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AT&T Slaps Family With a $19,370 Cell Phone Bill
theodp writes "Mama, don't let your babies send e-mail and photos from Vancouver. A Portland family racked up nearly $20,000 in charges on their AT&T bill after their son headed north to Vancouver and used a laptop with an AirCard twenty-one times to send photos and e-mails back home. The family said they wished they would have received some kind of warning before receiving their chock-full-of-international-fees 200-page bill in the mail for $19,370. Guess they didn't read the fine print in that 'Stay connected whether you are traveling across town, the US, or the world' AT&T AirCard pitch. Hey, at least it wasn't $85,000."
And this is tagged "apple" why?
This is not about an iPhone just because it's about AT&T.
You charged me exactly what it said in the contract I signed said you would! How dare you.
I would think that in the interests of PR, AT&T might send you a text or something when you go international roaming and pass some threshold of use, just to warn you. But really, if you pay extra to call Canada long distance, don't you think your cell phone/data card would work the same way?
11 was a racehorse
12 was 12
1111 Race
12112
Some people here will undoubtedly react in this topic, saying that this family "brought it onto themselves" or "should have read this or that".
I'm saying I'm disgusted, utterly disgusted how these companies treat their customers. Why isn't there a procedure in place that calls the customer upon reaching some limit like $500 or $1000 and warns them?
Why not? I'll tell you why. Because this is how the world works. But I'm still disgusted.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
You know AT&T is going to abuse the rules. Bring along some CDs to burn and mail home next time.
This sort of thing has been going on for decades with cell phones and roaming. It is all too easy to get hosed by unexpected charges. They really should be forced to inform you anytime the fees on a call will exceed 10 times your normal per minute fee BEFORE connecting the call or in this case Internet connection.
Democrat delenda est
The branding "Aircard" is close enough to "Airport" some readers may assume it refers to Apple equipment instead of stuff manufactured by Sierra Wireless.
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Are we suppose to be outraged or amused? I really don't see the point in this story aside from maybe a cautionary tale.
Slow news day, I guess.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Too bad that our FCC does NOT require reasonable access and reasonable charges on OUR public airwaves.
Instead, the FCC whores out our frequencies for billions of dollars, and we then get re-charged for using those frequencies. What a crock of shit.
Question: How much did the roaming agreement with that "roaming carrier" cost AT&T? 10$? 100$? ... Free (peering agreement)?
The iPhone, at least, has a "Disable Data Roaming" option... of course, they probably had that clue shoved down their throats by Apple. :)
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
You charged me exactly what it said in the contract I signed said you would! How dare you.
I expect that in a world where most either read their contracts in great detail (and are sufficiently educated to understand the ramifications) or refused to sign anything that took them more than a minute to read, this would work out great. I'm not sure which plan you're advocating, though, and I expect either plan would actually impede carrier sales.
I would think that in the interests of PR, AT&T might send you a text or something when you go international roaming and pass some threshold of use, just to warn you. But really, if you pay extra to call Canada long distance, don't you think your cell phone/data card would work the same way?
I think the particularly telling piece of information is that if you want a plan where they do limit your charges and notify you when you reach thresholds.... you have to pay extra. They're called prepaid plans, and there are no surprises (well, within limits), but for common use cases, it's guaranteed you'll pay 2-4 times the amount a customer on a given rate plan will.
Why the cell phone companies can't combine the limits on prepaid plans with conventional rate plans is an interesting question, but I suspect the answer is not a technical limitation.
Tweet, tweet.
The AirCard allows users to connect to e-mail, the Internet and business applications while traveling, according to AT&T's Web site. On the Terry family's bill, they were charged international fees for the service.
The Terry family said they asked an AT&T employee about the service before their son left the country. They said they were told nothing about international fees.
Did they even ask about international fees?
From the AT&T website about their plan.
So figure, $20k @ 1.5 cents a KB he transfered about a Gig. Looking at the video some of the sessions were a few hundred megs so I really can't find AT&T all that much at fault here that they didn't check the rates.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Roaming in other countries is not automactially enabled on the phones. Including Canada. You have to call and request it. The rep will try and sell you an add on plan that will make it less expensive while you are there, for calls or data, and then when you refuse they note they account. For when situations like this happen. Most people will not pay an extra ten bucks to cut the costs into 1/10 and figure they will only minimally use the phone. This always happens with kids. Kids figure they are home, and use the phone, and data card, like they are sitting in the computer room. You know what, send the pics when you get home, internet cafes are cheap, and the last thing i do when i am away from home is surf the web
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
My family was one of the many caught up in the original AT&T / Cingular Merger, and promptly quit them after we found out we couldn't add my little brother onto our current (read: old AT&T) cell plan (which was $20 per phone per month) unless the entire family got whole new phones and went on a new two-year contract.
