“Better charge my Three phone,” I thought to myself. I’d left it in my jacket when I returned to the hotel.
I found the charger just a few minutes ago, hunted for the phone, plugged it in… hold on a moment…
Arse. I looked at the screen. It was counting away — 1:55:13. I was connected to a call! It seems that the handset had called the Three customer service number (the first in the address book) by mistake. Looks like I forgot to lock the keyboard.
Triple arse.
I hung up immediately, flicked on the laptop and logged into ‘My Three’ to see what the damage was. Annoyingly, My Three only tells you how many minutes you’ve used up, how many texts/pictures/video mins you’ve got left and so on. It doesn’t tell you about international calls.
“That’s 55p a minute by 105 minutes,” I thought to myself, “Why doesn’t their system just hang up???”
Then I checked out the standard Three international call rate from Switzerland. It’s 80p a minute. 80p! 80p!
That’s an £84. EXCLUDING VAT. What a total 100% arse.
I seem to walk into these things, I really do. Last time it was that sodding Vodafone data bill. YES that was my fault, ultimately, because I should have checked that they’d kept me on the right plan. And now I’ve been a victim of the rather sensitive N73 keyboard.
Quardruple arse. I’ll phone them and see what the chaps in India can do about it. They’ll probably count it as an international call and it will remain my problem.
what rotten luck
I hope you can dispute the charge
Andrew — thanks for taking the time to respond — alas, I have to take responsibility … I should have put the phone on lock. It’s a stupid, stupid mistake, but I’m prepared for them to wave ‘na na’ at me and demand the cash.
but shouldn’t they have hung up at the other end? Shouldn’t that be automatic after a certain period as part of their service approach to customers?
Well exactly! You’d think? Weird.
Helen’s right, if the called party hung up it should have cleared the call down. Definitely works that way when you’re calling mobile to mobile or the called party has a digital (ISDN30 etc) connection to the network, as it signals back through the chain. However.. when you phone a normal analogue landline, I believe you can still do the trick of putting the receiver down and picking up another extension on the same line without dropping the call.
Menu * or do 3 disable this to make things easier and more expensive?
No doubt the chap/lass in Bangalore enjoyed listening to Ewan’s phone having fun with the MiniBar.
Would rather let the mini bar talk to 3’s India call centre, could probably get more sense out of them than I’ve ever done 🙂
I think all the networks should make it easy for end users to setup a maximum credit limit/price per call limit . I think perhaps 3 do offer this.
I think I might go and switch on international call barring now… I’ve been known to accidentally make calls in the pocket, but to date it’s been home (inclusive) or CS (333) …..