Mobile firms breaking promises on roaming fees post-Brexit, warns Martin Lewis

theguardian.com:

Phone networks are taking advantage of post-Brexit deregulation to baffle customers into racking up large roaming bills on EU holidays, consumer rights champion Martin Lewis has warned.

At the end of June, a range of consumer protections that had been introduced after Brexit expired. As a result, phone networks are no longer required to send customers a message with pricing details when they begin roaming, nor to cap the maximum data roaming fees that can be charged monthly. Networks also no longer need to provide protections against inadvertent roaming.

In an age of data-hungry smartphones, consumers can build up huge bills in a matter of minutes without even being aware they are using their phone at all, as apps connect to the internet to check for updates after a flight or during a journey.

Lewis, who leads the consumer group MoneySavingExpert.com, warned that mobile networks had shown that they could not be trusted to self-regulate and since Brexit, some operators had pledged not to reintroduce roaming fees, only to renege on those promises. The only option was for the government to step in, he said.

“I’ve no faith in mobile firms to self-regulate. When we left the EU, they promised not to reintroduce European roaming charges … yet most of the big networks have broken that promise,” he said.

“So our report calls on Ofcom to not trust voluntary promises – we need to reintroduce the formal, compulsory consumer protections.”

As well as imposing large top-line costs, mobile networks were taking advantage of ambiguities that individual consumers are rarely aware of. Many limit daily roaming fees, for instance, but each defines a “day” differently, with some counting the period of 24 hours after first use, but others simply