Well, we did... with T-mobile.
Fast forward to now and almost the entire family has upgraded their phones since -- only one person at a time as opposed to en masse -- and my sister and I are happy as clams with Sidekicks, and even when I traveled to Canada, it never got nuts like this. (In fact, the one thing my boyfriend likes about T-mobile is that when he was traipsing all over Europe, you couldn't swing a charge cable around without hitting a T-mobile tower, so be enjoyed as-good-as-home data service!)
So... yeah, not surprised.
Does anyone know what usually happens in these obscene roaming charge situations? Do they eventually get settled, or are victims mostly forced to file for bankruptcy?
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
I guess that about 30% of the carriers' revenue in US are such 'oh shit' charges (on a lesser scale, of course).
throw new SuccessException("Sig read successfully");
If you think that AT&T has ever been above charging a family $19,370 in their phone bill without blinking an eye, you obviously don't know AT&T or any other telecom carrier for that matter. My father-in-law got a similar bill years ago that came in a box, and I've seen one recently at work.
What an idiotic comment. There is simply no way any company of any kind should be permitted to commit $20,000 of service to an ordinary consumer, without so much as a phone call to confirm the charges.
The fact that you have this profoundly unhelpful attitude and WORKED FOR THE COMPANY speaks volumes about the attitudes that have developed within telecom industries, in my opinion. I hope your job got outsourced since it sounds like you would have provided the same level of service.
No cell phone bill should have a price structure that allows it to get that high in the first place. Talk about rapage.
The government should require these companies to offer its customers the ability to set a hard cap on monthly fees. Families with teenage kids should not live in fear of huge bills, nor should people who travel have to fear such ridiculously expensive prices.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Why can't mobile phones (& GPRS modem software for that matter) have the ability to pre-warn you how much the call is going to cost per minute before you press the dial button?
When you buy a product from a bricks'n'mortar or online store you're told up-front how much it's going to cost before you get out your cash/credit card/PayPal password
But not with mobile phones, usually you're either told just after the call ends how much credit you have left on your pay-as-you-go account or at the end of the month when your contract bill arrives in the post.
To do something right, you often have to roll up your sleeves and get busy.
Why is it that it's always AT&T that is in the news for the astronomic bills? I can't recall the last time I heard Verizon gouging their customers. If odds are supposed to show how often people make mistakes like this, AT&T charges $85,000, $20,000, and that guy got charged (IIRC) $4,000 for having his iPhone off while on a cruise ship in the Atlantic, mind you never Virgin, Sprint, or anyone else.
I think AT&T lives on gouging their customers, I never hear the story about how AT&T is helping their customers with bills, or something else like it.
I'm disgusted also. With this particular story, they brought it on themselves by trying to use a U.S.-based company for a data service in another country. But if the family usually got a bill in a certain range (the range being a few hundred at most), AT&T should have realized *something* out of the ordinary was happening and the bill was skyrocketing past a certain point. As for the man with the $85,000 bill in the link above... if he plugged that phone into a laptop and used it as such (unless there was a data rate plan does not apply if phone is used as a modem type clause in contract), he should have had lawyers all over that.
"The best way to accelerate a Macintosh is at 9.8m/sec^2" -Marcus Dolengo
Isn't there a common law rule about contracts that "unconscionable" clauses are not enforceable? There is no way a sane person would agree to purchase services at these prices or anticipate this level of charges. It's like ordering "a bottle of red" at The Olive Garden and getting a rare 1940 barolo priced at $20,000.
Every one of these stories eventually ends with, "And the cellular carrier has issued credits to lower their bill to $1000."
So what's the big deal?
I do agree, however, that companies should at least send a text message or email whenever your monthly bill starts to reach double its normal amount. It might even be in their interest to do that, too, by using that as a way to sell more plans and lower complaints to customer service.
-David
This is a situation that both parties are at fault. The customer should have known that international travel should bring up some type of addition fee's or restriction. 2nd If customer was unsure he should have called to ind out what his plan covered and what would be additional.
