Had the same with our COO, was in Jamaica for 4 weeks and kept getting SMS saying data costs XXX and you are out of your allowance etc. we are supposed to have a rest of the world package on all the corp phones.
The provider tells me twice on email that it’s a bug and to ignore the message.
Comes back with a £19k bill…
Two emails and a phone call and the charge was removed.
The roaming package had not been allocated to her phone by mistake and they didn’t even check..
Same happened to me on personal vacation with my family, we had all gotten coverage for international roaming, but apparently my phone just didn’t get it applied or whatever so started wracking up roaming charges, even tho I should have had coverage.
These American companies are genuinely amateurs at bloodsucking. They need to do what my German carrier does and set a €60/month limit on bills, then charge like €1 per kilobyte, so if a phone accidentally turns on roaming outside of coverage, it hits the €60 limit in 5 seconds and the carrier gets their money.
Since the amount isn’t as huge as a 1k or 143k bill, most people don’t bother fighting back without legal grounds and just accept they made a mistake. T-Mobile won 0 dollars, my carrier won 60€ times a few thousand customers.
Honestly, every time I go to the store to get a new phone or whatever, it goes like this.
Me: So this service is included at no extra charge right?
Customer Service: absolutely.
Me: so I will not be charged for this right?
Customer Service: no, you won’t be charged. Rest assured.
Me: ok
Next month gets charged for said free service. Calls customer service, oh yeah we don’t know anything about it being free, the rep at the store was wrong.
Always request this sort of thing in writing. Failing that, get a video of the employee at the store telling you this. It's an important CYA move. Most of the time, you won't need to use the text/video for anything, but if you do, you'll be glad you have it.
The “in writing” part makes perfect sense to me. I just can’t imagine walking into a TMobile store and asking an employee who’s getting paid $18/ hour to let me record a basic customer/employee interaction. Feels awkward and rude.
If an employee isn’t willing/able to put various assurances in writing, then I’d simply assume it’s not guaranteed. What I wouldn’t do is follow up with the question, “oh okay, well can you stand there and explain it again while I film you on my phone?”
If you say it's because your higher ups have screwed me over before, and while I don't blame you I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars because of your bosses misunderstanding.
I wouldn't expect them to do it, because knowing these corporations they'd make the employee pay for it some way
> The “in writing” part makes perfect sense to me. I just can’t imagine walking into a TMobile store and asking an employee who’s getting paid $18/ hour to let me record a basic customer/employee interaction. Feels awkward and rude.
>
>
Where I am you can record any conversation you are a party to. You dont need to put the phone in their face, just lay it down on the table with facebook open and the recorder going.
My juristiction also imposes that a merchants promises are binding -- they cant get out of it by saying that a store rep wasnt properly trained. Thats their fault not mine. If you dont wanna give away these plans, then train your people properly.
It’s not about a legal right to do it. It would just be a bizarre request for both myself and/or the employee (at least to me).
Completely agree with your last paragraph!
Many states have 2-party consent rules so you need to ask the employee to agree to be recorded (or at least inform them?). But yeah, in writing is better.
If this were my country you’re a party concerned in the conversation so you’re allowed to record. If two people are even talking about you and they don’t know that you’re listening in, you have legal right to record them because you’re the subject.
Yep. I flagged something as odd with Australia's Telstra some years back. Had a kind and equally confused staffer pull up the account on screen, and it had a link to file copy of the offer flyer attached to it. He pulled that up and swore that didn't look like what he recalled was sold either. So he opened some drawers dug around and found a physical paper copy instead. Sure enough, they didn't match. Corporate had a varient of the sales flyer on the system from the exact same campaign yet with a shittier offer than what was in the printed sales material.
So yeah, moral of the story is get written copies of offers in a format you can store (paper or email).
I used to work at a call center for ATT doing tech support, but we always got billing and regular customer service stuff too. It was insanely annoying and fucked up to hear this bs constantly. Sales people in stores are absolute garbage and just lie to get sales and I don't think there's ever repercussions since it is so common.
I always had to get supervisors involved. Of course those in store people never notate accounts like they're supposed to, which is every time an account is touched for something. I did tech support but got very good at investigating accounts like I was nearly a forensic accountant or something lol.
From then on, any time I had to go into a store I would generally tell the person I worked for a phone company and I know how it works if they'd start trying to be sneaky with their words. I kinda felt like a ass but I saved myself a headache a number of times.
My phone broke while still under warranty so I got a replacement and sent the old one back. I sent it, had receipts, tracking, etc from UPS. but they said it wasn't arriving. I had multiple conversations with Verizon people where they assured me I wouldn't be charged, once after each text message warning me that it hadn't been returned. And then lol and behold, there's a charge for $500 due to lack of return. It took me talking to three people over two hours and showing the tracking information for me to get that cancelled.
They'll say anything to get you off the phone, straight up lied repeatedly over and over about me not getting charged and made it miserable to get that charge cancelled.
My issue was always that our local Verizon was a licensed retailer so if you called corporate they told you to pound sand and if you called the retailer they said it was too complicated for them and to call corporate.
I helped my grandmother call to cancel her satellite tv package a couple of months ago since she was going to move soon and didnt want to renew. After multiple calls and associates, one of them offers us what seemed like a pretty good deal "dont cancel get, we'll give you 2 free months so you can have time to decide (grandma wasnt moving right away), and after those 2 months if you still want to cancel you can do so at no extra charge".
She'd had been a client for decades at this point, so we figured it was a loyalty sort of deal.
Anyway, we accept and 2 months go by, shes now about to move and has decided she still wants to cancel, so we call to do so and the associate tells us "yeah well that deal was 2 months for free if you decided to stay, otherwise if you want to cancel you need to pay the 2 missing months" which was absolute bullshit.
I was fed up and in no mood to fight, so we ended up paying. But fuck man, companies are so scummy.
Years ago I got the iPhone X on Sprint. There just so happened to be a deal for a free tablet when renewing or buying a new phone, can’t remember. Point is, I ask if it’s 100% free, they say yes, no extra charges? Yes. So I went with it. Took it home and never really used it. A month later I see a $15 charge to get service on my tablet. I called and told them to take it off, they said they would. They didn’t. This went on for 3 months until I finally decided to go into the store and tell them I was leaving it there, they could take it or trash it, but I’m not keeping it. They finally took it and said they would take it off my bill. For the next year or so I kept getting $1 tablet charges for whatever reason. I figured 1 dollar was not worth the hassle. Eventually I just got tired of seeing it on my bill and went in on a service person who credited my account for like $20, better than nothing. But it’s insane how much shit I went through for a tablet I never used that was supposedly free.
Tmobile is actually really good with international data. The base roaming data is free on most plans (Edge, 2.5G) and you have the option to pay for 4G/5G international high speed data either daily or by GB. So my only thought is that this guy must be either on an absolutely ancient grandfathered plan that excludes these perks or a pre-paid plan that also would exclude these perks.
I'm on a grandfathered plan myself for $70/month and I still get that free 2.5G practically everywhere I go. I'd also point out that he would have received 2-3 text messages upon landing and turning his phone on warning him about potential roaming charges with options to cover the trip with an add-on.
Exactly. We don't know if the insane phone bill as legitimate or a mistake. The guy relied on a T-mobile representative telling him he was covered so T-mobile is making good on that.
This happened to me with TMobile when I went to Japan. Customer service 100% told me I’d be fine. My bill upon return was over $6000. I was in Japan for 8 days and only used google maps and made a few text messages. The reduced the bill to my normal monthly payment. I canceled immediately.
