Steer clear of mobile phone bill shock this summer

The price caps are specified in EUR without VAT in Articles 8(2), 10(2) and 13(2) of Regulation (EU) No 31/2012, and in order to convert the price caps to GBP, the EUR/GBP exchange rate is calculated in accordance with Article 1(7) by taking the average of the exchange rates published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 1st March 2014, 1st April 2014 and 1st May 2014, which is 0.82581. Consequently the price caps are now £0.1569/min for outgoing calls, £0.0495 for outgoing SMS and £0.1652/MB for data. UK VAT of 20% is then added when roaming inside the EU VAT area, but not when roaming in parts of the European Union or wider European Economic Area that are outside the EU VAT area, specifically Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Gibraltar, the Åland Islands, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, in accordance with Article 19 of the Value Added Tax (Place of Supply of Services) Order 1992. This is because the United Kingdom opted to exempt non-EU VAT area roaming from UK VAT under Article 9(3)(a) of Council Directive 77/388 (“the Sixth VAT Directive”) so that it could charge UK VAT on services used in the UK but billed outside the UK (e.g. US-based services marketed to UK residents).

Make sure that your network doesn’t breach the new price caps by adding an additional 20% when roaming in the Canary Islands or Norway for example. Most networks get this right, but some don’t.

All this aside, the best solution, until December 2015, is to use a local SIM card. I avoid using my UK SIM card outside the UK so I pay the same as a local.

“Nearly half of people surveyed thought the price caps applied to all countries within Europe, but they don’t – they only apply to the nations in the EU.” – This is incorrect. The price caps apply throughout the European Economic Area, which comprises the European Union plus Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

Many of the settings I use to minimise my UK data costs effectively keep roaming costs down too. Most importantly, turn off any automatic synching, notifications and anything non-essential running in the background. Then track down the setting that can stop services updating while the screen is off, there’s only a tiny lag to update these things when you switch it on. Finally, it’s quicker to switch ‘airplane’ mode on or off than switch the actual phone on or off frequently but it has the same benefit in terms of savings. This really saves battery use as well!

And I sit on a sun bed in Corfu right now still utterly confused. I wish mobile operators simply had a “push button A” or “push button B” approach to tariffs.