A new case of mobile phone bill madness in France

Just another news-making day in France for Orange, the mobile 'phone network operator and Internet service provider of this country's main telecommunications company, France Telecom.

And that of course can only mean an astronomical bill for someone, somewhere.

Or at least, so it would seem, based on recent evidence.

Following hot on the heels of the story of Eric Gernez, who received a demand for payment courtesy of Orange, of over €45,000 for one month's worth of Internet charges comes the case of Christophe Aupy-Fagues.

http://www.france-today.com/2009/11/one-frenchmans-monster-45000-internet.html

When the company director in the town of Saint-Herblain in western France opened the most recent bill for his firm's mobile 'phone just last Friday he too, just as Gernez before him, received a nasty surprise.

The sum charged was a whopping €39,500 a figure, which Aupy-Fagues said, represented almost 10 per cent of his company's annual turnover.

Just to make matters worse Aupy-Fagues pays his 'phone bill by standing order so the money would have already left the company account had he not immediately contacted the bank and blocked the transfer.

All right, so it wasn't quite as much as the monstrous bill Gernez had been sent, but the period for which Aupy-Fagues had been charged was shorter - just 15 days - which meant that he had run up daily costs of...well you do the maths.

So what's going on here?

Well, the "offender", if you will, had been his business partner who had been on a trip to Spain and taken the 'phone with him.

But as far as Aupy-Fagues was concerned the real culprits were the 3G 'phone, Orange itself and the "unlimited access" contract he had signed with the company.

It was - and is - only valid for use in France, a vital detail of which, Aupy-Fagues maintains, he had never been informed, and the astronomical charges accumulated were a result of that infamous "roaming".

"If we had known that unlimited access was confined to France, my business partner would never have taken the 'phone with him," said Aupy-Fagues, who also blames Orange-France Telecom for not providing its customers with sufficient information or alerting them when charges appear to spiral out of control.

"Nobody got in touch with us or sent us a warning that the charges we had accrued were of such enormous proportions," he said.

Aupy-Fagues is still waiting for an explanation from Orange and hopes there has been some sort of mistake, but in the meantime he intends to try to find other "victims of the 3G key" in France

What's the betting he and Gernez are not the only ones?