COMMUNICATIONS ON TOUR

Everyone has probably read the horror stories about massive bills for using your mobile phone abroad. There was the woman who was billed £8,000 after downloading movies in Paris, the man who spent £600 in three days updating his Facebook status. Last Wednesday a woman complained it had cost her £1,200 to listen to Radio 4 while in Italy for a week. It couldn’t happen to you, could it?

I checked my provider (Orange) for their charges for service in Argentina and Uruguay:

Calls Made £1.75 per minute
Calls Received £1.00 pm
SMS (text) £0.50 each
Data/Internet £5.50 per megabyte

Orange will give me a 20% discount on these rates if I pay a £5 upfront fee. No bundles of minutes and texts are available.

I thought I could probably live with these figures (even though if I call another UK Orange customer while we are away, it will cost £2.75 per minute between us); just be sensible about how I used the phone, and obviously avoid using the internet.

Then it occurred to me that 38 sixteen-year-olds used to 24/7 social networking and unused to household budgeting might conceivably bankrupt the lot of us.

For example, 15 texts per day, 4 calls made and 4 calls received doesn’t sound unreasonable, does it? The bill? £240 when you get home, nearly half the cost of sending your boy in the first place. Even after a 20% discount, that is £180. And how many of the little treasures send just 15 texts per day? This is without using any data. One megabyte will give you around 20 web pages or 5 picture messages. Lurking on Facebook for the odd idle hour? It does not bear thinking about. (By the way, iPhones and some other smartphones receive automatic firmware updates for which you will be charged while roaming).

Simple solution: leave the phone at home. Well, no. I think we would all wish to have direct contact with and between the boys, coaches and supporters while we are away.

There are a number of ways to go on this, and each of us should choose what’s best for us. There will be another post here tomorrow with the options I have looked at but, in the meantime, if you have any suggestions, please use the Comments function or email me on grmsmth6@gmail.com.