used my 1GB, ignored the warnings and ended up monitoring my usage from my phones own stats.

thanks everyone for the comments and clarity brought to this..

[jonsie]

yes one text for £1.99, crazy which is the reason I opted out. I use TU so that I can use my UK allowance over wifi. Data I have a local simcard with 10GB for £8/month.

[MI5]

Hopefully now better informed and in control of costs.

[Anonymous]

FYI I was not made to wait seven days before switching off o2travel.