A Manchester business owner was left with a £42,000 mobile phone bill after his daughter streamed TikTok while on holiday in Morocco, a charge he says almost plunged his small business into financial crisis.
Andrew Alty, who runs a curtain business, discovered the size of the bill during a family trip to Marrakech after receiving an initial bill from O2 for £22,000. Shortly after her return to the UK, a second bill followed for around £20,000.
The charges are due to data roaming outside Europe, where the UK’s previous EU-wide free roaming rules no longer apply. Mr Alty had taken out a mobile phone contract for his small business through Currys, unaware that the agreement contained a clause opting out of a data cap for the “rest of the world”.
His daughter spent around eight hours using TikTok during the trip. With no cap in place, data charges rose quickly, reaching over £5,000 per hour of use.
“There’s no way they should be able to ask for that,” Mr Alty told The Telegraph. “They didn’t bother to inform us and just let the charges apply. I don’t understand how they can expect a small business to pay such a bill.”
Mr Alty initially suspected fraud or a technical glitch and tried to contact O2 while he was abroad, but was unable to solve the problem. It was only after they returned home that the family learned where the charges came from.
After weeks of complaints, both Currys and O2 agreed to waive the bill entirely.
According to Ofcom data from July to September 2025, O2 recorded the most complaints per 100,000 customers, alongside Sky Mobile and Three. Almost a third related to complaint handling.
Mr Alty referred his case to the Financial Ombudsman Service, arguing that the opt-out clause on data caps had not been clearly explained. However, the Ombudsman ruled that contractual representations were Currys’ responsibility, not O2’s. The FOS does not directly adjudicate disputes with network providers.
An O2 spokesman said the matter had been resolved following Currys’ internal review, with all charges dismissed “given the scale and circumstances”.
The case highlights the potential financial risks of using mobile data outside Europe without a roaming cap, particularly in business contracts where standard consumer protections may vary. While most major networks offer optional caps to limit data costs abroad, customers need to ensure these protections are enabled or risk incurring tens of thousands of euros in bills.
