A university student ran up a bill of almost £8,000 on his mobile internet broadband abroad in one month because rules introduced last year to prevent this have taken nine months to implement.
Although EU rules will be introduced in the UK on 1 March to protect users against “bill shock”, 22-year-old William Harrison (below) was initially told by Orange that it would have infringed the company’s customer privacy policy to monitor his usage.
Harrison, a third-year Nottingham university student, started a six-month internship in Paris last September and wanted temporary internet access in the flat he was renting there. He and his father, Roger, asked an Orange store in Hertfordshire about the best way to access the internet abroad and queried whether a dongle, a small piece of hardware that connects to a laptop or desktop computer allowing wireless internet access, would be suitable.
“The woman in the store said the dongle would work perfectly in France, especially for a short-term contract,” says William. “She said there was a 3GB (gigabyte) limit on data use but that this would be ‘perfectly ample’.”
In France, William used his internet account to access Skype, a software application that allows users to make voice calls over the internet, on a daily basis. “I was unaware of how expensive this was. On my computer at home it’s free,” says William. He says he did not use the internet to download anything that would have been data-heavy, such as videos.
On 17 October, his first bill arrived. It was for £6,101.56. “I immediately questioned it and asked for the dongle to be blocked,” he says. “But there was a further charge which covers the cost of the dongle use between the bill being sent and the dongle being blocked. I am now faced with a bill of £7,648.77.
“It is an absolutely awful situation, both in the short term because of the £8,000 debt and in the long term because the potential damage to my credit rating could be disastrous.”
Roger contacted Orange on behalf of William to query the bill, and was told by a shocked operator that there should be a £40 monthly limit on dongle usage. However, what he was not told, and which Orange’s own operator did not seem to be aware of, was that this does not apply to overseas use.
“I sent Orange a cheque for £158.66, which is what I had worked out to be reasonable from the bill. However I never received a response from Orange.”
He says: “I am concerned William was given unlimited credit. There was nothing to stop this going up to £100,000. I think it is wrong the way this [dongle] has been sold and that there was no ‘flagging up’ to highlight that a bill of this size was being built up. Even Orange said the size of this bill was exceptional. For my son, at his age, to be saddled with this amount of debt is terrible.”
Full story at The Guardian
The LG BL20 is the "New Chocolate". It has a very similar look to the BL40 (which was reviewed by us last year). It has a glossy black finish to it and has the stylish red metallic trim – but this time it’s a slider-style handset. It’s a lower end model too in the sense that it’s a bit more basic compared to its fancy touch screen predecessor.
What’s in the box?
- BL20 handset
- Battery (900mAh)
- Mains charger (microUSB connection to the phone)
- USB cable (again, a microUSB connection)
- Stereo earphones/handsfree (connects via microUSB)
- Userguide and mini CD
- Phone recycling bag from O2
Overall the BL40 was a hit with us so please read on to see how this LG BL20 shapes up…
The main news story of latest days, when it comes to iPhone app store is: Apple has removed thousands of apps with adult content and is rejecting new ones that have some adult content, even if it is just silhouette, not photo, that might be visible. While browsing apps that were released in latest 3 days, we have encountered this one, that obviously must have slipped through Apple’s strict review process (approved merely few hours ago!):
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Following on from the Sony Ericsson press conference held in Barcelona just before the official start of MWC a week ago James managed to track down a couple of the new handset announced by Sony Ericsson, namely the X10 Mini and the X10 Mini PRO.
These are two handsets that really surprised me, I didn’t expect Sony Ericsson to actually announce these. Both new handset have run on Android 1.6 but have a heavily customised user interface. In fact when I saw them in action earlier this week they were almost unrecognisable as being Android.
As you’ll see in the video both the X10 Mini and the Mini PRO have a footprint not much larger than a credit card but still manage to pack in plenty of cool features and what impressed me so was just how usable the QWERTY keyboard is on the Mini PRO, I expected it to be far too cramped to be viable for everyday use but I think it works pretty well!
We’ll be pushing Sony Ericsson hard to get our hands on these ASAP for a full review, but have a look at the demo video that James recorded at MWC where a nice lady from Sony Ericsson takes us on a quick tour. Video, photos and press release follow.
As I mentioned the other day, one of the handsets to get quite a lot of attention at MWC was the new Samsung Wave.
The Wave is the first Samsung device to have the new Bada operating system and the new TouchWiz 3.0 user interface. On top of that it’s also the first handset to incorporate Super AMOLED technology and DNIe. DNIe technology is proven display technology which incorporated to Samsung’s LCD TV and LED TV lineups.
James popped over to see the folks on the Samsung stand at MWC and got them to give him a quick demo of the Wave. I think James was quite impressed with the clarity of the display and the responsiveness of the touchscreen on the Wave.
We hope to get our hands on the Wave over the next few weeks for a full review but until then have a look at the demo video, photos and full press release after the break.
Whilst the big names are blasting out samey-samey phones with Android or Windows Mobile it was refreshing to see something a little different. From the video you can see I was having a little bit of trouble with one handed operation but the OS is striking and might they might have something if they can spend a little more time refining it. Video after the break:
HTC announced they would be pumping out their Smartphone for the people at Mobile World Congress and here is a quick flip through the operating system and a look at the device. It’s okay so far. Appealing and swish are two words that come to mind. For the Kids out there who are wanting to get into Smartphone’s this seems like a great starting block. Video after the break:
We managed to get a little show and tell with a new MSI Tablet. Hidden behind most of MSI’s other toys we thought this was actually an iPad and for good reason. From a distance they look almost identical however when running you can clearly see this is an Android powered device. Even though this is not finalised and they device we played with was about to undergo a serious hardware revision it’s still something of a head turner. To be priced competitively and have a more handsome feature list, this MSI Tablet is something I’m going to keep my eye on. Video after the break:
So you have probably seen our video coverage of the new device from HTC, the Legend, Desire and HD mini that we’re announced at MWC this week. Now that James has returned from Barcelona we can start to upload some more of the video content that James recorded while he was there.
So lets start more or less at the beginning with the press conference from HTC. This is virtually the full press conference as recorded by James. It’s a pretty long video, around 20 minutes, so probably worth making yourself comfortable before you start watching.
Don’t forget to also have a look at our video demo of the HTC Legend, HTC Desire and HTC HD mini also recorded at MWC. We still have more MWC coverage to upload and we’ll be doing so over the next couple of days.
Video after the break.
In 2009 Michael Jackson was preparing for a sold-out concert tour at the O2 Arena, a tour that, as it turned out, he was never to perform. With the full support of the Estate of Michael Jackson this film is made from behind-the-scenes and documentary footage that was filmed during these preparations to offer us a glimpse of what might have been.
Contents
2 Making of documentaries
8 Featurettes
Photo Collection
Theatrical trailer
Vignettes for Thriller and Smooth Criminal
Making of Thriller vignette
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