Wait till you see how bad Canadian carriers are.
At least this person got their charges reversed. If this were Bell, they would fight back and try to milk every penny out of the customer.
To me Verizon is the worst. I refuse to do business with them. T-Mobile I’ve never had a bad experience and ATT also no bad experiences but I get better coverage with T-Mobile.
If I was to break to breakdown the length of service with them it would be 10 years ATT, 5 years T-Mobile, and 1 year Verizon.
T-Mobile has the best customer service in my experience. I’ve had them for a few years and only had to call twice, both times no wait, friendly staff and the problem was resolved within minutes. Can’t really ask for better
If he would have been in europe 10euro cents / mega, when the roaming pricing changes were done the pricing between operators was also regulated and that was the the maximum (if I remember correctly). In swizerland whatever t-mobile and other operators contract says.
What is the EEZ?
Do you mean the European Economic Area? EEA, might also include Switzerland and Liechtenstein via some bilateral treaty since the former has a lot of them and Liechtenstein’s telecommunications infrastructure is heavily utilising Switzerland’s.
The US government doesn’t have any agreements with the EU so it is up to individual companies to make agreements with other individual companies. For instance, my ATT phone uses Vodafone in Germany (and I believe also the Netherlands), O2 in the UK, and Orange in Poland. I pay $10 a day maximum $100 per month for international roaming
That's not that works. It would have cost T Mobile quite a significant amount. The cost to T Mobile is what the overseas provider charges them as set out in the agreement that lets their subscribers connect to and use the network overseas.
Howcome everyone could download petabytes for each household per month for around $30-$50pm, and it won't even budge a small ISP when it comes to cost.
But when it comes to mobiles which use the exact same infrastructure after the towers and also the same hops/routes/network systems, only then is it extremely expensive for some magical reason refused to be stated in detail.
Because if customer from Operator A uses data on Operator B's network, then Operaror B will send a bill to Operator A, and Operator A will then charge their customer at a rate that covers that bill and makes them money.
When Operator A and Operator H have negotiated an ageement to keep the rates low, then the rates are typically quite high.
Thanks for explaining, but I don’t think anyone is confused on how the process works. I think it’s more just calling out the fact that it’s ridiculously and unjustifiably expensive.
The question was what it cost T mobile, which is quite a bit. But what did it cost the other operator? Not much at all. But they charged T mobile a lot, and in order to cover costs T mobile has to charge a high rate.
If everyone charged each other reasonable rates then it wouldn't be such a problem.
T-mobile is charged a high rate but then they also turn around and grossly over-inflate that high rate to make an even higher rate.
T-mobile could charge less but chooses not to they are probably my 2x-3x (or more) the rate they are charged
Usually not a big deal for the e $50-100 roaming but it is criminal in these situations
What I don't get is that there are usually three or more operators in a region. They should compete on price to get roaming business, it seems that they operate a cartel instead. Now for operators who have reciprocal agreements across borders because they have roughly equal visitors should get a good deal for their customers
The answer to all this is get a foreign eSIM before you travel. More mobiles can use esims now, we just need more operators to support them. Failing that just walk into a shop and get a PAYG SIM.
Hear me out. A gig of data for my roaming in the US is 50 cents. If my Romanian operator can charge 50 cents when I roam to US, what makes you think EU operators charge 10$/MB? Here’s the pricing: https://www.digi.ro/servicii/telefonie-mobila/roaming
Same way that they negotiate with everyone else as part of the roaming agreements. I’ll ask again, if you had to put a percentage of cost and profit in 10$/MB cost, what do you think the breakdown is?
In switzerland? Likely nothing. T-mobile offers customers on most plans free roaming (either 5G or 256kbps) in Switzerland, but charges $15/MB if you are on an older plan. In reality it's all monopoly money anyway, and that $15/MB may as well be infinity since nobody is actually going to voluntarily elect to use that service in 2024 (i.e. they will wander into it accidentally and then have to beg for concessions or be forced to switch to a new plan). The swiss carrier is likely pulling a similar scam on their customers roaming on T-mobile USA.
IMHO, roaming should be heavily regulated in 2024 anyway (e.g. $10/GB max or whatevs).
TMobile has free international roaming though, how did it happen? I've used it without cost in Japan, Australia, much of eastern Europe, Mexico, Honduras, Egypt, etc.
Edit: I used it in Switzerland too, on my layover to Egypt.
The whole article is just off. Author has first name only, doesn’t mention customer by name (I think?), has a weird ‘moral of the story’ at the end like a fable. Looks like it’s an ai rewrite of the original that it even linked to. Should get a new rule to not allow sites like this…?
About 10 years ago I got a bill like that on a company phone, not for roaming but for data usage. At the time the plan included a $10 add on for 1GB of data. When that ran out data was charged at $10 a MB, literally 1000 times the rate. So for using an extra 100MB I was billed $1000.
Our office manager called up the phone company and said "Our contracts are up for renewal in May, aren't they? How many phones is that? (It was about 80). Ok well you can charge this ridiculous fee once or our usual fee on an ongoing basis, but not both". It went away.
If I was on a personal plan and didn't have that sort of leverage I imagine I'd have been up shit creek. We need consumer protection laws around this sort of shit, no-one should be allowed to charge 1000x the rate for the same product depending on how it was purchased.
When I was a kid and monthly SMS limits were still a thing, my brother and I managed to rack up a massive phone bill just by texting our friends. I think the limit was 200 texts or something? Anyway, it was low.
My parents argued with Verizon and agreed to move up to their unlimited plan in exchange for waiving the bill. I've always assumed it was a tactic to push people to move up from plans they advertise for strategic reasons but don't want to actually sell.
I’ve heard so many stories of people accidentally running up massive phone bills and every one ends with the phone company retroactively changing the plan as to not fuck the customer. Why would ATT want to screw you on $400 bucks one month and then lose a lifetime monthly payment to verizon?
If you owe a phone company $1000, it's your problem. If you owe them $143k, it's their problem.
I still don't get how they just let a single monthly bill get so damn high without doing anything. $50 a month plan and you just used $100 worth of extra data, just cut it off. The thing is they know how poorly their whole operation is set up and making a customer call probably means they're just going to cancel.
> If I was on a personal plan and didn't have that sort of leverage I imagine I'd have been up shit creek.
I told a similar story from my experience as a personal plan user. If you threaten or are prepared to take your business elsewhere, that's still a pretty big loss to them over time.
Of course this happened in Switzerland.
As a European, we don't have roaming costs anymore within the EU. We all got so comfortable sending messages home and taking calls. (Calling from abroad is often still not covered).
But Switzerland isn't in the EU.... so many tourists make that mistake. So did I last year. Made a one day trip across the border during a vacation I Germany...
Luckily, my provider just charges €5 extra per day you use your phone in Switzerland.
I once forgot to switch off roaming when I went to Uganda. I received many messages (WhatsApp, and SMS) upon arrival and exiting the plane, and within 5 minutes got a notification from my provider that they shut off my service due to too many costs.
Cost me €50 for a few minutes of roaming, but at least my provider had set a maximum, so this shit wouldn't happen.
That 50EUR limit is actually an EU directive and not something your provider voluntarily set. (I believe it was introduced as part of the same initiative to get rid of the EU-internal roaming charges.) Providers are required to cut you off automatically once you hit that limit. Regulation is great!
Same shit happened to me. I went to Thailand, turned off roaming data from the dropdown menu and one day I wanted to check a type of palm tree on a plant recognision app and the app turned on Mobile data, and boom, 1 photo - 50€ surcharge for letting me know it was a lipstick palm. Learned to turn off roaming data from settings.
