Roaming Charges

[Guide16]

Beware when in Rhodes Greece O2 have charged me for roaming inTurkey. They refuse to budge and more or less say it is my fault. I have been with them for nearly 20 years and now will cancel both my contracts and go with BT

[MI5]

Inadvertent roaming is when your phone automatically locks onto another network because of a stronger signal.
The advice we give everyone when travelling to places with close borders to other countries is to manually select a network of the country you are in to avoid this.
O2 advise this on the website too.

[MI5 · Accepted solution]

Inadvertent Roaming

Accidental roaming (sometimes known as inadvertent roaming) might occur if you are in an area close to national borders because your phone picks up the network across the border. If this happens, you may be charged as though you were roaming on the network across the border. You can prevent this if you live near a national border by setting your handset to do a manual network selection (as opposed to an automatic network selection) and select the O2 network. This way if you lose the O2 network your handset will not automatically try to connect you to an alternate network. For advice, please visit your nearest O2 store.

Source: http://www.o2.co.uk/international/travel/standard-charges/payandgo

http://www.o2.co.uk/international/travel/standard-charges

[Bambino]

@Guide16 We understand how frustrating being charged for something you weren't aware of is, but before you cancel your contracts in a fit of pique, be aware that you will still have to pay what you owe on them, which could cost you even more. 

[jonsie]

Always best to research and look at the international pages before you trave. 20 minutes and you are fully aware of what you need to do.

[Anonymous]

I'm not sure how they even have a leg to stand on.

Yes you can put 'accidental roaming in'. But there's no accident here. I was standing in Greece during my 6 days abroad and charged twice for being Turkey which is quite obvously not the case. In terms and conditions they state that if you are travelling to Rhodes, Greece then you will not incur roaming charges. Whilst in Rhodes I was charged therefore they are in breach of their terms and conditions as it's their signal that has the problem, not my phone's. Trust me I'll be arguing this one until i get my money back. 

[MI5]

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@Anonymous wrote:

Trust me I'll be arguing this one until i get my money back. 

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They most likely will reimburse you as a goodwill gesture, but everyone really needs to be aware of the signal their phone has latched on to if in Auto mode and take the appropriate action where necessary.

"Accidental roaming" is a standard industry term for when a phone latches onto a stronger signal from a neighbouring country. So it's perfectly valid.

If I were you, I would be polite and humble with your discussions with customer service as this is more likely to reap rewards.

Good luck and welcome to the forum

[Anonymous]

Well then they completely contradict themselves then don't they? You can't on one hand say, "If you go to Greece then you will not incur roaming charges" and then say "but stand in the middle of that country or we might charge you".

I've already spoken to someone on live chat and my case has been put through to the customer servies department. There's being polite and humble and then there's being charged for going to Turkey when I was in Greece, which is divided by a small part of the Mediterranean, but yes, I understand what you are saying.

"Everyone needs to be aware?" It needs to be made blatantly obvious. You can't take appropriate action as by the time you've turned your phone on its already connected.

[MI5]

Selecting manual network rather than auto is the way to prevent it, but do this before you leave the UK.
Let us know how you get on with this please.

[TwoPints]

I have just experienced this.  I went to Croatia, got a text from O2Roaming saying 'Welcome to Croatia' and confirming that all charges would be as per my UK contract.  I get home to receive a bill for using my phone in Bosnia.  No text from O2 to say 'Welcome to Bosnia' so I merrily carried on using my phone thinking I was still in Croatia (which I was).  If I'd received a text saying O2 thought I was in Bosnia, I'd have manually changed my provider to a Croatian one.