If you're on O2 and been abroad using your iPhone, have a careful look at your bills, as reports say that some of you are still getting unexpected and wrong data roaming charges.
As we highlighted back in July, people on the Apple forums have been complaining about being charged for data roaming, despite disabling the feature in the iPhone settings.
BBC News report confirmed that O2 has known about the problem for around four months. Orange and Vodafone users don't seem to have been affected.
In one Apple forum post, Tim Drewett said that while travelling in the US with his iPhone 4, he received a visual voicemail message that triggered the downloading of 25 emails as well as web browsing and app activity.
Others have suffered similar problems, with some getting their money back and some not.
In the most recent post, Steveapple1 wrote, "I also had this problem. I go to France regularly. I switch the data roaming off before I leave the UK and only switch it on when I land back in UK.
"I had £40 of roaming charges for July, phoned 02, had two arguments with them, the third time they agreed to refund, the guy admitted to a fault in the software."
"Today I noticed more roaming charges for August.... these were refunded immediately."
"What is O2 going to do about the millions of people with errors in their billing of tens of millions of pounds that have not noticed and complained???".
We have embedded a YouTube video of a different user who claims to have suffered the problem while in Cyprus this year at the bottom of this post.
The BBC said that O2 was "investigating these reports with Apple".
Apple said, "We are aware that some O2 customers have reported receiving unexpected data roaming charges and are investigating."
"To avoid unexpected data roaming charges while travelling outside the UK, O2 customers can turn off Cellular Data in their iPhone settings."
According to a thread on the O2 forums the same type of problem occurred with early versions of the iOS 3.0 software. This was fixed in version 3.02, but the problem seems to have reoccurred.
Are you an iPhone user on the O2 network and been hit with bills for data roaming you haven't expected? And whose fault is this, Apple or O2's? Let us know in the comments.
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Comments 5
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Anonymous 2 September, 2010 20:24
I recently did a hard reset on my iPhone 3GS whilst on holiday in Tunisia with all 3G and cellular data switch off but on restart the phone downloaded all my emails etc later that day I got text saying I had exceeded my data whilst roaming and was charged £40!
when I phoned O2 the first operator said it was my fault, not happy I phoned again and was told it may be a fault on the phone and to email O2 on my return to the UK.
I did email but a week passed with no reply so I phoned today to be told it is a fault and the charge had been refunded it will fixed soon in an update.
Anonymous 4 September, 2010 20:15
Yes I had turned off data roaming but still incurred charges. O2 gave me £15 back, which covers the charges but I was not aware of the issues until I read your article. As I have just come back from Europe then they are still trying to resolve the issues. I was wondering why they were keen to pay me £15 but they insisted that I had incurred the data roaming.
Anonymous 8 September, 2010 03:02
I had this happen while I was roaming in Spain from the US. In a 24 hour period while I passed through O2 territory as the roaming partner, after having updated to OS 4.0 on my phone, things went crazy and I didn't even know it. My phone showed I had used 27 MB and my data was cut off for excessive usage because over 600 MB data had been transferred on my phone in a few hours time while I drove through Spain.
AT&T tried to charge me over $4,000 and I found all these articles, posts and blogs and told them it's a glitch that O2 knows about but AT&T won't contact O2 on my behalf and is just assuming the data is legit and that I used it. What a fiasco. I'm having to file a complaint with the FTC because AT&T says that unless they get a notice from O2 about the problem they won't research it from their side. Meanwhile, me, the customer, gets screwed and there's nothing I can do about it because I'm not an O2 customer and can't call them myself.
Anonymous 11 September, 2010 15:23
After reading your website I have just agreed with O2 to refund cjharges which appeared after a vist to Germany ansd Austria.
Thanks
David
anonymous 12 January, 2012 22:02
Seems someone is telling porkies! This problem has happened again in December 2011. A £40 bill from O2 for data, even though it was switched off. O2 customer service agent said that iphones have mind of their own and can turn data roaming on & off without warning! I know these devices are supposed to be clever, but come on, surely if its off, its off!