The Hidden Cost of Holidays
We just got back from a 10 day break in Menorca, Spain, at a "5 star" all-inclusive resort. You can probably imagine that, as there are five of us and it was half term, this didn't come cheap. Which makes it all the more annoying when an expensive holiday gradually becomes more and more expensive due to the extra hidden costs associated with travel today. Of which there are many.
The most annoying additional cost came in the form of "data roaming" charges. Annoying because I was well aware of the pitfalls of using a smartphone in Europe and had made sure Karen knew not to enable roaming on her iPhone and I only enabled it twice a day on my S2 to download email before quickly disabling it again.
Both Karen and I are with Tesco mobile who charge 4GBP (~7USD) per MB. Criminal, I know. When we first arrived in Punta Prima (a tiny holiday resort on a small Spanish holiday island) I was half expecting no data connection at all, but was pleasantly surprised to see a H+ icon meaning I had 4G speeds!
For the first 5 days I kept the total usage below 1Mb. Then, on the sixth day, Android decided to check for updates to my installed apps and then started downloading them. Luckily I noticed the arrow icon that meant it was doing this and quickly turned off data roaming. Not before it had downloaded half of a 20MB update though! Even though I acted quickly the fact the resort was covered by 4G meant I'd already been stung.
Before re-enabling data roaming I made sure that in Google Play (formally Google Market) I had disabled auto-updating apps and made sure updating "via Wi-Fi only" was enabled. Assuming I was then safe I turned on data roaming. Only to find it continued to update more apps. This happened a few other times until I stopped trying (20MB later) and opted to buy 24hr of wi-fi from the resort's reception to let it continue all the app updates that way.
It seems to me that once Android knows there are updates it ignores subsequent changes to the how and when you want updates to happen until it next checks and there's nothing you can do to stop the ones it knows about.
Normally you could simply use Google Play to see a list of Installed apps that have updates available and you can could simply remove them. But - without an internet connection, Play doesn't work at all, as you can see below. Very annoying.
A day after all this happened and Tesco send an SMS to tell me my account is disabled. I then had no phone at all. Not even the ability to SMS or call!! Needless to say that's not good.
Now I'm home and logged on to my Tesco mobile account I see I racked up 134GBP in charges. Although they're limiting it to 40GBP as per the EU opt-in legislation. Or at least I hope they are. I'd ring and ask but it's under Karen's name and they won't talk to me without her consent and she's at work. It's all a massive PITA.
Conspiracy?
So who gets what cut of the 4GBP for each MB? Tesco or MoviStar? Let's assume most goes to the local provider -- MoviStar. This would explain the oddity of having super-fast data-connectivity in a holiday resort, would it not? It's in their interest to cover holiday resorts with 4G connections! The more data that the unsuspecting holiday makers can use while away the more money they make.
What I'm most annoyed with is the Android OS though!
Seriously, Android, you know that I'm roaming, you know it expensive (you told me so yourself) so why the hell would you update my apps? No, come on, really!?
If I'd been stung for 130 quid because of essential business access for emailing customers I could bring myself to terms with that. But all I have to show for the massive great bill is a few updated apps. In other words nothing at all.
If you going away this summer and have an Android phone. Be aware! Although on July 1st new EU laws cap the per MB cost at 0.7EUR!
Skip to the 
You can subscribe to an individual
Never been to Punta Prima but it's just along the coast from Binibequer which we know well. The in-laws have a villa long the coast at Son Bou.
Anyway, indeed, it's a rip-off. Okay, these telephone companies have invested in infrastructure, but the prices involved when you roam are worse than ridiculous. It's just greed. This is another one of those occasions where you think if they made the price reasonable then more people would use it rather than just turning roaming off.
Reply
I would suggest to get a local prepaid sim next time. I'm using masmovil when in spain, they charge 3ct/MB (Eurocent that is). And I think Tesco is the one who's ripping you off. Quite a few telcos from germany charge about 50ct/MB when roaming in Europe, so movistar could hardly charge them more than that.
Reply
I noticed the provider I had while away was "MoviStar TESCO" so maybe they have a special agreement and only offer the higher charing telcos the 4G network. Probably not, but I do love a good conspiracy theory.
Reply
Look at the bright side Jake, at least you weren't at Disney.
Reply
Florida or Paris? When travelling outside the EU there's currently no limit to what phone companies can charge for roaming data use. Ouch.
Reply
This sort of nonsense is precisely why I switched to a prepaid phone. It makes calls reliably and is cheaper than using the house phone when staying in a hotel. Roaming almost doesn't exist in the US now that most vendors have gone to nation-wide coverage but 13 years back, I too was stung with a $100+ cellular bill just driving from Michigan to Kentucky for a weekend to see my future wife. That was with Verizon and old old cell networks.
