A Manchester business owner was left facing a £42,000 mobile phone bill after his daughter streamed TikTok on holiday in Morocco, a charge he said nearly pushed his small company into financial crisis.
Andrew Alty, who runs a curtains business, discovered the scale of the bill while on a family trip to Marrakech after receiving an initial £22,000 invoice from O2. A second bill for around £20,000 followed shortly after their return to the UK.
The charges stemmed from data roaming outside Europe, where the UK’s previous EU-wide free roaming arrangements no longer apply. Mr Alty had taken out a mobile contract via Currys for his small business, unaware that the agreement included a clause opting out of a “rest-of-world” data cap.
His daughter had spent around eight hours using TikTok during the trip. With no cap in place, data charges mounted rapidly, amounting to more than £5,000 per hour of usage.
“There’s no way they should be able to charge that,” Mr Alty told The Telegraph. “They made no effort to inform us and just allowed the charges to accrue. I don’t understand how they expect any small business to pay that sort of bill.”
Initially suspecting fraud or a technical glitch, Mr Alty attempted to contact O2 while still abroad but was unable to resolve the issue. It was only after returning home that the family understood the source of the charges.
Following weeks of complaints, both Currys and O2 agreed to waive the bill in full.
According to Ofcom data covering July to September 2025, O2 received among the highest levels of complaints per 100,000 customers, alongside Sky Mobile and Three. Almost a third related to complaints handling.
Mr Alty escalated 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 contract explanations fell under Currys’ responsibility, not O2’s. The FOS does not adjudicate disputes with network providers directly.
An O2 spokesperson said the matter had been resolved following Currys’ internal review, with all charges waived “given the scale and circumstances”.
The case highlights the potential financial risks of using mobile data outside Europe without a roaming cap, particularly on business contracts where standard consumer protections may differ. While most major networks offer optional caps to limit overseas data costs, customers must ensure these safeguards are activated, or risk bills running into the tens of thousands.