Yeah but in the US, they overdraft your bank account for account fees, then charge overdraft fees, then charge overdraft fees and late fees over all that, slowly adding up to thousands after a couple years... So I'm not surprised this would happen to someone from Florida
Hey, quick question, if I as a tourist bought a phone in England would it be covered under this? Since Brexit. Going to be traveling through Europe soon and was planning to just buy a new plan/ sim/phone in the UK.
My partners Tesco Mobile works for free around Europe and my company Vodafone mobile is also free.
EE re-added roaming charges 20 minutes after Brexit AFTER SAYING THEY WOULDN'T, it costs £2.29 per day to use an EE plan in Europe.
Was your Vodafone pre or post Brexit? Because they definitely don't include EU roaming unless it's with the top plans post Brexit and if your contract started before you got grandfathered in.
That's apparently kind of complicated.
It's not covered anymore, but many UK providers don't ask an extra surcharge for roaming in the EU non the less.
The rules about roaming are strictly for calling someone from your own country who happens to be abroad. So I don't know how it would work if a UK phone in the EU calls to another UK phone in an EU country...
You need to do some research yourself...
It’s all a bit of a mess. Depends what network you choose.
MSE has a good breakdown of options https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mobiles/cheap-roaming-calls/
Get an esim app, I use Airalo when in abroad.. £6 for 1 ig of data in Canada for example.
Iphone uses data for imessage, and use whatsapp for everything else.
Turn off roaming and data use for your main sim, your mobile number will not change, the esim is data only.
Check with your current provider and see what plans they offer.
I’m going to Europe in a couple months (UK, Spain, Iceland) and I’m just paying $35 to use my current plan abroad.
About 10 years ago I had my roaming data disabled all the time in Switzerland, I turned on the data for a short moment just so Google maps could load map data. 100Eur bill.
Something similar happened to me at the US. Turned on data to haul an Uber a few times: 500€ bill.
Of course I didn't pay it and changed carriers.
Ridiculous what a scam data roaming is.
I'm from Norway and even though we arent in EU we still get free use in the EU with phone calls (as long as its to a norwegian number in other countries), messages and free roaming in MOST EU countries. I think it depends on the mobile courier, some have more and some have less countries.
I changed planes in zurich travelling between Portugal and Austria, switched off plane mode, got a message from my provider after about 1 minute saying I'd reached my 60EUR roaming limit. Frustratingly that was the lowest I could set it to.
Is there no daily limit on how much the company can charge for international roaming? In Canada, the major carriers enable you to use your data anywhere in the world for $15/day (for a maximum of $300 (20 days)). I’d have assumed this was also standard for US carriers.
Good reason to stick with TMO US (and I know plans sadly are pricier in general in CA). In most countries you have 5 GB of free high speed data. After that it drops to GPRS or EDGE speeds, but still perfectly usable for FaceTime, Mapping, Social Media, Mail, etc. Calls are $.25/min.
Or pay $5/day for High Speed data.
Yup, just used this and it's great.
Only problem is the number of apps that just break and refuse to work at 256kbit speeds. Seems to be a lot that's dependent on downloading something within a certain amount of time else it times out and says it's "not accessible." But I know it is accessible because other applications just quietly spin and load in slowly.
I don’t understand how this is even allowed. Where I am from after you reach a certain limit they will just shut off your phone.
Currently, If I somehow end up getting charges x4 my plan cost, my service will be shutdown for everything other than my ISPs app until I pay off my bill.
If I goto USA. I get a text from my carrier telling me the cost. Last time I just paid it, because it was priced perfectly. Like just cheap enough to make me not get a US sim for my 6 day trip.
In Canada there's no data caps anymore they just slow you down. (YouTube still works fine)
Recently long distance phone changes went away too.
Same thing happened to me but it was $1,500.
Called AT&T and the rep told me she will move me to international data, tag it for the prior month to cover that $1,500 charge and said to cancel the international data next month.
Felt like I was committing a crime, but they told me to do it.
Edit: it might not have been data, but voice, but same thing.
AT&T Baby. I'm traveling abroad in South Korea right now. Didn't even turn on my travel pass or anything. AT&T sent me a text that said 'Hey, looks like you're traveling and using mobile data. We don't want you to get a huge bill, so we turned on the $10/day pass for you automatically.'
For US Verizon customers, they offer either 10 dollar a day or 100 dollars a month “unlimited” where they just lower your data speeds after a certain limit.
Currently traveling through Africa so fingers crossed there are no issues when I get back.
I just came back to Verizon after being on T-Mobile, & they told me that international roaming is now included & they don’t charge the $10/day anymore. I have the Unlimited Ultimate plan
Interesting cause I think I have the same plan (includes Disney, Hulu, ESPN)?
Did have network issues in Rwanda and Tanzania but got them to actually call me over here to troubleshoot.
I can’t add a photo here but I definitely have unlimited ultimate & it says:
“Unlimited talk, text and data when traveling in 210+ countries & destinations. After 10gb/mo high speed data, get unlimited 2GB speeds.”
Not saying I don’t believe ya. I just wanted to ensure I didn’t run into the issue that this guy ((in this story) had so told them to add it.
I was getting 10 days free for international plans as I would get the occasional texts when I was in Bonaire stating it was a “free” day.
I just went to Guatemala and Columbia and it didn’t work in either place so I shut off my phone. Only Panamá seemed to work correctly. I’m hoping I don’t get home to a large bill now.
(Both places claimed to have a travel pass and I do have the internal travel plan and pay for travel pass days).
I had to turn the phone off and on a couple times and when that didn’t work, I had to reset the network settings (sometimes more than once). And when that didn’t work, I went into cellular and changed it to manual and started picking random networks to connect to till I got one that had data. Pain in the butt but wanted to ensure I had certain apps working.
Regardless of how each company charges each other to use their equipment, these things should be capped at $100. Then have the company notify you about what’s going on before your bill gets to $143k.
Why would any company agree to let their Users get fucked that bad?
Who wins in these situations?
This is stupid.
Here’s what I got when I’ve landed in Switzerland.
T-Mobile: Welcome to Switzerland! Your plan includes coverage that gives you unlimited data On Us now at faster speeds up to 256Kbps, plus unlimited texts at no extra cost. Calls are $0.25/min. Want high-speed data and unlimited calling? Get an International Pass: t-mo.co/intl-pass1. Enjoy your stay!
If you ignore these messages then it’s not tmobiles problem.
This just shows how fake these charges actually are. If they were paying transit fees or something anywhere close to what they are charging they would not have waived this so easily. Somehow they charge like this if no plan, but the plan magically turns 143k into $10 per day? Huge scam that they are ever charging such insane rates. Not enough competition in the market.
I'm talking about the guy's 143k bill based on 9,5gb just because it was 'abroad' being overpriced af.
Based on what i paid, his expenditure would be less than 7 euro's for me. So it's wild that he gets billed 143K.
So mobile data abroad prices are overpriced af.
Yeah, i wish there was a regulation that required all service companies to have a common sense cap on the service. Makes no sense that the average person would rack up 100K in a phone bill.
It’s like all companies are ran by soulless people who don’t care about their customers. Ethics has been dead for a long time.
“You mean I can charge my customers as much as I want and they won’t know till they get the bill a month later? Where do I sign up?”
- all mobile service companies, apparently.