AT@T is also to blame by allowing a customer's bill to get to such a insane amount. There should be some type of safety in place as your service is shut off after X amount of dollars (Like Spirnt does) or a phone call to notify the customer.
But as a few people have said, businesses are just here to make money, not to be responsible or caring about their customers.
From TFA:
The Terry family said they asked an AT&T employee about the service before their son left the country. They said they were told nothing about international fees.
Dave Terry also said they were never contacted by the company to be alerted of the high fees.
And I fixed your comment title for you :)
they would NEVER get that kind payment from me, i would start tossing bills in the trash if they got over 200 dollars, i know not everyone can get away with it but i can...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I.... I think I've just seen God.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Ridiculous, but expected from this, the worst company ever. Why people continue to use them is inexplicable.
AT&T is no longer the old AT&T, because the name was sold to SBC. My understanding is that the SBC trademark was worse than useless because the company is so abusive. So, the managers decided to use another name.
Those interested in how that happened can watch Stephen Colbert explain in a 1 minute 14 second video: The New AT&T.
... that the mobile carriers could save themselves a great deal of grief if they provided a fact sheet to their data subscribers. Sure, the contract said $0.019 per KB, but most people have no idea what that means. Now, if they handed them a sheet like the following:
...
Here are some typical charges at $0.019/KB
1 email would cost about $0.02 to send or receive
1 web page would cost about $0.20 to display
1 3.2 megapixel picture would cost $6 to send
1 10 megapixel picture would cost $20 to send
1 minute of DV video would cost $5200 to send
In other words, express the charges in terms of something they can understand. I'm sure if this family was given a fee schedule like this they would have suggested that their son not send home the pictures.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
Yes, because everyone needs to be treated like a two year-old. No, we can't expect people to act like adults and be responsible for their own actions.
Real grown-up responsibility has more than a watch-out-for-yourself component. There's both an individual and a social component.
And a reasonably convincing case to be made that among others, most cell carriers don't take enough responsibility in helping people signing contracts understand the whole thing. Or that a reasonable person would find it highly surprising there are corners of the covered terms of service which if you wander into can subject you to fees 2-3 orders of magnitude larger than your conventional bill.
Think about it this way: when the people in question got the data service, do you really think they *never* asked what the service cost? It's highly unlikely. What is highly likely is that they asked, got the standard answer about the most common usage, and were simply not informed about the additional usage fees. They took an incomplete answer as a complete one.
You can argue that the contract is a complete answer, but here we have a problem: contracts are not intended to be effective vehicles for communicating terms of agreement to consumers, they're designed to be effective vehicles for specifying terms to the legal machinery. If you want to argue that the contract is the answer, you may as well argue the source code of a piece of software serves as a FAQ or Manual.
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Then at 0.15cents, it should be 10x what you said, or 10G... unless he was doing some heavy torrenting, I doubt that adds up. 1Gb itself is quite a bit of data for an aircard/evdo thing to do, as slow as they are. And with only 21 uses of it, thats a good bit of data: ~51Mb per session avg., which with normal speeds around 200k, ~25KB/s, would be 34Mins of constant full bandwidth usage per session, 12Hrs total, but probably 3-4x or more that time realistically.
Granted, I do not agree that its "AT&T's responsibility" to notify them that the card is seeing usage, but it probably is in AT&T's best interest to avoid problems like this, or what the family suggested: stolen card.
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There needs to be an option in any utility plan that after a customer specified amount is reached they have to call to verify that they are aware that they are going over what they specified. There would not be any reason for these multi-thousand dollar bills if such a system was in place. My credit card company called me once when I spent more than usual to verify that it really was me making the purchases and that I was aware I was way over my normal pattern of monthly spending. This was before I had even reached my limit.
AT&T charging 'international' rates for data transfers between Portland and Vancouver is as silly as restaurants in my city in the Southern US calling Corona an 'import' and charging twice as much for it, even though it costs no more to ship it here by the trailer-load than do the 'domestic' beers from Milwaukee, and is one of the cheapest beers on the shelf in my local supermarket.
Others who remember this also read Slashdot... At a previous company I worked at a 19,000 page bill was received for a test device. This device sent an SMS Test message every 5 minutes. The bill came in and actually itemized every single SMS message(which was free).
The Bill: 65 bucks, arrived via UPS and the carrier was ATT. Don't ever expect this company to do the right thing(notify you of your monster bill).
