Within the European Union (and Norway, Liechtenstein and Iceland) there are no additional costs for telephony and internet. This also applies to free units according to tariff regulations. Outside the EU, using a smartphone can be expensive. A man from Steyr also experienced this, as the Upper Austrian Chamber of Labor reports.
Before leaving for the Swiss mountains, the man bought a weekly package from his network provider so that he could use a messenger service, for example. Then the next morning he got a nasty surprise: Overnight, roaming costs of more than 16,400 euros had been incurred. The data flow had not been stopped after the purchased data volume had been exceeded and the legally required block at 60 euros had not taken effect, even though notifications had been received on the cell phone.
‘,’pinpoll-205453’, null, null, ‘C0004’);
});
Horrified, the man from Steyr cut his vacation short and contacted his network provider and the consumer protection department of the Upper Austrian Chamber of Labor. The consumer protection officers contacted the mobile phone provider and demanded that the charge be adjusted to a maximum of 60 euros. By law, a charge block at 60 euros or, in a second step, 120 euros must prevent such charges.
The demand would only be justified if consumers actively override these blocks. Fortunately, the provider responded on the same day: the Steyr resident only had to pay 60 euros, the rest was credited.
In another case, a woman from St. Martin spent her vacation on the Portuguese island of Madeira. She then received a bill for 67.06 euros for the data transfer of 8 MB. The consumer could not explain this, as Portugal is part of the EU, and contacted the Chamber of Labor – her mobile phone provider had not responded to her request.
The solution to the mystery was provided by the individual call record: the data had been downloaded on the day of the return journey in Switzerland, during a stopover at Zurich airport. The Chamber of Labor urges caution here: roaming costs can arise even for such short stays.
In general, consumer protection agencies recommend that you find out about the conditions before you go on holiday. The roaming function can be deactivated by yourself or by the operator in order to be safe even in border areas. The mobile mailbox should also be deactivated: otherwise unanswered calls will be redirected to the mobile mailbox and so-called passive roaming will occur, warns the Chamber of Labor.