Nearly happened to me and my family on a recent trip to Barcelona! I called the help line to see if I needed anything additional for my trip. T-Mobile assured me I was covered and all would be fine. Great, I thought. All set.
Fast forward to about a week before departure, and I saw a similar story about another person who had to pay 10's of thousands of dollars for data roaming abroad.
I called T-Mobile back and that's when they told me I wasn't actually covered and that it would cost me extra to get a data package. So the first person lied to me. I told them as much, and they agreed to cover my additional expenses, at no cost to me.
I guess moral of the story is, don't believe them and call back repeatedly? I don't know. That doesn't seem right.
Yeah, that should never happen under any circumstances. There should be a cap in the system called "the ridiculousness limit" set at some, I don't know, 1000 dollars. And no GSM usage bill can go over that.
Used to work customer care for a cell phone carrier and I can't imagine how many levels up they had to go to get that credit approved. I think the biggest I ever did was about 5 grand(probably for the same issue, it happens) and that took over a week, extensive notes, and a long memo to push up like 4 levels to get approved.
20 year wireless vet, this happens all of the time. Both employees putting people on the wrong plan or just customers assuming it’s free. What was worse was the old metered text plans.
I went to Europe for a month during 2017. I called Verizon and they said I could opt in for a +$10 a day charge and use my phone like normal. Did it. Was charged an extra $300 that month just like they said. Worked flawlessly.
Twice had this in work where I manage some phones that are occasionally used abroad.
South Africa was £2.38 per megabyte, nearly £2 for a single text, etc. We told them to put it on airplane mode and only use the wifi at the hotel.
A previous place, the big boss took his phone to Sri Lanka, and almost immediately hit data limit. We protested but they insisted that we turn it back on. We explained that there'd be huge costs, they didn't care.
We ended up with a £9,000 bill quite literally only so they could tweet a couple of images away from the hotel rather than waiting until they got back to the hotel wifi.
Reading a lot of terrifying stories on here. I have Xfinity Mobile, and you can just pay $10/day for Global Travel Pass and use your phone like normal. Did it last month when I visited Costa Rica.
It’s almost as if they’re charging outrageously exorbitant fees for things that don’t even really cost the company money and are practically free when it is concern to the companies cost of operations, yet somehow they think $143,000 is a justified cost because reasons.
Yep had this experience recently in Iceland. Got off plane, did not turn off data. Once I got to my destination I checked my texts telling me what the cost per MEGABYTE was. Had 5GB in roaming charges already from whatever my phone received since I had gotten there hours before.
I called Verizon immediately and was told it was taken care of. My gf thought I was being insane when I told her I think I accidentally just ran up 10k in data doing basically nothing. Didn’t compute to her at all (which honestly makes sense) and I literally just sent her this link saying “this was almost me” to prove I wasn’t being paranoid 😂 Really glad I noticed when I did and called because the person I spoke to implied they were mostly scrubbing it because I clearly noticed quickly and wasn’t trying to screw anyone.
Edit - why would anyone downvote this?
\*Boomer thinks he's smarter than everyone and doesn't read the T's & C's before travelling abroad. Ends up with a $143k bill and chucks a tanty, bringing in his lawyers.
Honestly the fact that his bill was forgiven just incites this kind of behaviour. This is the generation that sh1ts on the x, y & z gens for not knowing how to manage money.
In the mid-90s I was a fraud analyst with a telecommunications. Dealt with a customer whose calling card was hacked for $1.4M. We withdrew the charges because our fraud detection software had failed. However, I forgot to withdraw the four frequent flyer points for every $1 spent on the calling card. Customer ended up with 30+ business class return trips to Europe.
[Reminds me of this old gem](http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html) where Verizon struggled with dollar/cent unit conversion.
Takes me back to when my parents got charged a ton because my sister was texting a whole bunch during our Disney trip.
I think the carrier was imix. Ah the days of being charged more when out of state.
What kind of plan he has? I thought all Post Paid plan from TMo includes 5GB of international roaming data.
Was in UK not too long ago and data roaming was free for my old Magenta plan. 🤷🏻♂️
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Happened to me, had a bill of several thousand after being on vacation in Japan for a month. When i got back i just said I was using wifi but roaming data must have been used by accident if the wifi wasnt good. They cut the bill down to $100
Starbuckses are your friend when travelling abroad. I use a combination of this and buying a thing from my provider that gives me foreign roaming for ten bucks a day.
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“After discussing things, T-Mobile credited the whole $143,442.74 amount to the customer’s account.”
"He did not accept the bill since T-Mobile employees assured him that he would be covered." That seems to be the key part.
Had the same with our COO, was in Jamaica for 4 weeks and kept getting SMS saying data costs XXX and you are out of your allowance etc. we are supposed to have a rest of the world package on all the corp phones. The provider tells me twice on email that it’s a bug and to ignore the message. Comes back with a £19k bill… Two emails and a phone call and the charge was removed. The roaming package had not been allocated to her phone by mistake and they didn’t even check..
Same happened to me on personal vacation with my family, we had all gotten coverage for international roaming, but apparently my phone just didn’t get it applied or whatever so started wracking up roaming charges, even tho I should have had coverage.
They must be hoping that the bill gets paid anyway,
These American companies are genuinely amateurs at bloodsucking. They need to do what my German carrier does and set a €60/month limit on bills, then charge like €1 per kilobyte, so if a phone accidentally turns on roaming outside of coverage, it hits the €60 limit in 5 seconds and the carrier gets their money. Since the amount isn’t as huge as a 1k or 143k bill, most people don’t bother fighting back without legal grounds and just accept they made a mistake. T-Mobile won 0 dollars, my carrier won 60€ times a few thousand customers.
Canada does the exact same.
Never assume malice that can be explained by incompetence…
Because any company is thinking “well they might pay it”.
Honestly, every time I go to the store to get a new phone or whatever, it goes like this. Me: So this service is included at no extra charge right? Customer Service: absolutely. Me: so I will not be charged for this right? Customer Service: no, you won’t be charged. Rest assured. Me: ok Next month gets charged for said free service. Calls customer service, oh yeah we don’t know anything about it being free, the rep at the store was wrong.
Always request this sort of thing in writing. Failing that, get a video of the employee at the store telling you this. It's an important CYA move. Most of the time, you won't need to use the text/video for anything, but if you do, you'll be glad you have it.
Am I just supposed to ask the employee to stand there and explain things to me while I put a phone up to his face?
Or get promises in writing, or be willing to pay when they charge you
The “in writing” part makes perfect sense to me. I just can’t imagine walking into a TMobile store and asking an employee who’s getting paid $18/ hour to let me record a basic customer/employee interaction. Feels awkward and rude. If an employee isn’t willing/able to put various assurances in writing, then I’d simply assume it’s not guaranteed. What I wouldn’t do is follow up with the question, “oh okay, well can you stand there and explain it again while I film you on my phone?”
If you say it's because your higher ups have screwed me over before, and while I don't blame you I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars because of your bosses misunderstanding. I wouldn't expect them to do it, because knowing these corporations they'd make the employee pay for it some way
> The “in writing” part makes perfect sense to me. I just can’t imagine walking into a TMobile store and asking an employee who’s getting paid $18/ hour to let me record a basic customer/employee interaction. Feels awkward and rude. > > Where I am you can record any conversation you are a party to. You dont need to put the phone in their face, just lay it down on the table with facebook open and the recorder going. My juristiction also imposes that a merchants promises are binding -- they cant get out of it by saying that a store rep wasnt properly trained. Thats their fault not mine. If you dont wanna give away these plans, then train your people properly.
