You may have come across in the news the story of the hapless MSP Michael Matheson, the Scottish Health Secretary, who managed to rack up mobile roaming data charges of £10,935.74 whilst on a week’s family holiday to Morocco. Cue calls from political opponents for him to pay this out of his own pocket. Cue condemnation of his cavalier waste of public funds. But was it all his fault?
Well, it was his iPad and he was the one in Morocco, so he probably has to take some of the blame. But take a closer look at the story (something which no major news provider seems to be able to do, presumably because they don’t work for a telecoms company), and it’s more complicated.
Firstly, how much data does that £10,935.74 represent? His iPad was on EE, and EE’s out of bundle data charges (i.e. not included in an allowance or a bolt-on) is £7.50 per Megabyte (MB) in Morocco. That doesn’t sound so much, but that equates to £7680 per gigabyte (GB). Bearing in mind that 20 minutes of Netflix HD streaming video could be as much as 1GB then you can see how you could run up a massive bill so quickly.
Now this isn’t suggesting that the Health Secretary (or his children) were using the iPad to catch up on their latest box set, although it’s fair to say that 1.4GB of usage is an awful lot of emails. But, more importantly, the overspend could have been avoided with two simple things.
Firstly, Mr Matheson could have contacted the individual who managed his work mobile phone (usually somebody in IT, HR or Accounts) and said ‘I’m going to Morocco next week, do I need a bolt-on to be able to use my iPad?’ And then the manager could have replied ‘Yes, you need the World Daily Passport for £9.79 per day which will give you a 1GB per day allowance’. Obviously nobody thought to have this conversation.
But even if they hadn’t, the second solution would still have worked. At Simpatico it’s standard practice to put a spend cap on a number, even if the customer doesn’t ask for one. So when a number exceeds £50 out of bundle charges, or £75 or £100 or whatever is appropriate, the phone/tablet stops working before any more damage is done. We find it easier to have a conversation with a client as to why their phone has stopped working, before getting their authorisation to lift the bar, than have to present them with a bill for £10,000.
Did nobody working for the Scottish government think to have something like this in place? Who is managing their mobiles and iPads (and if you know them, can you put us in touch? Always worth an ask). Perhaps the manager responsible for looking after the minister’s mobile and ipad should be the one refunding the money to the taxpayer? Although they probably get paid less than the Health Secretary (currently on £120,000 a year). What do you think?
