Just like Mums everywhere, I've apparently been to Iceland?

[Anonymous]

On the 3rd of May this year, I boarded a ferry in Portsmouth and 24 hours later docked in Bilbao, Spain. Whilst onboard I had no mobile phone connection. No data access.

I checked my bill when I got home this weekend and I've been billed £40 for "Non-EU browse and download" on the exact date I was on a boat, country code "ISL". 

Has anyone else had this happen?

I've had an online chat with O2 twice now. The second time they had no record of my first query about this. This time again they said they will investgate it.

I'm quite loath to pay £40 on my bill and wait for them to investgate when I'm on a £27-a-month contract!

[adamtemp64]

Yes this crops up on here every now and then.

The boats use satelite mobile so it is not classed as eu data. so £6 a mb up to the £40 fixed maximum o2 impose.

I will find an old thread and link to it.

[Anonymous]

But the Op says they had no connection so why the charges

[adamtemp64 · Accepted solution]

the ferry operators can only switch on when out of territorial waters and it can seem like you have no connection but whilst the phone is asleep it can connect and do auto updates etc it is only 6.6 mb to use the £40.

the only way to stop this is to turn cell data off or turn the phone off.

Out of interest what phone were you using when the charges happened

[Anonymous]

That's out of order

[Anonymous]

Hmm that sounds very dodgy.  I had no email or facebook updates for the entire journey, and my app updates are limited to wifi only.

I'm using a Galaxy S2.

[Anonymous]

I would ring customer services and ask them to refund you if they won't send in a complaint

[adamtemp64]

in that case you need to Talk to o2 on 202 pay monthly and do not use live chat.

what was the ferry company?

[Anonymous]

O2 will not be able to tell you what the data was used on - they will only be able to tell you if data was used on the foreign network.

If you are adamant that no data was used on the phone, CS can do a network investigation where O2's network services team will investigate the sim card's usage on the foreign masts and tell you if it was or wasn't used. This can take up to 5 days and the outcome will be accurate.

If your software version on the Galaxy S2 is 4.0 or greater then you can go to Settings then Data Usage and on the graph highlight the dates in which you were away (or the dates which correspond to the foreign data usage on your bill) and that should tell you what it was that used the data.

[adamtemp64]

@opium we have recently seen a few examples of this perhaps you could feed back the information.

Surely if isl is on a bill then o2travel rates apply as iceland is included.

so the op may have only had £1.99 daily rate added.
The old international pages made it clear but nor it is not explained. but I know cruise / ferry are at full non eu this needs to be clearer.

Just my take on the issue it should show a code that is not an eu o2travel includes country.