I thought cell phones ran credit checks... don't customers have a credit limit like a credit card would have? Why are the telcos allowing such huge overages over what plan you are credit approved for? They know your credit score and reasonable limit,why are they not following that on these cell plans?
This is like the old-school days when mechanics would have you sign to "fix" your car, then replace the parts with 10x what they costed and huge labor costs then not let you have your car back... in response we passed law saying they had to tell you charges BEFORE work started and return the used parts. Expecting telcos to honor the credit checks they perform should be expected as ethical behavior.
Enjoy that iPhone!
As I've said elsewhere in the thread, expecting contracts to serve as effective communication to the customer is like expecting source code of a program to serve as a FAQ or a manual.
Contracts are not really intended for (nor good at) effective communication of agreement terms to a customer. Especially when drafted entirely by the legal department of one side agreement, their purpose is something else entirely, which is to communicate those terms to the legal system (and, maximize the interests of the side that drafts them under the fullest extent possible under the law).
Tweet, tweet.
If someone slapped me and my family with 200 pages of paper, no matter what is printed on them, I'd be filing assault charges.
This is the kind of thing that should be covered by a user's bill of rights. Fair play and fair thinking in business is something we all have a right to expect. We have lemon laws for cars, and consequently have the right to think we'll be treated fairly by telephone companies. That we often are not is evidence of cause for legal action.
We'll get there, and instances of stupidity like this will push the line in the sand. Think about it, my bank calls me to make sure I really want to spend money on my card if it is outside the norms of my usual activity. Why would phone companies not also do this? ..... exactly.
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I was recently in Europe, and every time I crossed a border I got a (free) text message from ATT, to the effect that I was roaming, paying international rates, and oh-by-the-way we can save you money with a different plan. It was pretty accurate too. I walked from Austria to Germany on a back-woods hiking trail and within 5 minutes I got the text message that I was in Germany.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Why the cell phone companies can't combine the limits on prepaid plans with conventional rate plans is an interesting question, but I suspect the answer is not a technical limitation.
Actually, T-Mobile does. It's called Flexpay, and your service gets cut off (at least for the rest of the billing cycle) when you reach your limit. And they have the same plans that normal postpaid accounts do. You can even buy your phone at full retail price and not even have a contract. You can cancel at any time.
I'm not sure why the other companies do that. I suspect T-Mobile does cause their the little guy, and they need the customers.
How much does it "cost" ATT to pay for that kind of bandwidth? 20 cents? 1 cent? This is theft, grand theft, 20 grand theft - 20 cents for the actual cost of course. On what basis is it justifiable for a corporation to make that kind of profit? Comrade Lenin had it right.
Why don't phones show you, in a clear, unambiguous area on the display (not buried 6 menus deep) exactly how much you will owe on your next bill? Or in the case of prepaid plans, how much is left on the plan? Most companies have a service where you can send a text to a certain number, which you have to remember (and pay for). So, they seem technically able to figure this number out in realtime. Why not show it to you by default?
They should have to pay their phone bill. Seriously. AT&T isn't making any money by charging them roaming to cover their time on Bell Mobility. Bell Mobility is fucking expensive. They should have done their homework. Fuck 'em.
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That was delicious and well written.
Are we complaining that AT&T 'should' do something, or 'it would be courteous' if AT&T did something?
Because it's pretty damn clear that roaming voice is expensive, data is expensive, and roaming data is even more expensive.
Yes, it'd be courteous if they texted you something saying 'you've hit your free limit, we've turned it off for you just in case, but you can reply Y and we'll turn it on for another 5MB' (or something)
Yes, it'd be nice if it wasn't so expensive. However, I have a funny feeling that it's the CA teleco's (Rogers?) setting the price, so not AT&T's fault.
But this is part of having a cellphone plan. I don't really feel bad for this family, if you can't afford roaming data (it's not hidden!) don't use it/turn off your phone. If you can't afford a variable bill in general, they should have gone prepaid.
This is like that guy who bought the $1000 iPhone application because he 'thought it was a joke' until it charged his card... it's pretty clear what stuff costs and you have a choice.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
(In fact, the one thing my boyfriend likes about T-mobile is that when he was traipsing all over Europe, you couldn't swing a charge cable around without hitting a T-mobile tower, so be enjoyed as-good-as-home data service!)
That might have something to do with the fact that T-Mobile is a European carrier, the mobile arm of Germany's Deutsche Telekom.
