Astronomical Debitel mobile phone bill

OK..here goes...

Myself and my wife popped over to our local Saturn and signed up for individual Debitel Mobile Contracts.

As we were signing a copy of the contracts my wife asked for a detail of the tariffs to which she replied 'they are standard'. The tariffs were never given to us in writing or explained.

We got home that night and my wife being my wife decided to see if she could check her facebook. She logged on via the Vodafone portal, spent 10 minutes browsing and then logged off.

I also logged on for approximately 15 minutes to download a copy of a poker game for 5 euros.

The next day her phone was not working. She called Vodafone / Debitel for an explanation and they said since her phone had exceeded 100 euros it had been blocked.

She explained there must be a mistake as she had only had the phone 9 hours. They said no mistake but refused to send an itemised bill or discuss the charges.

The next day mine was blocked. I did not phone Debitel I just stopped using it.

They phoned ME today to say that I owe them 600 EUROS!!! They say that the vodafone portal I used is based in the UK.

Today my wife's bill came in. The charges were not detailed, it just had written.

BILL : 354 EUROS

Surely we are being ripped off. We had the phone a combined total of 18 hours but managed to accrue 1000 Euros of charges between us???

Is there any avenue open to us to get these charges reduced?

I am sure I am not the only one to think this...

But you actually signed a contract without knowing the charges you were commiting yourself to??

And now you want us to help bail you out??

I just love a Friday wind-up!

You should have a copy of the contract with you, right? What is written on that? Normally every Debitel tariff scheme has a name. If you can provide that, someone can have a look at the rates. Have you received phones with the contract? How much were they offered for? 1 EUR (normal) or a higher price? (for high end phones).

That certainly sounds like an astronomical rip off, I logged in a while ago to BBC Radio 5 live to get updates on a rugby game, I was on the phone for about 20 mins & it was around 3 euros, I don't have a data package either, was D Telekom though.

SpiderPig - cheers for the help. Appreciate it.

Minga - The phones were 1 euro each. The contracts are in German (obvious one really) but we just assumed they would be similar to UK contracts. But there was absolutely no table of tariffs.

Leky - it does sound astronomical

I have some sympathy here as the roaming charges are absolutely astronomical and it's really not likely too many people realise it.

I was lucky. I got a huge bill from when I was in the UK but it was my company phone.

The roaming charges are an unashamed ripoff.

@Steve_F

If you have internet acess then go to the debitel website and see if you can find any names for their contracts that match anything written on your bill.

You can then check the charges etc. However this is germany so have a telescope or some other devise so you can read the small print.

Most people on here will try to help out bbut you need to give more info.

My first thought was, if they block the phone after 100 euros usage how did it get to over 300?

I am also suprised they refuse to provide an itemised bill, how else can they check what was used and when.

I thought the roaming charges had now all been capped at 59 cents a minute?

Anyway, I don't have anything constructive to add, other than to belatedly say that it pays to do your homework.

Or just goto their web site, and register your # for web account access. There you can get a detailed breakdown of the costs.

It is not roaming as they used the phone within Germany. May be the Vodanfone UK website accessed has special high rates to use its services.

Roaming is not the only culprit, it's roaming and data transfer. You used your mobile, logged into a UK based ISP via mobile service and transfered quite a bit of data. Even if you'd used the german service you probably would have payed about 3 € per MB after the first 5 MB. Now throw roaming charges into the mix and you have one huge bill.

Clearly the data transfer rates come into play, but I don't understand how roaming is relevant. How can they roam if they are still in their home provider's coverage area (i.e., in Germany)?

Have you tried logging in to your account online?
It looks like they have a Kosten-Check service for unbilled activity: https://www.debitel.de/kunden/mein_debitel/...led%2Findex.php

This activity has already been billed though..

On one of the phones, but not the other.
You can also view bills online.

I don't know if it's technically possible, but if you enter the wrong settings (gateway ip...) to connect, you could probably use a uk based internet service from germany.

Still Debitel can charge them only for using Debitel services. Another possibility can be a time based internet tariff and they could have been connected even after downloading the stuff from Vodafone UK.

I actually have no sympathy for you if you did not read the contract, T&C and prices before signing. But I presume that you now realise your mistake and having a go at you will not help.

Having said that, if you act quickly you might be able to get out of the contract by claiming that they took advantage of you not being German and that they didn't fully explain everything to you. But you will need a lawyer if you take this approach. I have heard of similar things before where the defendants claimed that they were mis-sold, mis-informed (or not informed) and that told that things like this were "standard in Germany" by the sales person. So you might have a chance, but I don't know how difficult this might be.

Otherwise, if you have used the service then you have to pay for it. Regardless if you had a bad tariff or not. If you are lucky the operator might be kind and let you negotiate another contract with different terms, otherwise you are stuck with this.

As for the itemised bill. Under EU law all operators must provide this on request. But mobile operators can charge you for this (wireline has to be free). But under German law all call details have to be removed from the operators system after 3 months. So it is possible that if you do request an itemised bill too late that the details might have been removed from their systems.