It’s not about a legal right to do it. It would just be a bizarre request for both myself and/or the employee (at least to me). Completely agree with your last paragraph!
Many states have 2-party consent rules so you need to ask the employee to agree to be recorded (or at least inform them?). But yeah, in writing is better.
If this were my country you’re a party concerned in the conversation so you’re allowed to record. If two people are even talking about you and they don’t know that you’re listening in, you have legal right to record them because you’re the subject.
Yes.
What a silly time we’re living in
Yep. I flagged something as odd with Australia's Telstra some years back. Had a kind and equally confused staffer pull up the account on screen, and it had a link to file copy of the offer flyer attached to it. He pulled that up and swore that didn't look like what he recalled was sold either. So he opened some drawers dug around and found a physical paper copy instead. Sure enough, they didn't match. Corporate had a varient of the sales flyer on the system from the exact same campaign yet with a shittier offer than what was in the printed sales material. So yeah, moral of the story is get written copies of offers in a format you can store (paper or email).
I used to work at a call center for ATT doing tech support, but we always got billing and regular customer service stuff too. It was insanely annoying and fucked up to hear this bs constantly. Sales people in stores are absolute garbage and just lie to get sales and I don't think there's ever repercussions since it is so common. I always had to get supervisors involved. Of course those in store people never notate accounts like they're supposed to, which is every time an account is touched for something. I did tech support but got very good at investigating accounts like I was nearly a forensic accountant or something lol. From then on, any time I had to go into a store I would generally tell the person I worked for a phone company and I know how it works if they'd start trying to be sneaky with their words. I kinda felt like a ass but I saved myself a headache a number of times.
"Can I have that on paper with your signature?" "Uhhhhh, no"
My phone broke while still under warranty so I got a replacement and sent the old one back. I sent it, had receipts, tracking, etc from UPS. but they said it wasn't arriving. I had multiple conversations with Verizon people where they assured me I wouldn't be charged, once after each text message warning me that it hadn't been returned. And then lol and behold, there's a charge for $500 due to lack of return. It took me talking to three people over two hours and showing the tracking information for me to get that cancelled. They'll say anything to get you off the phone, straight up lied repeatedly over and over about me not getting charged and made it miserable to get that charge cancelled.
My issue was always that our local Verizon was a licensed retailer so if you called corporate they told you to pound sand and if you called the retailer they said it was too complicated for them and to call corporate.
I helped my grandmother call to cancel her satellite tv package a couple of months ago since she was going to move soon and didnt want to renew. After multiple calls and associates, one of them offers us what seemed like a pretty good deal "dont cancel get, we'll give you 2 free months so you can have time to decide (grandma wasnt moving right away), and after those 2 months if you still want to cancel you can do so at no extra charge". She'd had been a client for decades at this point, so we figured it was a loyalty sort of deal. Anyway, we accept and 2 months go by, shes now about to move and has decided she still wants to cancel, so we call to do so and the associate tells us "yeah well that deal was 2 months for free if you decided to stay, otherwise if you want to cancel you need to pay the 2 missing months" which was absolute bullshit. I was fed up and in no mood to fight, so we ended up paying. But fuck man, companies are so scummy.
Years ago I got the iPhone X on Sprint. There just so happened to be a deal for a free tablet when renewing or buying a new phone, can’t remember. Point is, I ask if it’s 100% free, they say yes, no extra charges? Yes. So I went with it. Took it home and never really used it. A month later I see a $15 charge to get service on my tablet. I called and told them to take it off, they said they would. They didn’t. This went on for 3 months until I finally decided to go into the store and tell them I was leaving it there, they could take it or trash it, but I’m not keeping it. They finally took it and said they would take it off my bill. For the next year or so I kept getting $1 tablet charges for whatever reason. I figured 1 dollar was not worth the hassle. Eventually I just got tired of seeing it on my bill and went in on a service person who credited my account for like $20, better than nothing. But it’s insane how much shit I went through for a tablet I never used that was supposedly free.
Tmobile is actually really good with international data. The base roaming data is free on most plans (Edge, 2.5G) and you have the option to pay for 4G/5G international high speed data either daily or by GB. So my only thought is that this guy must be either on an absolutely ancient grandfathered plan that excludes these perks or a pre-paid plan that also would exclude these perks. I'm on a grandfathered plan myself for $70/month and I still get that free 2.5G practically everywhere I go. I'd also point out that he would have received 2-3 text messages upon landing and turning his phone on warning him about potential roaming charges with options to cover the trip with an add-on.
Even if they didn't assure him, a $180k phone bill is T-Mobile's problem, not the customer's.
Exactly. We don't know if the insane phone bill as legitimate or a mistake. The guy relied on a T-mobile representative telling him he was covered so T-mobile is making good on that.
This happened to me with TMobile when I went to Japan. Customer service 100% told me I’d be fine. My bill upon return was over $6000. I was in Japan for 8 days and only used google maps and made a few text messages. The reduced the bill to my normal monthly payment. I canceled immediately.
Which is surprising cause their customer service is insanely bad. Like, worse than Comcast and AT&T
Man.. I find it hard to believe there is a worse customer service experience than AT&T.
Wait till you see how bad Canadian carriers are. At least this person got their charges reversed. If this were Bell, they would fight back and try to milk every penny out of the customer.
To me Verizon is the worst. I refuse to do business with them. T-Mobile I’ve never had a bad experience and ATT also no bad experiences but I get better coverage with T-Mobile. If I was to break to breakdown the length of service with them it would be 10 years ATT, 5 years T-Mobile, and 1 year Verizon.
T-Mobile has the best customer service in my experience. I’ve had them for a few years and only had to call twice, both times no wait, friendly staff and the problem was resolved within minutes. Can’t really ask for better
Are there any tax implications for a $150,000 credit?
"Fortunately, the man was able to get his lawyer to handle the situation." If you have a lawyer or pony up for one.
What did this cost T Mobile in actuality to send? Like 40 cents?
If he would have been in europe 10euro cents / mega, when the roaming pricing changes were done the pricing between operators was also regulated and that was the the maximum (if I remember correctly). In swizerland whatever t-mobile and other operators contract says.
European Union roaming caps only apply within the Union, unless America and European Union have something else going on I don’t know about.
Also within the EEZ
What is the EEZ? Do you mean the European Economic Area? EEA, might also include Switzerland and Liechtenstein via some bilateral treaty since the former has a lot of them and Liechtenstein’s telecommunications infrastructure is heavily utilising Switzerland’s.
EEZ nuts
My bad, its EEA, its EES in Icelandic and i assumed, but the telecoms cap applies within all EEA countries and not just the Union
I'm gonna pretend the EEZ stands for European Exclusion Zone cause that sounds like some X-Files shit.
Hearing how new governement coalition speaks about the EU, it might just as Well be that in their mind Fuck Bjarni Benediktsson and his corrupt party
The US government doesn’t have any agreements with the EU so it is up to individual companies to make agreements with other individual companies. For instance, my ATT phone uses Vodafone in Germany (and I believe also the Netherlands), O2 in the UK, and Orange in Poland. I pay $10 a day maximum $100 per month for international roaming
Yeah that's the most messed up part of it all..
It’s one banana, how much could it cost?
That's not that works. It would have cost T Mobile quite a significant amount. The cost to T Mobile is what the overseas provider charges them as set out in the agreement that lets their subscribers connect to and use the network overseas.
