Consumer queries: New EU roaming caps cause confusion

A reader contacted us about Three's roaming charges. "I read that roaming charges have been capped by EU at 5 cent per minute, yet recently I have been charged 38 cent per minute roaming on pay as you go with Three Mobile. I asked a few weeks ago in a Three shop in Monaghan, but the girl there said she didn't know about the EU cap."

Our reader went online and chatted with someone in Three’s help centre. “I have been told that I needed to contact them to activate the ‘extra benefits’ roaming. Surely if there is an EU regulation, then I should not have been charged 38 cent per minute? How many other customers are still paying this rate as they have not activated the new bundle? Should it be up to the customer to activate a new rate when there is an EU regulation? Should I be refunded the overcharge?”

The regulations stipulate that customers now pay their domestic rate plus a surcharge, which is capped at 5 cent per megabyte. But the rules treat prepay and bill-pay customers differently. For bill customers, usage when roaming in the EU is taken from the agreed bundle and a surcharge added. When prepay customers are roaming in the EU, the rules say they are to be charged the domestic rate plus the surcharge, but if the domestic rate is greater than the cap, the customer pays the domestic rate only.

Three says it is only charging our reader the domestic rate, as is allowed.

When it comes to roaming add-ons, Three offers a variety. Before the introduction of the roaming regulations, all customers had to give explicit consent to keep any roaming add-on that was in place. Our reader apparently did not give the consent, so did not have the best rates. They have now been applied to her account.

IN PRAISE OF AMAZON’S SPEEDY HELPDESK

“I know that you feature bad-news stories, but I have a good one that I think is worth shouting about,” begins an email from Dublin reader Sonia, whose story starts with a broken Kindle at the beginning of July.

“My Kindle just died overnight,” she says. The screen was unresponsive and, although the ereader still had power, it would not let her access any of her library.

"I googled the problem and followed all the troubleshooting tips I could find, but no joy," she says. "So I nearly gave up. But because the Kindle is only seven or eight months old, I figured it was worth giving Amazon a shout.

She went online, logged on to her Amazon account and answered a few automated questions about the nature of the problem.

“Then I was told that the problem appeared to be more serious than the automated system could deal with and a message told me to expect a call from the Amazon helpdesk. Not having had great experiences with helpdesks in the past, I just assumed the call would never come. Seconds later my phone rang.”

Colm from Cork was on the other end of the line.

“He talked me through some more possible solutions before agreeing that the problem could not be fixed. I expected some class of palaver about returns and testing to see if the damage was my fault, but that didn’t happen. He just said Amazon would be sending me a new Kindle and asked me to return the damaged one when the new one arrived.”

Our reader says Colm from Amazon was pleasant and helpful and “deserves to be praised, as does the Amazon response to my problem”.

A BOX OF BROKEN TILES HAS READER LOOKING FOR REFUND

A reader named Betty bought tiles in early June. When they arrived, the tiles in one box were broken.

“We did inform the store at the time that they arrived broken and also said that we may have some other boxes to return. The shop said they were happy until the job was completed to return all together.”

In July, when Betty returned them, she was told the shop would not refund the money, and after a “long negotiation only agreed to a credit note, as the return was outside their 30-day return policy”.

Betty wonders if this is legal. And as it is a tile shop, she says she “won’t be in any hurry to use this credit note”.

It is legal in the sense that a retailer does not have to offer any kind of redress unless a product is faulty. One box of tiles was broken, so she is entitled to a refund for them.

But as she is only returning the others because they are unused, the shop does not have to give her anything – neither cash nor a credit note.