Phone networks are taking advantage of post-Brexit deregulation to con customers into racking up huge roaming bills during EU bank holidays, consumer rights champion Martin Lewis has warned.
At the end of June, a number of consumer protections that had been introduced after Brexit expired. As a result, phone networks are no longer required to send customers a message with pricing details when they start roaming, or limit the maximum data roaming charges that can be charged each month. Networks also no longer need to provide protections against inadvertent roaming.
In an age of data-hungry smartphones, consumers can rack up huge bills in minutes without even realizing they’re using the phone, as apps connect to the internet to check for updates later of a flight or during a trip.
Lewis, who runs consumer group MoneySavingExpert.com, warned that mobile networks had shown they could not be trusted to self-regulate and since Brexit, some operators had pledged not to reintroduce tariffs ‘roaming, just to deny these promises. The only option was for the government to step in, he said.
“I have no faith in mobile companies to self-regulate. When we left the EU, they promised not to reintroduce European roaming charges … but most of the big networks have broken that promise,” he said.
Martin Lewis: “We need to reintroduce formal and mandatory consumer protections.” Photograph: Antonio Olmos/The Guardian
“So our report calls on Ofcom not to rely on voluntary pledges – we need to reintroduce formal and mandatory consumer protections.”
In addition to imposing huge upfront costs, mobile networks were exploiting ambiguities that individual consumers are rarely aware of. Many cap daily roaming charges, for example, but each defines a “day” differently, with some counting the 24-hour period after first use, but others simply ending it at 11:59 p.m. , UK time, regardless of where the traveler actually is or when they first used the data. Worse, carriers rarely define their terms in texts sent on arrival in foreign countries.
This means a traveler arriving in Greece, which is two hours ahead of the UK, at 1.58am could be charged a full day’s roaming for one minute of phone use before it runs out his franchise, without ever being explicitly advised that this was the case. .
“We need to ban a daily roaming fee that’s charged for use until 11:59 p.m. ‘without even mentioning what time zone,'” Lewis said.
“Instead, we recommend that all providers define a roaming ‘day’ as a 24-hour period from first use, explain this clearly in the arrival text and notify customers at least one hour before daily charges end” .
As well as campaigning for greater regulation of mobile phone roaming charges, Lewis has been heavily involved in the current cost of living crisis, warning Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak that whoever becomes the next Prime Minister will inherit a country on the brink of a “national financial cataclysm” as a result of rising energy bills.
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“The winter will be bleak,” he said. “I think if action is not taken we are facing a potential national financial cataclysm,” which may require the provision of “heat banks,” “warm spaces in public buildings” such as libraries and leisure centers where people who they can’t afford to warm up. their houses can shelter. The energy price cap is expected to rise in October, and again in January, to more than £3,300 a year, from its current level of £1,971.