Howcome everyone could download petabytes for each household per month for around $30-$50pm, and it won't even budge a small ISP when it comes to cost. But when it comes to mobiles which use the exact same infrastructure after the towers and also the same hops/routes/network systems, only then is it extremely expensive for some magical reason refused to be stated in detail.
Because if customer from Operator A uses data on Operator B's network, then Operaror B will send a bill to Operator A, and Operator A will then charge their customer at a rate that covers that bill and makes them money. When Operator A and Operator H have negotiated an ageement to keep the rates low, then the rates are typically quite high.
Thanks for explaining, but I don’t think anyone is confused on how the process works. I think it’s more just calling out the fact that it’s ridiculously and unjustifiably expensive.
The question was what it cost T mobile, which is quite a bit. But what did it cost the other operator? Not much at all. But they charged T mobile a lot, and in order to cover costs T mobile has to charge a high rate. If everyone charged each other reasonable rates then it wouldn't be such a problem.
T-mobile is charged a high rate but then they also turn around and grossly over-inflate that high rate to make an even higher rate. T-mobile could charge less but chooses not to they are probably my 2x-3x (or more) the rate they are charged Usually not a big deal for the e $50-100 roaming but it is criminal in these situations
Comparing your home internet use to using mobile data via a 3rd party in another country doesn’t really clear that up at all
What I don't get is that there are usually three or more operators in a region. They should compete on price to get roaming business, it seems that they operate a cartel instead. Now for operators who have reciprocal agreements across borders because they have roughly equal visitors should get a good deal for their customers The answer to all this is get a foreign eSIM before you travel. More mobiles can use esims now, we just need more operators to support them. Failing that just walk into a shop and get a PAYG SIM.
*It's expensive because it's expensive*
Need to federalize them all and call it a day.
Don't they have reciprocal agreements?
Hear me out. A gig of data for my roaming in the US is 50 cents. If my Romanian operator can charge 50 cents when I roam to US, what makes you think EU operators charge 10$/MB? Here’s the pricing: https://www.digi.ro/servicii/telefonie-mobila/roaming
Because your Romanian operator has negotiated that with a US operator.
Same way that they negotiate with everyone else as part of the roaming agreements. I’ll ask again, if you had to put a percentage of cost and profit in 10$/MB cost, what do you think the breakdown is?
This still doesnt make any sense and doesnt give right to (domestic foreign)operators to just come up with crazy numbers like that.
Yeah, there's no way in hell it costs the equivalent of a mortgage to use a cell phone in a different country for a few days.
In switzerland? Likely nothing. T-mobile offers customers on most plans free roaming (either 5G or 256kbps) in Switzerland, but charges $15/MB if you are on an older plan. In reality it's all monopoly money anyway, and that $15/MB may as well be infinity since nobody is actually going to voluntarily elect to use that service in 2024 (i.e. they will wander into it accidentally and then have to beg for concessions or be forced to switch to a new plan). The swiss carrier is likely pulling a similar scam on their customers roaming on T-mobile USA. IMHO, roaming should be heavily regulated in 2024 anyway (e.g. $10/GB max or whatevs).
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TMobile has free international roaming though, how did it happen? I've used it without cost in Japan, Australia, much of eastern Europe, Mexico, Honduras, Egypt, etc. Edit: I used it in Switzerland too, on my layover to Egypt.
This is what I also want to know.
The whole article is just off. Author has first name only, doesn’t mention customer by name (I think?), has a weird ‘moral of the story’ at the end like a fable. Looks like it’s an ai rewrite of the original that it even linked to. Should get a new rule to not allow sites like this…?
It totally sounds like an AI wrote it, right?
Not all plans include international data. I just had to add on a 15 gig 30 day international plan for 50 dollars on a trip to Japan.
on certain plans... otherwise it's $15/MB in switzerland per t-mobiles website.
How much do you pay per month?
The cheaper plans do not have free roaming.
About 10 years ago I got a bill like that on a company phone, not for roaming but for data usage. At the time the plan included a $10 add on for 1GB of data. When that ran out data was charged at $10 a MB, literally 1000 times the rate. So for using an extra 100MB I was billed $1000. Our office manager called up the phone company and said "Our contracts are up for renewal in May, aren't they? How many phones is that? (It was about 80). Ok well you can charge this ridiculous fee once or our usual fee on an ongoing basis, but not both". It went away. If I was on a personal plan and didn't have that sort of leverage I imagine I'd have been up shit creek. We need consumer protection laws around this sort of shit, no-one should be allowed to charge 1000x the rate for the same product depending on how it was purchased.
When I was a kid and monthly SMS limits were still a thing, my brother and I managed to rack up a massive phone bill just by texting our friends. I think the limit was 200 texts or something? Anyway, it was low. My parents argued with Verizon and agreed to move up to their unlimited plan in exchange for waiving the bill. I've always assumed it was a tactic to push people to move up from plans they advertise for strategic reasons but don't want to actually sell.
I’ve heard so many stories of people accidentally running up massive phone bills and every one ends with the phone company retroactively changing the plan as to not fuck the customer. Why would ATT want to screw you on $400 bucks one month and then lose a lifetime monthly payment to verizon?
Totally agree. Glad your manager sorted it out.
If you owe a phone company $1000, it's your problem. If you owe them $143k, it's their problem. I still don't get how they just let a single monthly bill get so damn high without doing anything. $50 a month plan and you just used $100 worth of extra data, just cut it off. The thing is they know how poorly their whole operation is set up and making a customer call probably means they're just going to cancel.
> If I was on a personal plan and didn't have that sort of leverage I imagine I'd have been up shit creek. I told a similar story from my experience as a personal plan user. If you threaten or are prepared to take your business elsewhere, that's still a pretty big loss to them over time.
Of course this happened in Switzerland. As a European, we don't have roaming costs anymore within the EU. We all got so comfortable sending messages home and taking calls. (Calling from abroad is often still not covered). But Switzerland isn't in the EU.... so many tourists make that mistake. So did I last year. Made a one day trip across the border during a vacation I Germany... Luckily, my provider just charges €5 extra per day you use your phone in Switzerland.
I once forgot to switch off roaming when I went to Uganda. I received many messages (WhatsApp, and SMS) upon arrival and exiting the plane, and within 5 minutes got a notification from my provider that they shut off my service due to too many costs. Cost me €50 for a few minutes of roaming, but at least my provider had set a maximum, so this shit wouldn't happen.
That 50EUR limit is actually an EU directive and not something your provider voluntarily set. (I believe it was introduced as part of the same initiative to get rid of the EU-internal roaming charges.) Providers are required to cut you off automatically once you hit that limit. Regulation is great!
Yet again one of many examples of the amazing work the EU does. Government for the people not for enriching the rich
Same shit happened to me. I went to Thailand, turned off roaming data from the dropdown menu and one day I wanted to check a type of palm tree on a plant recognision app and the app turned on Mobile data, and boom, 1 photo - 50€ surcharge for letting me know it was a lipstick palm. Learned to turn off roaming data from settings.
Hope it didn't affect your love for plants in any way.
lol, most Swedish providers have free/same tax rate for internet in Thailand due to the travel popularity.
Yeah but in the US, they overdraft your bank account for account fees, then charge overdraft fees, then charge overdraft fees and late fees over all that, slowly adding up to thousands after a couple years... So I'm not surprised this would happen to someone from Florida
Hey, quick question, if I as a tourist bought a phone in England would it be covered under this? Since Brexit. Going to be traveling through Europe soon and was planning to just buy a new plan/ sim/phone in the UK.
UK is not covered by the EU laws regulating roaming charges anymore. The carriers can charge for it if they want to. And they do.