I did like your tweet, though: forced to spend time with family. Good boy. ;-)
Reply
That tweet was of course tongue in cheek. Even if the data were 4G and all-inclusive I'd still have avoided use of phone. A holiday should be a holiday in my books - where you get a break from what you do back at home. I tried to give Karen as much time off as I could (she complained of an achy shoulder towards the end which I suspect is a case of "Kindle Shoulder") and I spent a *lot* of time with the kids, which was great. Good to be back at work though ;-)
Reply
For me, it's not the roaming ... it's the monthly fee.
I've got a dumb (feature) phone which is off most of the time. I only take calls by appointment such as when my wife is due to arrive at the airport. Phone cost $12 and the plan costs about $100/year.
There's a new pay-as-you-go company, Ting (https://ting.com/plans). They charge you a flat $6/month. Then you add on the minutes, SMS and data you use each month. They charge separably for each of the three categories. So if you don't use any SMS in a month ... no charge.
And the charge are cheaper than my pre-paid and I could get a smart phone too. (Have to buy it from them, though, and the choices are somewhat limited and not subsidized.)
It's brought to you by the people who run CreativeCow.net and domain registrars hover.com
Not in Europe yet and doesn't solve the roaming issue but to me it makes more sense to pay for what I use as long as the price is reasonable.
Reply
Show the rest of this thread
So that's why I haven't had any good reading material lately, you've been on vacation living it up!! While we're stuck here pounding the keyboard. Man, some guys have it made :)
Glad you guys had a good time.
LOL - I just realized you said the 5 of you, poor Quinn got left at home
Reply
Yeah. I was surprised to come back to a house. All those horror stories about teens announcing a small gathering to a small groups on Facebook only to find 100s of drunk kids destroying the house. Luckily her and her bf are very trustworthy and sensible.
Quinn opted for a 4 day break in Rome with said bf instead. It's not that we left her out on purpose of course.
Reply
Jake, check if your apps are set to "allow automatic updating ". It's a checkbox for each app in Google Play.
Reply
Most are. But even deselecting it had no effect. Also, without an internet/data connection you can't even see your apps in Google Play (see above screenshot). The only way was to turn data roaming on and then quickly(!) open Play to see what was updating and deselect auto-update - only to find it had no effect.
Regardless of that I'd like to think that the global preference of only updating over wifi would negate the need to do this.
Reply
I live in the US and have a company BB and a personal Galaxy S, both on AT&T. But I'm typing this from my company's office in Frankfurt. We got a data plan for the BB, $30US for 50 MB, but didn't for the Galaxy S, so it's at $20US for a single MB!
As a result I've keep the Galaxy S in "Airplane" mode since the plane left Atlanta. In this mode it can still do WiFi. But the only place I've found with WiFi outside of the office and the hotel room is O'Reilly's so my Galaxy S has pretty much been useless this week.
And with 50 MB needing to last me a week, I'm not using my BB nearly as much outside the office as usual.
$20 for 1 MB without a plan. What a racket.
Reply
Ouch.
I love how the phone makers advertise them as though we live in a new world where businessy-type people dash from country to country with all the services then rely on always at there fingertips. When the reality is that roaming is prohibitively expensive and a decent wifi connection a pain to find.
Last time I was in London I'd gotten a bit disorientated so thought I'd use my S2 to find me a Tube station. Not only could I not get GPS my data connection was too flaky. In the end I gave up and just wandered around until I found a station. Old ways are best some times.
Reply
how funny that there are still people laughing at me when I tell them how super important it is that mobile business Apps can sync data to the device so that they can work offline.
Your experience and the comments just support my opinion - data roaming is still a mess, less a mess in the EU, but still only a small gap from being criminal... and really, I don't see that this will change in the foreseeable future.
If you're out of your country and need data traffic, you're doomed or you need to use a prepaid card.
For that reason, I fail to see what mobile web apps that need a decent network connection are good for. But that's a different story.
Reply
I normally untick "data roaming" in the mobile network menu then try to use wifi when possible. Then fail by turning it back on to quickly check my email and get hit by everything trying to sync :-)
Reply
5 stars hotel at Spain sun? The business are going better Jake?
IT is good to read that!
Please be honest , who pay the bill? Lotus domino, Sharepoint or mobile Jobs?
Keep moving!!
Reply
Hi Emilio,
Yes, business is better this year than last (it couldn't have gotten any worse ;-)
Who pays the bills? It's not a simple question, but I guess the simple answer is "Still Domino"
Reply