Woman landed with £4,900 phone bill for downloading The Apprentice abroad

You're Fired: Janet was charged £4,900 for downloading three BBC shows including The Apprentice

It comes at a time when the European Commission is putting pressure on mobile phone companies to cut their fee hikes for services on the continent.Janet decided to download the Apprentice using the BBC's iPlayer service during a long weekend trip to Villefranche on the French Riviera.At the same time she decided to watch the politics shows This Week and The Andrew Marr Show on her laptop using a Vodafone 3G card, which enables fast internet access.She wrongly assumed that the tariff included downloading programmes while abroad. Her internet provider actually charges £4.25 per megabyte for the service. It means a show like The Apprentice - which requires a 600 megabyte file to download - would cost £2,550.Janet, who rents a serviced office in Oxfordshire, said: "When I got home I had a call from  the person who manages my office."They said they had got a bill for my mobile while I was abroad."You can imagine how I felt when they said it was nearly £5,000. I am refusing to pay it because when I got my 3G card, I wasn't given any information which said it was going to cost me that sort of money to download data abroad."The hotel where I was staying had wi-fi access which I could have used for 15 euros a day, but I thought I was saving myself 15 euros by using my 3G card."Janet, who specialises in property law, buys her mobile phone and internet services from the company from which she rents her office, which in turn has a contract with Manchester-based Yes Telecom, a Vodafone subsidiary.A spokesman for Ofcom, the communications watchdog, said that companies were obliged to ensure customers were aware of the cost of using phones abroad."We think these data roaming rates are too high. We think the industry should reduce its roaming charges and if it doesn't  then we will discuss with the EC how to reduce the charges," he added.Viviane Reding, the European Union commissioner for information, society and media, had given phone companies until July 1 to cut their fees for downloading data and texting while abroad.