Not sure what to do

[98ninja]

Well I went on holiday to New Zealand in July.
I took my mobile phone with me. The service provider is Optus.
I had international roaming enabled and made a few calls and sms's.
I expected the bill to be a little bit higher than normal.,
Well I got the bill and Ive copped a 430$ data charge. Ive called Optus
and told them the data didnt work for me when I was there.
I was told my call would be escalated for my bill to be disputed, the only correspondence I received
was that they would send me an sms when im about to exceed my monthly limits,
anyway
what to do?
Do I just pay this data charge? or should I keep pursuing it?

[Disco]

I'm going overseas at the end of the year and have been told to turn off the message bank etc....And also If anybody call's me that I will be the one copping the international charge's .....I'm gunna leave my mobile at home now

[h.b.bear]

keep pursuing it until you cant pursue any more and if you lose pay it then,only because by not paying it it will come back and bite you on the bum when comes to your credit rating for a loan or even renting a house

[h.b.bear]

keep pursuing it until you cant pursue any more and if you lose pay it then,only because by not paying it it will come back and bite you on the bum when comes to your credit rating for a loan or even renting a house

[dilligaf]

you're not on your own

http://www.theage.com.au/business/why-d ... 1hk5u.html

I travel a bit and have a cheap cell phone and I've been able to buy a pre paid sim whenever I change country.

[Naked Twin]

I would suggest you have one of the those new fangle phones like and android type one that has internet connection like an apple iphone. They are constantly connecting to the server, back in your home country which tend to cost even if you are not receiving. Try pursuing them but I doubt you will have much luck.

However take some hope from this - My managing director went back to Germany for 5 days and his bill was near over $2k, but no worry our parent company which is still privately owned one of the brothers was in South Africa, rang up a bill rumoured to be between 14 and 17,000 thousand Euro in 14 days!

[Jonno]

Pursue it all the way mate, register a dispute against that bill.

I have just reduced my last Tel$tra immobile bill by 1700 clams as they forgot to notify me of data usage, only took 3 months to sort it. Oh get the operator to manage the whole process by pleading not to be put onto another dept again and say this has taken me 3 days at 5 hrs each time and again plead for them to manage your enquiry.

While you are disputing that bill you wont need to pay for it until resolved, I actually paid some of it as a goodwill gesture and it did end up helping.

[damotm]

also drop the word "Ombudsman"

[Smitty]

I am with jonno
especially if the data connects didnt work...

[red_dave]

Stick it to the man!

[Megsnitro]

I took my optus Iphone to NZ & had the same thing happen - I had asked about international roaming when I was on a general call to them & they said it was a function that I had to turn on (I didn't). When I saw the bill, I went ballistic, rang them & got the "We have no record of you asking about it" - told them I didn't care, that I had requested it not be turned on in the initial crap you have to listen & go through when you sign up on the contract & as they couldn't disprove that - they refunded the charges.
message me if you want the Australian office of Optus that I dealt with (I'd have to track the number down in the diary!)

[mike-s]

When we were in New Zealand recently i have an android phone (Samsung Galaxy S2) and took my phone with us to keep in touch with family/in case of emergency. I keep data services off to extend battery life, but made 100% sure i never turned it on while we were overseas. At $2/meg (if not more) it was certainly sufficiently expensive to make sure that i stuck with just using the local internet cafe instead.

I made sure of this as when we went to Kenya for 2 weeks last year i ended up clocking up $250 extra in charges just by receiving calls (and making one) that in total would not have been longer than 30 minutes for the entire time that we were there, as well as sending and receiving 1 sms per day.

[Naked Twin]

But Africa has some of the most expensive mobile call costs in the world.

[Strika]

also drop the word "Ombudsman"

I have been told that it costs a Telco around $700 every time someone lodges a complaint with the Telecommunications Ombudsman. That is a charge levied by the Ombudsman apparently. So it is in their best interests to help you as they lose more than that just from you lodging the complaint.

I had a similiar issue with my data charges on a Mobile Broadband from Optus a few years ago. I got very little joy from Optus and was duckshoved and denied at every turn. So, I just lodged a complaint with the Ombudsman, I got a phone call from Optus Management the very next day and they agreed to waive the charges. I also threatened to desert them and asked them to go back through the history of my number and see how many years I had been with them before making a decision on the charges, as they may not see me again otherwise. (I have been with them since 1997 from memory and had very high usage at the time.)

[mike-s]

But Africa has some of the most expensive mobile call costs in the world.

That may be the case, but it was still an incentive to not cock around and use the phone unless i had to.