I'm not sure wich is more frightening...the nearly $20k bill that was 200 pages long, or the fact that AT&T seems to have an envelope to deliver the 200 pages of the bill in.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
I have a prepaid plan with Verizon and I've had it for well over 4 years. I've paid on average $15-$30 per month. I don't know why anyone wouldn't use these plans as it's cheap as hell and as long as you're not some yuppie jaw jacking all day in traffic or at the office("I totally see where Obama is coming from but he doesn't have the experience, and as bad as the republicans are...", "So I tried this new diet and it's just not working for me and I was thinking I'd..."), you don't tear through your minutes. Granted, you can't unlimitedly surf the net with those, but apparently you can't do that with AT&T's non-prepaid plans either. People need to unplug a little bit and this shit won't happen as much.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
I've had calls from my bank's fraud department when they see a spike in, say, clothing purchases at department stores -- because I hardly EVER do that.
If they can call me because charges amounting to less than 10% of what flies in and out of my account roll through over a weekend -- not just because of how much, but because of /where/ -- AT&T sure as hell could flag an account that is fast approaching 50 times normal usage in the space of 24 hours.
It's pretty funny seeing you guys talk about this as if it's a novelty! "Pay as you go" is very common in the UK and has been for at least 8 years. For the levels of usage that I used to have as a student, a contract wasn't worth it - especially as contracts back then only gave you about 100 free texts a month, unless you wanted to pay crazy money.
which is totally what she said
Cell phone companies should provided us with unlimited incoming & outgoing calls. If we all join together this can be done.
Even veals have more autonomy!
Taking your cell phone out of the country? You have three good options:
1. Call your provider and find out what it will cost you. Roaming charges are almost defunct in the USA, but they certainly exist once you are outside of the USA.
2. Keep your phone OFF, and use it only for dire emergencies.
3. Get your phone unlocked (if it is locked), AND buy and use a prepaid SIM card when overseas.
As far as I'm aware, there was never a credit check run on me when I signed up for cell service. I didn't have *any* credit at the time. There was definitely no credit check run when I added four more lines to my plan.
Seriously? You're going to pay $60+ per month on a 2 year contract and NOT read all the text? Are you insane? Anything I sign that costs that much and lasts that long gets fully read.
Please tell me you read the lease on your apartment? Car?
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
When I added four lines to my cell phone account, the salesperson made me listen to the spiel about monthly fees and charges and limits once for every single line, even though I bought them all from the same person and they remembered me. I don't think I can say I wasn't informed of what the fees would be.
On the other hand, a few days ago I got my August bill and it was quite a bit higher than usual. They had charged me for switching my wife's number over from Verizon (the salesperson said it would be free) and they had charged me for half a month's service on two deactivated lines. One call resolved that.
And here's a "protip" for those of you who take advantage of their "upgrade" offers near the end of your contract. They'll charge you an $18 upgrade fee on your next bill. Call them and ask why. They'll give you some nonsense about activating it in the system. At this point, explain how SIM cards work and make sure they understand that swapping a SIM card to a new phone requires exactly zero intervention from them; in fact they don't even need to know about it. Go on to say "If that's your reason, I want a refund for the fee because your reason is a blatant lie." If the person on the other end of the line is anything like the person I talked to, you'll get your $18 back.
But, as always, YMMV.
2-3 orders of magnitude larger?
Let's assume $50/month. 1 order of magnitude larger is $500. 2 is $5,000. 3 is $50,000.
I think you meant 1-2 orders larger.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Exactly. It is definitely not a technical limitation, but designed to enhance profits.
I am always irked when I travel to a new city, spend $60 on my VISA card, and am called 5 minutes later for a "fraud alert" early warning. Or, better yet, dine in a restaurant in another city and have it "declined for my safety" due to unusual activity.
For any of you guys saying "Oh, this is good," remember this is designed to protect the Credit Card company, not you. Almost all cards limit your responsibility to $50 for fraudulent transactions. You can rest assured if you were responsible for your own well being, as in the case outlined, you would not get an early warning. Similarly, there is no financial incentive to do so in the case of AT&T above, who can now harass the customer to pay a huge amount of money, and then look "generous" to let them off with only a couple of hundred dollars in fees.
Slashdotter, ID #101. UIDs are in binary, right?
is unconscionable.
Just because something is in a contract doesn't mean it's enforceable. AT&T got hosed a year ago by a court because the contracts they were giving people said that you couldn't sue them and had to go to binding arbitration as a sole remedy, and you couldn't group disputes as a class action.
