David Barrow

Scotland

Consultant

I have had problems with Vodafone for the past 5 years concerning downloading of data abroad. One of the problems has been that you are charged £1 each time the phone connects to the GPRS service - even if no data is downloaded. With some handsets, that don't hold the GPRS connection, this 'connection fee' starts to get expensive and this is before the actual data charges come into play. Specifically Vodafone's website is misleading with regard to their charging of data use whilst roaming and nowhere mentions and connection fee. It just shows the price per Mb. In addition there is also a minimum amount of data each time - and this is not explained but could be 100Kb. The biggest issue is with the customer 'service' who have absolutely no clue about data charging - at home or abroad. The reason I stay with Vodafone is that at least their calls to customer service are free.

I don't believe that the other operators are any better. They are all in for a hard time if they continue to promote data as a big deal - once customers get their first bills, they won't be so keen to continue downloading data.