The face value of tickets to World Cup Games is supposedly between about £50 and £80. We all know that they’ll be changing hands for a lot more than that though. At the time of writing, that popular online auction site had one ticket to see England versus the USA with a reserve of £350. There’s no doubt that following your country to the World Cup Finals is an expensive business. There are also those people for whom such a once in a lifetime opportunity is worth the money. So, watching England in the World Cup: priceless?

On top of the ticket price, there are all of those other expenses to consider too. For starters, getting to South Africa, if you can find a seat on a flight out there, is going to be an expensive proposition. Accommodation will be at a premium too, with footie fans from all over the world descending on the Rainbow Nation. Let’s just say that’s all done though. It was expensive but worth it. You’re there and you want to phone home to tell everyone just how good it is. Well, the watchdog Consumer Focus has warned that fans could be paying in excess of £100 to make calls and send texts on match day.

The team leaves the tunnel, the sun is shining and the flags are flying. You want to post a photo or two, to show those that couldn’t make the trip what they’re missing. Not so fast, the highest charges could well be for mobile phone users that upload their photos or videos to social networking sites. You could find that the charges for data and mobile internet could range from just over £1 to £8 for each megabyte.

All of this means that you must check the rates applied by your service provider before you go. If you pay your mobile phone bill by direct debit, you could find that you return from watching the World Cup in South Africa with substantial charges having been applied to your account. This could push your account into the red, meaning overdraft charges and even the possibility of missed payments that could seriously affect your credit rating. We are keen for you to bear in mind that the implications of this can be serious and long lasting so make sure you know where you stand with your network charges. It’s also important to remember that the charges are going to be a lot higher than they are when travelling in Europe. Look into extra data bundles and other money saving angles before you leave.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 11th, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Debt News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.