This is just more of the same. If I put it in a contract, buried on page 205, in small print, that you owe me your firstborn as part of the deal, no "reasonable person" would sign the contract if it was stated plainly on the first page.
Have you /read/ a cellphone contract lately? I could find an argument that most cell companies use unconscionable terms as a matter of course.
At&T can put in their contract "If you travel, we'll empty your wallet without telling you" but if a court finds that such a clause is unconscionable, it's void.
"Here at the Phone Company we handle eighty-four billion calls a year. Serving everyone from presidents and kings to scum of the earth. (snort) We realize that every so often you can't get an operator, for no apparent reason your phone goes out of order [snatches plug out of switchboard], or perhaps you get charged for a call you didn't make. We don't care. Watch this [bangs on a switch panel like a cheap piano] just lost Peoria. (snort) You see, this phone system consists of a multibillion-dollar matrix of space-age technology that is so sophisticated, even we can't handle it. But that's your problem, isn't it ? Next time you complain about your phone service, why don't you try using two Dixie cups with a string. We don't care. We don't have to. (snort) We're the Phone Company!" -- Lily Tomlin
--
BMO
You're an idiot too, doubly so for referring people to a B-rated comedian for news. AT&T is a prestigious brand name that dates back more than one hundred years. SBC was the name of one of the baby bells setup by Judge Green during INVOLUNTARY divestiture. You're one of those Millennial kids who don't know who the aggressive parties in WWII were and mindlessly chant "yes we can" without knowing the differences between a Liberal and a Conservative. You get all your news from the Comedy Network. "1 minute and 14 second" Moron!
It is because it isn't costing them the 20 grand if the customer doesn't pay. They do a credit check because they are giving you the loan of the phone, which is paid off over time. Their marginal costs for the 20k worth of service was minuscule (i am guessing pennies) so it isn't necessary to cut the service to prevent a bigger loss. If they pay, great pure profit; if they don't, they are out a couple pennies.
I thought cell phones ran credit checks... don't customers have a credit limit like a credit card would have?
Hmm. A credit card company can earn more money by servicing long term debt. If you pay your balance in full every month, consistently, your credit limit will eventually dwarf your ability to realistically pay.
If the cell phone companies adopted a similar policy, the "limit" would quickly become unrealistic.
"As I've said elsewhere in the thread, expecting contracts to serve as effective communication to the customer is like expecting source code of a program to serve as a FAQ or a manual."
Apparently a man who's never been told RTFM or "but you have the source code".
Cell companies are fascists. Really, you won't convince me otherwise. International roaming charges are joke beyond contempt. How many cell phone companies are there in the world? I bet you could count up all the major Western players on ten fingers and most have a presence of some sort in all countries. So, Orange connecting me to Orange UK instead of Orange Poland shouldn't cost them a cent, or at least not as much as they claim. No wonder the EU stepped in.
Doesn't help me though in the short term though: I live 9km from the Poland/Ukraine border in a fairly large(ish) city. Given the time of day, wind conditions or ennui I often find my phone connecting to a Ukrainian network. The sms telling me about this normally comes a few hours later. So, I'll receive a call and get charged exuberant roaming fees without ever having left the comfort of my home. I dread to think how many organs I'd have to sell if I used the Internet.
So, how about this question, does anyone know of a NICE wireless telecom? Verizon screws you with BREW. Sprint had terrible customer service and voice coverage (I know it's being worked on. I'm sure WIMAX is the answer to everything...) AT&T is... AT&T. Shitty coverage (their map is such a terrible terrible lie) and shitty data (3G coverage is so spotty. My market is just now getting it. Sprint has had it since at least 2002 for 1xRTT and shortly after their EVDO launch it was in my area.) T-Mobile, as of yet, can't be signed up for in all the metropolitan markets (my city of 500,000+ doesn't have T-Mobile. I think it has to do with the FCC. They have towers there, just no area codes.) So there's the big four. Who am I supposed to like? Maybe Verizon once they move to LTE and (hopefully) dump BREW (pretty please?.) I don't mind Sprint since I know how to treat a CSR, but I really do wonder about their long-term viability as a company.
credit check or not I don't belive that the current cellphone roaming system where it is difficult to figure out what roaming from a given network will cost and the default is to automatically roam to any network that will accept the connection regardless of price and then on top of that they make no effort to tell your or let you reduce your credit limit is reasonable.
