Data blocked due to roaming charges abroad - paid off but still no data access??

[ElizaSlaw96]

I'm having an issue that has made me decide to leave O2 altogether, but until I can terminate my contract I was wondering if anybody else has had a similar issue with pay monthly and how you resolved it? I'm on a pay monthly tariff with 100GB data.

A few weeks ago I travelled to Vietnam and within minutes of turning my phone off aeroplane mode, I received a text saying I had hit my £50 roaming abroad limit and would need to up this to £120 if I wanted to use more data. I have no idea how I hit the £50 limit when my data never even worked, but presumed something downloaded by accident and caused this to happen. I upped the limit to £120 as the airport had no wifi and I needed to WhatsApp my friend to tell them I had landed. I had internet access for a few minutes before I received a text that I had already hit the £120 limit.

I then received a text stating that as I had used £200 of roaming charges abroad (confusing given the previous text said there was a £120 cap) I would no longer be able to access data until I paid it off. I used wifi for the rest of my trip, and when I came back to the UK my data still was blocked. I paid the £200 charge, in addition to my regular airtime bill for the month, but have still not been given access to my data. It has been 24 hrs since I paid off the bill.

O2 customer support are being absolutely useless and seem to not understand the issue. I now plan to just end my contract entirely as soon as I can, but as I have to give 30 days notice I would like to be able to access data until then (especially given I PAY FOR 100GB DATA A MONTH!?).

BTW yes I have turned my roaming on/off and also turned my phone on/off multiple times.

[gmarkj · Accepted solution]

o2's systems take a couple of days to sync, so the payment and the data connection will not link up immediately @ElizaSlaw96 

Disappointing that the customer support you have spoken to (assuming you called and not chat) have not tied the two together.

Let's see if the community advisors can help getting this sorted sooner - can you step in @O2Ryan ?

As for what caused the issue, the charge for Vietnam is £7.20 per mb - so using 7mb gets you to the £50 limit. Most newer phones have something syncing in the background, and certainly things like iMessage or Android Chat will try and use data.

In fact these services can also try and connect to a mobile network on start up!

[O2Ryan]

Thanks for the tag ill send a private message over now.

[ElizaSlaw96]

Yep, called customer service and they said that there is no issue with my data and that I should be able to access it. I ended up getting a PAC code and decided to just end my contract and find another provider - thank you for letting me know it takes a couple of days! I accepted the Vietnam charges and learnt a valuable lesson (use a different SIM while abroad!).

Thanks very much for your response

[MI5]

@ElizaSlaw96 

No need to wait. How to get PAC here Guide: How to get your PAC [June 2021 Update]