On Sunday night I boarded a ferry from Hull to Zeebrugge, for a couple of days city break in Bruges. When I was roughly halfway across the North Sea, I got a surprisingly pleasant text message from O2:
"Relax in Europe with O2 Travel. You'll never pay more than £1.99 a day for data. Check your email, Facebook, Twitter and BBC News. Now you can keep your data switched on to find good restaurants, share holiday pics and stay in touch..."
"£1.99 a day?!" I thought, "Bargain! All the things listed in the text message apply to me! These are exactly what I'd like to do when abroad but have never previously dared due to the fear of unclear data charges". So this is exactly what I did - I left my data roaming on. I checked my email. I checked Facebook. I Tweeted. I sought out some restaurants. I Instagrammed some pictures of gothic buildings, beer glasses and waffles. It was amazing! And after all, i'll NEVER pay more than £1.99 a day for data, right? Wrong.
Shortly after boarding the ferry back to Hull the day after, I recieved a very different text message from O2:
"Using the web outside Europe costs £6/MB. We'll tell you when you've spent £20 and again at £40. We won't charge you more than £40 on your current bill and you can use up to 50MB."
What happened to the £1.99 a day thing? That was a much better proposition. Also, I don't remember ever having left Europe - the Ferry I was on travelled down the East coast of the UK to Belgium, All of which is in Europe unless I am mistaken. Within a couple of minutes of facebooking and twittering I had another text message. I'd spent £20! Phone off, and grumpy Danny.
Dreading getting my bill from O2 this month. Interestingly, I should also probably point out that whilst abroad my 3G speeds were amazing, too - guessing the "give long term customers crap 3G allowance" algorythm that O2 deny existance of doesn't apply abroad.