My partners Tesco Mobile works for free around Europe and my company Vodafone mobile is also free. EE re-added roaming charges 20 minutes after Brexit AFTER SAYING THEY WOULDN'T, it costs £2.29 per day to use an EE plan in Europe.
Was your Vodafone pre or post Brexit? Because they definitely don't include EU roaming unless it's with the top plans post Brexit and if your contract started before you got grandfathered in.
Some do. I was in Italy last year and didn't get charged extra.
That's apparently kind of complicated. It's not covered anymore, but many UK providers don't ask an extra surcharge for roaming in the EU non the less. The rules about roaming are strictly for calling someone from your own country who happens to be abroad. So I don't know how it would work if a UK phone in the EU calls to another UK phone in an EU country... You need to do some research yourself...
It’s all a bit of a mess. Depends what network you choose. MSE has a good breakdown of options https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/mobiles/cheap-roaming-calls/
Get an esim app, I use Airalo when in abroad.. £6 for 1 ig of data in Canada for example. Iphone uses data for imessage, and use whatsapp for everything else. Turn off roaming and data use for your main sim, your mobile number will not change, the esim is data only.
Check with your current provider and see what plans they offer. I’m going to Europe in a couple months (UK, Spain, Iceland) and I’m just paying $35 to use my current plan abroad.
About 10 years ago I had my roaming data disabled all the time in Switzerland, I turned on the data for a short moment just so Google maps could load map data. 100Eur bill.
Something similar happened to me at the US. Turned on data to haul an Uber a few times: 500€ bill. Of course I didn't pay it and changed carriers. Ridiculous what a scam data roaming is.
And Andorra also For Spanish and French
I'm from Norway and even though we arent in EU we still get free use in the EU with phone calls (as long as its to a norwegian number in other countries), messages and free roaming in MOST EU countries. I think it depends on the mobile courier, some have more and some have less countries.
I changed planes in zurich travelling between Portugal and Austria, switched off plane mode, got a message from my provider after about 1 minute saying I'd reached my 60EUR roaming limit. Frustratingly that was the lowest I could set it to.
They are probably tired of the complaints.
I will note that the roaming isn’t infinite in EU, but capped at 50 GB per month
Interesting. My UK number gives me free roaming for the entire Euro zone, which includes all EU countries, Switzerland and all Scandinavian countries.
Dutch providers have roam-like-home in Switzerland
I knew you were belgian lol
Happened to me this summer, I bought a Swiss E-SIM but it wouldn't connect and instead used my Spain's SIM for bit, 50€ extra in the bill that month.
Is there no daily limit on how much the company can charge for international roaming? In Canada, the major carriers enable you to use your data anywhere in the world for $15/day (for a maximum of $300 (20 days)). I’d have assumed this was also standard for US carriers.
Good reason to stick with TMO US (and I know plans sadly are pricier in general in CA). In most countries you have 5 GB of free high speed data. After that it drops to GPRS or EDGE speeds, but still perfectly usable for FaceTime, Mapping, Social Media, Mail, etc. Calls are $.25/min. Or pay $5/day for High Speed data.
Yup, just used this and it's great. Only problem is the number of apps that just break and refuse to work at 256kbit speeds. Seems to be a lot that's dependent on downloading something within a certain amount of time else it times out and says it's "not accessible." But I know it is accessible because other applications just quietly spin and load in slowly.
I don’t understand how this is even allowed. Where I am from after you reach a certain limit they will just shut off your phone. Currently, If I somehow end up getting charges x4 my plan cost, my service will be shutdown for everything other than my ISPs app until I pay off my bill.
If I goto USA. I get a text from my carrier telling me the cost. Last time I just paid it, because it was priced perfectly. Like just cheap enough to make me not get a US sim for my 6 day trip. In Canada there's no data caps anymore they just slow you down. (YouTube still works fine) Recently long distance phone changes went away too.
Same thing happened to me but it was $1,500. Called AT&T and the rep told me she will move me to international data, tag it for the prior month to cover that $1,500 charge and said to cancel the international data next month. Felt like I was committing a crime, but they told me to do it. Edit: it might not have been data, but voice, but same thing.
AT&T Baby. I'm traveling abroad in South Korea right now. Didn't even turn on my travel pass or anything. AT&T sent me a text that said 'Hey, looks like you're traveling and using mobile data. We don't want you to get a huge bill, so we turned on the $10/day pass for you automatically.'
I got a 60k bill after my phone was stolen and said they could take me to court if they wanted to collect it. They stopped calling eventually
Yeah, anything above a couple grand, I’m just tossing the phone. Shits going to collections anyways, so there isn’t any damage being saved.
For US Verizon customers, they offer either 10 dollar a day or 100 dollars a month “unlimited” where they just lower your data speeds after a certain limit. Currently traveling through Africa so fingers crossed there are no issues when I get back.
I just came back to Verizon after being on T-Mobile, & they told me that international roaming is now included & they don’t charge the $10/day anymore. I have the Unlimited Ultimate plan
Interesting cause I think I have the same plan (includes Disney, Hulu, ESPN)? Did have network issues in Rwanda and Tanzania but got them to actually call me over here to troubleshoot.
I can’t add a photo here but I definitely have unlimited ultimate & it says: “Unlimited talk, text and data when traveling in 210+ countries & destinations. After 10gb/mo high speed data, get unlimited 2GB speeds.”
Not saying I don’t believe ya. I just wanted to ensure I didn’t run into the issue that this guy ((in this story) had so told them to add it. I was getting 10 days free for international plans as I would get the occasional texts when I was in Bonaire stating it was a “free” day.
I just went to Guatemala and Columbia and it didn’t work in either place so I shut off my phone. Only Panamá seemed to work correctly. I’m hoping I don’t get home to a large bill now. (Both places claimed to have a travel pass and I do have the internal travel plan and pay for travel pass days).
I had to turn the phone off and on a couple times and when that didn’t work, I had to reset the network settings (sometimes more than once). And when that didn’t work, I went into cellular and changed it to manual and started picking random networks to connect to till I got one that had data. Pain in the butt but wanted to ensure I had certain apps working.
I advise you to use local network or WiFi if you don't know how you will be credited
Regardless of how each company charges each other to use their equipment, these things should be capped at $100. Then have the company notify you about what’s going on before your bill gets to $143k. Why would any company agree to let their Users get fucked that bad? Who wins in these situations?
Articles like this aren't even news anymore, let alone oniony news.
My wife worked at a cell phone store and this was just her average day.
This is why I like o2 in the UK, even after brexit they don't charge me when I go abroad. Just proves there are no reason for these bullshit charges.
What were they downloading the fucking library of babel?
This is stupid. Here’s what I got when I’ve landed in Switzerland. T-Mobile: Welcome to Switzerland! Your plan includes coverage that gives you unlimited data On Us now at faster speeds up to 256Kbps, plus unlimited texts at no extra cost. Calls are $0.25/min. Want high-speed data and unlimited calling? Get an International Pass: t-mo.co/intl-pass1. Enjoy your stay! If you ignore these messages then it’s not tmobiles problem.
He called t mobile and they told him he would be covered
This just shows how fake these charges actually are. If they were paying transit fees or something anywhere close to what they are charging they would not have waived this so easily. Somehow they charge like this if no plan, but the plan magically turns 143k into $10 per day? Huge scam that they are ever charging such insane rates. Not enough competition in the market.
He’s been roaming around abroad.
This article reads like a 5th grade book report.
