Hidden mobile data charges: ethical or not?
I'm very pleased with my new mobile phone. I know there are far better models out there but I have to balance features with affordability. If someone offered me a free HTC Incredible for the same £10-per-month deal I'm on now, I'd grab it so quick you wouldn't even see the blur. But my LG GC900 suits me: it has an 8 MP camera which yields reasonable quality pictures and can also be set to save them in a size suitable for mobile blogging as well as in a size suitable use as a 'desktop' or a contact's image; it can do 720 x 480-pixel video; it has 3G connectivity as well as WiFi and Bluetooth; it has a good set of PIM apps as well as the usual MP3 player and an FM radio; it even has a dedicated Google Maps app to go with the built-in GPS receiver and, while it won't give me live turn-by-turn directions, I don't need them - I rely on my SatNav for that; it can even do video calls, though I don't yet know anyone else with a videophone.
On top of all that, it's only costing me £10 per month for 24 months which includes the price of the phone, 100 minutes to any local or national number per month, 3,000 minutes per month to other Virgin Mobile users, and 500 texts per month. Add up what the calls and texts could cost and you'll see that the phone isn't really costing me very much at all. So, as I say, I've been very pleased with my new mobile phone. I'm not quite so pleased with Virgin Mobile, however...
A few weeks ago I fell foul of the 'hidden data charges' problem that I know many other people have suffered; and I'm sure that in many cases it isn't their fault but the fault of the data provider. In my case, I thought I'd try tethering the phone to my netbook. It worked pretty well and I spent a while sitting in a central London park web browsing, checking my email, and having a short Skype chat with a friend (text, not voice). It shouldn't add up to much data, I thought.
When I got the phone, the guy in the shop told me that there is a 'fair use policy' of 1 GB per month. He got this wrong; at least, according to the Virgin Mobile website. It's actually 25 MB per day; the 1 GB per month seems to apply only to the unlimited data tariff, not the 30p per day tariff that he sold me. So while my netbook was tethered to the phone, I was thinking that there was no way that my hour or so of Internet use was going to add up to 1 GB. Also, the guy in the shop didn't tell me how much I'd be charged if I went over the 'fair use policy' amount. It turns out that the charge is £2 per MB. Had I known that the daily limit was so low, I could have monitored the session and stopped well in time to avoid a large bill.
The next time I logged into my account at the Virgin Mobile website, I found that my current bill was a little over £85. Not as bad as some of you have been clobbered with, but still too much in my constrained financial situation. I worked out that that hour or so of internet had added up to about £75 in charges. I tried to check my itemised bill but VM only shows you the last 60 entries and I couldn't go back to the start of that day. What I found was that I'd been consistently charged 48p every few seconds with smaller amounts interspersed every now and then. The timing of these bursts seemed to coincide roughly with the sending and receiving of Skype messages. It seems that Skype moves a lot more data than just the text you're sending and receiving and, once you go over the daily limit, Virgin Mobile charges you for each transmission. This is simply a way of making money hand over fist from anyone who doesn't know the rules. And they don't explain the rules up front. At least, the salesman in the shop didn't.
I could have scoured the Virgin Mobile website in advance for this information but I didn't think it necessary as I was intending to get the information from the guy in the shop. And I really don't think that caveat emptor applies here; that guy should have given me full disclosure on the deal he was selling me. In my opinion, not to do so is unethical.
I phoned VM to challenge them on the charges and their representative (who sounded as if he worked in a call centre in Mumbai, but that might not be relevant) was adamant that I should be charged for this data despite the fact that the salesman hadn't given me adequate information. In fact, the salesman had misinformed me on several occasions during the time I was in the shop: he told me that the phone wouldn't run Java apps - it does and I use them almost every day; he told me that the phone couldn't be tethered - it can, though it would cost me an arm and a leg if I ever tried it again; he told me that although there's a built-in GPS, I couldn't use it with Google Maps which, of course, I can; and then, of course, there's the matter of telling me that there's a 1 GB monthly 'maximum usage' on my account rather than a 25 MB daily one.
In desperation, I said to the rep, "What am I supposed to do? Return the phone?" He asked how long I had had the phone and, of course, it was a couple of days longer than the 28 during which I'd be within my rights to return it.
If I'd caused a big enough fuss, Virgin Mobile might have said that the salesman should have fully informed me, that he had been trained to fully inform me, and that it wasn't VM's fault if he hadn't. And it could come down to my story vs. the salesman's story.
Anyway, as I said at the start, I have to balance features with affordability and if it means not tethering the netbook to the phone, then that's how it has to be. I have to bite the bullet and pay the extra £75. And from now on, I'll make sure that Virgin Mobile never get a penny more from me than I intend them to have. Ever.
What Virgin Mobile needs to do is to train their salesmen to give the prospective customer the *full* details of both the phone and the data plan that the customer is contracting to and warn the prospective customer that tethering a computer to the phone can lead to high excess data charges, and also give some realistic examples of what those charges might be.
In my personal opinion, anything less would be less than ethical. What do you think?