And by the way, a lot of operators now sell the mobile phones at 1 euro (or very cheap) as they then charge you a monthly fee for 2-3 years. So at the end you might have ended up paying 150-200 euros or more for the phone.

Go back to Saturn ? Confront the b#####rds who sold you the pup.

I once used my mobile phone, which I got on a contract but with no data plan, to go on the internet. All I did was bring up Google (without images turned on) and do a search. I didn't click on any results. That cost me around 2.50 euros. The prices can be astounding, so if you just went on and started normally surfing without checking the charges, I wouldn't be surprised if they hit the prices you're talking about.

I can also quote the usual "buyer beware", "understand what you are signing" and "data transfer using a mobile phone can be blood expensive" clichés, all of which cover this case.
However, it seems to me, if it's true, that your get-out clause maybe here:

A detailed description of tarifs forms part of your contract. If you were not given this, or subsequently sent it, then they have broken the law. Of course, the contract you have signed might include a paragraph where you have confirmed you have been given a copy of all call rates, so even if you weren't in fact given these you are stuffed (royally). Seems to me that the sales person played the "foreigner" card, made a hefty commision as a result and you are screwed for the next 24 months. Lay down and enjoy it at least "Buyer beware"! (Or did I say that already?)

BTW Debitel is now owned by Freenet

Does sound extremely high, but how did you logon on to the Vodafone UK site (and how do debitel know?)?
I assume you are connecting via a laptop in Germany using a Germany SIM card, so roaming charges do not apply.
You did not sign up for a data tariff, so this typically would cost around €3 per MB, but that would imply you downloaded more than 300MB which is quite a lot even with sites with full of multimedia.

But are you logging onto the Vodafone UK site via a dial-up connection and not GPRS/UMTS (probably settings on your laptop)? If so then you would pay international call charges plus international data tariffs.
It is possible to use Vodafone UK via WAP which uses dial-up (although would be quite slow)

I never used a laptop...they said I did this via my phone!!

Using a phone you bought from Vodafone UK?

If so do you know what is the default Access Point from your phone?

I arrived in Germany a few weeks ago and grabbed a blau.de SIM (from Saturn) and put it in my old UK mobile.

I've not got any internet in my apartment yet so connected the phone, via bluetooth, to my laptop just to check emails, read the occasional thread here on TT etc and ... they are charging me around 25c per MB. I did the automatic-send-sms-to-phone thing on Sony Ericsson's website (luckily they still support the Ericson T39m!) to set myself up.

OK, the cost will rack up into whole euros if I keep looking at things but we're talking one or two euros per day. Something went nasty with the 1000 euro bill.

The debitel CallYa rate is 20c per 10kb according to this:
http://www.debitel.de/privat_shop/prepaid/...allya/index.php

So downloading 5MB would cost you about €100.
Perhaps you are on this standard tariff. Although if they are charging this it is daylight robbery.

EDIT: Actually all of the debitel data tariffs with prepaid cards are around this price.

My last post assumes you did sign a prepaid contract and not a minimum 1 or 2 year contract. If the latter then there are 100s of tariffs on the debitel website.
My advise would be (if you've not done so already) to show the bill to the saleswoman who sold you the contract, and see what she says.
Pehaps as a longshot she feels gulity enough to do something about it (assuming she has the authority to do so.)

We are on a monthly contract not prepaid.

But that tariff is actually quite helpful...

I can't help wondering why anybody is surfing or downloading via the cell phone?
The price per MB can be up to 3 Euro.

with a reasonable tarif, why not?
Aldi Talk GPRS costs 24cent per megabyte, and T-Mobile offer flatrate packages for internet traffic.

When's the last time you spent an hour or two reading and understand the small print on contract, and in a foreign language to boot! I bet never. Perhaps they could have pressed for more details but I suspect the answer would have been technical and vague, not help.

Unfortunately customer service in Europe (not just Germany trust me) ranges between "do I look like I really care" to "sucks to be you buddy"

Unfortunately your probably going to have to sallow hard and pay up. I'd check with your German friends for advice on this one but I think your out of luck.

Best thing to do (as you now can't avoid paying) is to call Debitel up and tell them that something must be wrong with the bill, how can my bill be so high etc.? Complain a little bit, you'll probably have to write them a quick letter as well and they will probably cut the amount of the bill in half. Probably...

IF the debitel tariff that you have is one of the Vodafone D2 range (and you did not select an additional data tariff option) then you could be paying up to 36 cents/10kb.
That is the D2 Volume by Call price according to page 2 of this pdf:
http://www.vodafone.de/infofaxe/426.pdf

Found at Vodafone live! by time & Volume by Call

That really is daylight robbery! To think, you download 1 meg, you end up paying 36 euros. In some heavier web sites, you could do this by viewing just a couple of pages.

You were ripped off. Still you are speculating on the contract you have?
You should go down to a debitel shop, give your mobile number and get the complete details of your contract. It is not that difficult even if you don't speak German.