But none of the telcos have any motivation to change this, screwing a customer out of $20K once is probablly going to make you as much profit as keeping them a customer for life.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
You know that's corporate-speak for "We're looking for a strategy to minimize the negative PR, and make this customer go away."
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Knew this.
Still can't argue with service like that. (If anybody ought to know how to handle international, it's a company that started in a country that has plenty of other nearby countries to deal with)
What a well-thought-out answer. I want this on a crib sheet for whenever someone like GP comes along.
Without a decade spent studying and practicing contract law, good luck understanding any damn contract, esp. in the US where consumer protection is minimal. /designed/ to be unreadable? Even old Perl code is more readable than those things, and if I assume that 99.999% of people can't read Perl, I don't think I'm treating them as 2 year olds.
Seriously, how is the average consumer supposed to understand those documents that are
And seriously, if you like "personal responsability" and big corporations so much, why don't you go have sex with them?
This is just one more example of the evil, deceptive, criminality of Corporate America. It's this kind of behaviour which, in the eyes of the rest-of-the-world, has branded the United States as the Ultimate Satan. That's unfortunate in the extreme because I am certain that it is only a relatively small number of "Evil Axis" entities which behave in this way, and the vast majority of the American People lead moral lives. However, it's that evil minority which has created the label.
Many of us who are not inhabitants of the US sincerely hope that November will bring the beginning of a long period of fundamental change which will cause us to actually want to welcome the Prodigal One back into the Family of Nations.
AT&T is waiving the bill as long as they stay AT&T customers.
http://www.kptv.com/news/17405019/detail.html#-
Smart move because it means they get to look like heroes despite their deceptive business practices. And yes, lack of meaningful disclosure of material terms/conditions is deceptive. And no, fine print is not meaningful disclosure, even assuming the fine print was all-encompassing to begin with.
My cell phone provider once offered to signed me on an "unlimited" WAP plan for €5 / month or something. I accepted at first (it was through cust. service). I was suspicious because that was veeery much lower than what any company was offering around here.
So I looked on their website, turned out what they called "unlimited" was 5 MEGABYTES. So I called them back, and the dumbass telemarketer told me that 5 megabytes was a lot because you could read a thousand emails with it. No shit, you could even read 80 million emails if each of them was 1 bit long.
So yeah, cell phone companies defraud customers on a MASSIVE, daily basis, esp. in Europe where many of them have been fined, repeatedly, to the tune of hundreds of millions of euros for anti-competitive practices, yet continue to violate the law.
Well without the EU they'd charge you even more; and the price is going to fall soon thanks to the EC.
This proves it.
(mod note: mod this as "funny" if anything. I know some people get confused with witty statements..)
I am the maverick of Slashdot
That's fine, just don't charge for it at all. Instead of charging, have the citizens vote for how they want the bandwidth used.
21 calls/text messages, emails equals $20,000?! Over a range of about 315 miles and into Canada?!
That's not stated clearly in the fine print AT ALL and it certainly isn't sane in any rational universe.
But, in the interest of full disclosure, I'd LOVE to see the international calling bills and rates paid by AT&T EXECUTIVES. I am willing to bet that they pay either nothing or at least nothing close to $1,000 per call/email from Portland, OR to Vancouver, BC!
What is their "wireless" service made of - Platinum and Plutonium?! Because that's about the only way I can see charging $1,000 per use for calls from Portland OR to Vancouver, BC and even that's a stretch!
I had a data plan with verizon. $40 for unlimited data with my PocketPC. I had something like 130Megs used the one month. All for $40. After I quit using the internet on it, I disabled the data plan. Someone asked me to look something up. I had used around 3 megs of download, and my bill was right around $50 for the data.
So the first plan was a little over 3 megs per dollar. The 2nd was 20K per 1 dollar approx.
The common element in this story and the linked article with the $85K bill is Canada. Cell phone and data rates in Canada are usurious and vastly overpriced compared to the rest of the world.
Well, then you deserve to be gouged.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
From the AT&T website about their plan.
Rate Plan Details
Included Data 5 GB
Additional data $0.00048/KB
Canadian Data $0.015/KB
International Data $0.0195/KB
****
So that's.. 5GB max. Even at the lowest domestic rate, that adds up to 5,242,880 Kb. Times $0.00048
$2516.58 before they turn it off.
