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A small business owner was left facing a £42,000 bill that he said nearly bankrupted him after his daughter racked up data roaming charges while the family were on holiday in Morocco.
Andrew Alty, who owns a curtains business, was in Marrakech when he received a bill for £22,000 from network provider O2, but at first he assumed it was a mistake.
“I was on my way to the desert,” he told the Telegraph. “I made multiple attempts to call O2, but there wasn’t much I could do. I could only assume there had been a glitch, or the account had been hacked,” he said.
Once he returned home, he received another bill for £20,000 and the scale of the problem became clear.
Alty had taken out the phone contract through his Manchester-based business. The deal, which he bought via the retailer Currys and was provided by O2, contained a clause that left data roaming charges outside Europe uncapped.
Roaming charges apply when phones are connected to a mobile network for internet access outside the UK and have, at times, left holidaymakers facing substantial bills.
In this case, Alty’s daughter’s use of the social media app TikTok resulted in a bill of more than £5,000 an hour.
“There’s no way they should be able to charge that,” Alty said. “They made no effort to inform us, and just allowed the charges to accrue. I don’t understand how they expect any small business to pay that sort of bill.”
He added: “It’s taken up such a huge part of my life over the past two months. It’s ridiculous. [The customer service teams] have not been helpful; the calls have just ended in frustration and despair.”
Alty contacted the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), and complained that the “opt-out of rest-of-world data cap” included in his contract was not explained to him by O2.
The FOS ruled that, while O2 provided the mobile service, Currys was responsible for contract explanations and decisions about spend caps, and so the FOS was unable to help.
Currys and O2 eventually agreed to waive the charges after being contacted by the Telegraph.
A spokesperson for O2 said: “We’re aware of Mr Alty’s complaint, which the ombudsman ruled was a sales process dispute with his account provider Currys. We understand that this is now resolved, with Currys agreeing to waive all charges.”
Currys said the charges were removed “given the scale and circumstances surrounding the case”.
