The future is not so bright!

So ... I bought a new PDA a month ago. I primarily wanted it to act as my diary, but the fact it could also do email -- and that I had GPRS enabled on my mobile phone -- gave me an idea: Why don't I have my PDA check my email every hour during the working day? That way, even when I'm away from my desk, I'll have email. Sensible idea, if you're a geek like me.

So I did the math, and figured checking the emails every hour of every day for a month would equate to about 4Mb of data. Not much, and therefore not much extra to pay on my phone bill. All the same, I thought I'd trial it this month and see what my phone bill came out at.

Oh dear.

Look at this extract from my Orange mobile phone bill:

Now, as you can see, my estimate of 4MB was a little off ... but not too much. 5.4MB to be exact. Then I notice the next bit. You know, the bit that says I now owe Orange £55

£55??! And that's just for the data ... the phone bill was £102! That can't be right?! I put my highly mathematical brain to work, and figured out that they're charging £10 per MB! For God's sake Orange -- this is the 21st century. Not even AOL charges that much!!

I go to their website and check their tariffs. Nowhere does it state anything close to that amount. In fact, according to their website, the most I could possibly end up paying for that amount of data is £9. Something is wrong here, so I give Orange a call. First time I redirected to another number, then I get disconnected. Second call I get through to a human, then get disconnected as she speaks to her manager. I call back, get through to another operator. I get half way through explaining that I was cut off when the other operator calls me back on the other line. So I have to apologise, disconnect, switch calls, get back to where I started. The operator then helpfully tells me that I've been charged £10/MB. I tell her, "I can see that. I figured that bit out for myself." ...

I won't bore you with the details, but after about 5 minutes on the phone, and several trips to the 'manager', I get a £46 refund. Apparently I hadn't setup 'Pay as you use GPRS' on my account. *I* hadn't set it up. Little me. How silly of me. I asked, "How come if I didn't have 'pay as you use' setup, I've still been charged for the amount I used? Isn't that the same?". Reading between the lines it appears that, as a loyal Talk 120 customer, I had been elevated to a special 'Pay Through The Teeth as you use' service.

The moral of the story? Check your phone bill!