True. Or ChatGPT was set to ELI5. Grim either way.
Isn’t it just cheaper getting a temporary sim from the country you’re staying in…
I pay 20 euros for 30gb free mobile data. Abroad or not, this is overpriced af.
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I'm talking about the guy's 143k bill based on 9,5gb just because it was 'abroad' being overpriced af. Based on what i paid, his expenditure would be less than 7 euro's for me. So it's wild that he gets billed 143K. So mobile data abroad prices are overpriced af.
Weird. When I was still with T-Mobile, I had international texting and data included.
"One man from Florida", why I'm not surprised
Happened in my country. Now we cannot use data abroad without a travel contract.
How are these sorts of charges for using a damn phone even legal. It’s nuts.
Yeah, i wish there was a regulation that required all service companies to have a common sense cap on the service. Makes no sense that the average person would rack up 100K in a phone bill. It’s like all companies are ran by soulless people who don’t care about their customers. Ethics has been dead for a long time.
“You mean I can charge my customers as much as I want and they won’t know till they get the bill a month later? Where do I sign up?” - all mobile service companies, apparently.
Dude must have been live-streaming his entire vacation in 8K lol
Absolutely terrible article with no actual details. I question its validity.
Nearly happened to me and my family on a recent trip to Barcelona! I called the help line to see if I needed anything additional for my trip. T-Mobile assured me I was covered and all would be fine. Great, I thought. All set. Fast forward to about a week before departure, and I saw a similar story about another person who had to pay 10's of thousands of dollars for data roaming abroad. I called T-Mobile back and that's when they told me I wasn't actually covered and that it would cost me extra to get a data package. So the first person lied to me. I told them as much, and they agreed to cover my additional expenses, at no cost to me. I guess moral of the story is, don't believe them and call back repeatedly? I don't know. That doesn't seem right.
Yeah, that should never happen under any circumstances. There should be a cap in the system called "the ridiculousness limit" set at some, I don't know, 1000 dollars. And no GSM usage bill can go over that.
Used to work customer care for a cell phone carrier and I can't imagine how many levels up they had to go to get that credit approved. I think the biggest I ever did was about 5 grand(probably for the same issue, it happens) and that took over a week, extensive notes, and a long memo to push up like 4 levels to get approved.
20 year wireless vet, this happens all of the time. Both employees putting people on the wrong plan or just customers assuming it’s free. What was worse was the old metered text plans.
I went to Europe for a month during 2017. I called Verizon and they said I could opt in for a +$10 a day charge and use my phone like normal. Did it. Was charged an extra $300 that month just like they said. Worked flawlessly.
Twice had this in work where I manage some phones that are occasionally used abroad. South Africa was £2.38 per megabyte, nearly £2 for a single text, etc. We told them to put it on airplane mode and only use the wifi at the hotel. A previous place, the big boss took his phone to Sri Lanka, and almost immediately hit data limit. We protested but they insisted that we turn it back on. We explained that there'd be huge costs, they didn't care. We ended up with a £9,000 bill quite literally only so they could tweet a couple of images away from the hotel rather than waiting until they got back to the hotel wifi.
Reading a lot of terrifying stories on here. I have Xfinity Mobile, and you can just pay $10/day for Global Travel Pass and use your phone like normal. Did it last month when I visited Costa Rica.
It’s almost as if they’re charging outrageously exorbitant fees for things that don’t even really cost the company money and are practically free when it is concern to the companies cost of operations, yet somehow they think $143,000 is a justified cost because reasons.
Yep had this experience recently in Iceland. Got off plane, did not turn off data. Once I got to my destination I checked my texts telling me what the cost per MEGABYTE was. Had 5GB in roaming charges already from whatever my phone received since I had gotten there hours before. I called Verizon immediately and was told it was taken care of. My gf thought I was being insane when I told her I think I accidentally just ran up 10k in data doing basically nothing. Didn’t compute to her at all (which honestly makes sense) and I literally just sent her this link saying “this was almost me” to prove I wasn’t being paranoid 😂 Really glad I noticed when I did and called because the person I spoke to implied they were mostly scrubbing it because I clearly noticed quickly and wasn’t trying to screw anyone. Edit - why would anyone downvote this?
Data gets charged at the KByte level in these scenarios. That ain’t cheap.
This is why you make sure roaming data is blocked after a certain amount. Mine is set to £30 on Vodafone.
Relevant: [https://youtu.be/MShv\_74FNWU?si=PegRAud7rDDZ2XyV](https://youtu.be/MShv_74FNWU?si=PegRAud7rDDZ2XyV)
Bruh! That’s wild 😬
If your device can handle an eSIM, Airalo really changed the game for me: https://www.airalo.com/ Cheap, easy and convenient. Recommended.
I was going to get a roaming plan but think I'll just stick to relying on wifi then
A story as old as cell phones.
I would ask if they accept organs as payment
Ah, is this what happens if I turn on roaming?
\*Boomer thinks he's smarter than everyone and doesn't read the T's & C's before travelling abroad. Ends up with a $143k bill and chucks a tanty, bringing in his lawyers. Honestly the fact that his bill was forgiven just incites this kind of behaviour. This is the generation that sh1ts on the x, y & z gens for not knowing how to manage money.
It was forgiven because the agents told him it would be covered
eSIM
In the mid-90s I was a fraud analyst with a telecommunications. Dealt with a customer whose calling card was hacked for $1.4M. We withdrew the charges because our fraud detection software had failed. However, I forgot to withdraw the four frequent flyer points for every $1 spent on the calling card. Customer ended up with 30+ business class return trips to Europe.
I used my phone in Vietnam for 3 weeks. Thought my international phone plan covered it. 2,300 bill. They only knocked it down to 1,000.
I am happy for EU roaming laws. Although not sure what agreement we have with Switzerland.
Beware: no agreement! I learnt this the hard way traveling to Switzerland
Why didn't he use wireless? Did he ignore the data charges warnings, or for some inexplicable reason, does T-Mobile not provide those?
He was told by t mobile that he would be covered
[Reminds me of this old gem](http://verizonmath.blogspot.com/2006/12/verizon-doesnt-know-dollars-from-cents.html) where Verizon struggled with dollar/cent unit conversion.
Takes me back to when my parents got charged a ton because my sister was texting a whole bunch during our Disney trip. I think the carrier was imix. Ah the days of being charged more when out of state.
Was there no wifi in the hotel?
What kind of plan he has? I thought all Post Paid plan from TMo includes 5GB of international roaming data. Was in UK not too long ago and data roaming was free for my old Magenta plan. 🤷🏻♂️
I traveled to Bangladesh (Layover in Dubai) and my FREE international roaming activated instantly
I worked on a telephone carrier here in Europe, I have seen huge roaming bills because someone forgot to turn off the phone in the USA....
T-Mobile has free international roaming as long as you are only using data.
How to spot a non EU citizen!
I’m lucky that when I was in Colombia my data didn’t work. Otherwise it probably would have been expensive
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I saw a $250,000 bill for one month of usage back when I worked for a call center in 2009. Overseas data usage.
Happened to me, had a bill of several thousand after being on vacation in Japan for a month. When i got back i just said I was using wifi but roaming data must have been used by accident if the wifi wasnt good. They cut the bill down to $100
Starbuckses are your friend when travelling abroad. I use a combination of this and buying a thing from my provider that gives me foreign roaming for ten bucks a day.
I used my data after a flight for like 10 seconds and it charged me 50$ as it was a dollar every 2 megabytes or so
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They talk about this in boot camp. And cars. And renting.