Rest of the world 24hr pass

[Raz6452]

Currently abroad and out of Europe. I have data roaming disabled and am only using WiFi. I haven’t made any calls or sent any sms texts from my iPhone SE.
Just received an itemised bill which includes additional charges of £6.40 to my normal business contract for numerous 1 second calls to 7802000332. This also activated the rest of the world 24hr pass 5 times at £7.50 a time, a total of £37.50. I have a total monthly bill of £60.10 instead of the normal £16 and I haven’t used my phone!
None of the spurious 1 second calls to 7802000332 are logged on my phone and I’ve not texted.
I contacted o2 customer services but they insist all is correct, but after insisting it wasn’t they would only refund the £6.40 calls cost as a one off goodwill gesture, not the cost of the rest of the world pass activation.

I have now requested that the £7.50 a pop rest of the world pass is disabled as it appears I have been charged for using it 5 times without my knowledge.

[gmarkj]

Have you been turning your phone on and off?
iPhones send a message when they are turned on to register for iMessaging...

[MI5 · Accepted solution]

07802000332 is the sms gateway number that is shown when sending text messages from abroad.
The iPhone will send text messages silently to register for facetime and iMessage each time the phone is turned on.
It's an unavoidable feature of the iPhone unless you turn off iMessage and facetime or leave the phone turned on all the time.

[Raz6452]

Thanks. I did wonder about this, although I haven’t been turning the phone off. I am however on a cruise ship and their internet, which has to go through their company portal will not allow iMessage or FaceTime to register so it becomes disabled with the message “waiting for activation”.
Once ashore and logged into the free WiFi in a cafe, iMessage and FaceTime reconnects and registers again, even though data roaming remains disabled.
Once connected again to the limited internet through the cruise ship’s portal it again can’t register.
I am now presuming the messages are sent over and over again by the iPhone, without my knowledge, while attempting to reconnect iMessage.
Not good! Possibly one to watch for in the future if travelling on cruise ships? I suppose a solution, if this is the reason, would be to put the phone in aircraft mode for the duration, but then nobody could contact me on the event of an emergency.
I do have an android smart phone with me on a Vodafone contract, and this has not had the same issue, so again perhaps one to bear in mind with an iPhone.

[Jasper1]

We recently returned from Turkey 24/06/2018 and our O2 bill showed 2 amounts of £7.50 for the Rest of World 24 hr pass. We have resolved the cost issue by obtaining refund of part of our bill. However we are due to return to Turkey in a couple of months and wish to avoid incurring the 24 Hr pass fee. We were told by O2 that they cannot assure us that, without a pass in place, we can avoid much higher charges from other sources?? Also despite advising O2 prior to a our recent trip that we did not want a pass, they nevertheless automatically them to our bill. I asked how we can avoid being charged for texts and calls we did not make. These included calls from PPI and car insurance claim lawyers who were not responded to and indeed whose numbers we had previously blocked. Apparently disabling Data Roaming and Mobile data on our iPhones was no guarantee of preventing unsolicited calls and texts from triggering the 24 Hr pass. The solution, we have been given, is to remove the Sim card from the phone. This seems to be a drastic measure. Has anyone else encountered a similar issue. Incidentally where we stayed we had free WIFI and only used WhatsApp and emails from that location.

[MI5]

You should put phone into airplane mode and then turn on WiFi so you can connect via WiFi for WhatsApp and emails.

[Jasper1]

Many thanks for that

[Kick-a-day-13]

It is not stated,in the T and C for the "Rest of the World" pass,  that you are going to be billed, when you are abroad, from the moment a data signal is received by your phone once  it is powered up.

When you power your phone up abroad and wish to enter you back calls listing, for example,  you will receive a measage on a yellow background showing "YOU HAVE GOT THE 24 HOUR PASS".  The message continues that you will be billed for initiating a call or message.  It does not state that you will see on the itemised invoice timings of 01 seconds or 00 seconds which will trigger the 24 hour pass

Many months later you will receive an un-itemised invoice which you may or may not just pass on to you accounts section.  However, you may wish to question why the bill is so heavy when you were sitting on the beach, drinking Cuba Libres.  Accordingly you will search and retrieve the itemised invoice.

On inspection of the invoice you cannot find a telephone number but you can see a listing of  entries of 01, 00, 01,01, 00 down the page.. Then you will find the legend which shows that these are messages.  The incoming message triggers the "REST OF THE WORLD Pass".   You will be billed GBP 7.50 silently for each day you lay on the beach.

You may , then, take it up with O2 Customer Services  whose job it is to protect O2 from having to pay out for lack of transperency.  You will receive a letter which rejects your claim, for wrongful billing, but will be told "you are wrong". but you can go to arbitration.

[Raz6452]

It is not strictly the O2 Rest of the World Pass that is at fault here. That just initiates the daily charge for using their roaming service in world destinations other than Europe at a cheaper rate for 24 hours than the singular cost for phone calls, texts, or data if a single call, text or data is used in the relevant area.

The reason that the charges were made to me, and unbeknown to me at the time, is that if you have an iPhone, and either turn it off or disable FaceTime or iMessage while using it as I was on a limited maritime service at sea (disabled automatically and also unbeknown to me by the ship’s paid for maritime internet service), and then turn the phone on once ashore simply to join a free WiFi service in a bar for example, not to use the roaming service, the iOS of an iPhone transmits a 0.1 second phone service text message in the background without warning to the user, to re-enable the disabled FaceTime and iMessage services, via O2, not to O2. This is sent by the phone even though data roaming remains disabled in the iPhone settings.

I was on a month’s cruise at the time it happened to me, and unbeknown to me the phone sent this short background text message many times every time I went ashore, activating O2’s charge each time, resulting in a larger bill than it should have been for using the O2 Rest of the World Service I didn’t actually choose to use myself.

I did speak to customer services at O2, but as the reasons for the charge were due to the way an iPhone works, and not down to them, my claim was rejected, although I did get a nominal goodwill refund.