Holy crap that's usurious. The limit is set to an insane level and should be more like 100MB. That would give you a more reasonable $50 a month maximum and the poor guy who sent emails would try to send one picture and hit the limit. And be charged $1573. Still nuts, but not impossibly so.
5Gigs is the problem.
This is one of those things people don't understand about contract law. If one of the parties does not understand the contract, they can not legally be held to it. ATT loves to brag about their international roaming, but then they won't tell you that it costs you $5 every time you view the main page of slashdot. No reasonable person would use a service that expensive.
Let's see. $19350, I believe the article said. That's between $5000 and $50,000. Sounds like 2-3 to me, as well.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
enough said. I'm thankful that I can go to vancouver and get on the internet.
Reminds me of my bother in law, who yells at the comcast rep because his high def tv and high speed internet is down for 24hrs. Its a service, its not your service, you should respect the providers and obide their rules.
"I'm a cranky old bastard who got fucked when the federal government enforced the law against an out of control monopoly (I may have even been involved in the case)! That has nothing to do with how much SBC sucked or didn't suck, or how much or little the AT&T name was worth, but I'M STILL BITTER ABOUT IT! Damned whippersnappers! I hate you all! Arrrrrggggghhhh!"
It must be fun to be so bitter while still being so wrong. Explaining the origin of the name in your post in now way addresses the OPs point that the management of those employed under that name were abusive to their customers to the point that the name was ruined.
The rest of your name calling and mud slinging was quite amusing however.
I agree about T-Mobile data and Europe. I have used my MDA there, in Asia and in South America and have never been charged for data roaming. No idea why cause the contract clearly says I should be. I tested it once, by just chatting on msn for a few minutes. I then waited a couple months...no charges...so next trip I did it again...two dozen trips later I use it as much as I want and haven't been charged data roaming in 3+ years. *knock on wood*
On all the cell phones I've had over the last few years (Sprint) you can disable roaming support. If the call is worth the fees, leave roaming on, or turn roaming back on and return the call. My Verizon wireless prepaid phone has a number I can call to get remaining amounts of money I have & billing rates.
If you're trying to be cheap, you need to read the contract and watch your usage.
I happen to have a "bill" for roaming fees to the tune of $500 that I refuse to pay from 2003. I was told verbally that I had the same plan I had before I left the area that happened include the small corner of Colorado I was in. Well their redrawn region maps did not in fact include that small corner anymore. So techinically I was "roaming" although I was under the assumption that I wasn't. The irony is that I'm now back with AT&T after being a Cingular customer. And yes I have an iPhone. All I have to say is to make sure you get everything in writing from ATT. And ask how your bill will be effected beforehand. Actually you should do this with every telcom, because its these overages in billing that really make them profit not unlike the banks.
Badges!?! We don't need no stinking badges!
No, you don't "have to be pretty dumb to try to use your cell phone as a modem for browsing the internet." There are countries that have unlimited Internet access for maybe $20/month, including tethering, and it's quite reasonable to expect to be able to do that with your phone.
By creating this kind of uncertainty, cell carriers are really hurting themselves: people end up being afraid of using their phones and look for alternatives to regular plans: WiFi, iPhone, Hiptop, whatever.
Carriers should do something like cap monthly charges at, say, 200-300% of what you would pay for an unlimited (US) subscription anyway. That means maybe $100-$150/month if you really go all out. People would still have an incentive to subscribe to unlimited plans, and people on limited volume plans wouldn't be afraid to use it and probably sooner or later subscribe to an unlimited plan.
Funny, I know that there are different charges for national vs international roaming because I happened to look at the literature when I was shopping for the service. Guess what was spelled out in the brochure? But, then again I also had a clue because it costs more to call internationally with a wireline phone too.
Your speculations about what they asked are like your false analogies, idiotic, and a true reflection of you.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
After I was hit for the second time going over my minutes I decided to investigate if there was a web service available from Cingular to text me that I am about to or have gone over my minutes. According to the Cingular reps there was not, so I decided to make my own. Spent a good amount of time figuring out their java Script to log into my account page screen scrape the data and check if it was within threshold to text me a message. The next week they changed the website to AT&T and my little java app broke. I told a co-worker about this and he informed me that I broke my contract my not obtaining data in an authorized way by using a bot. What's a consumer to do to protect himself?
I am glad that I am using Pay-as-you-go in China. Basically that's what the majority using. We still get plans with it - it deducts the subscribed amount of money from the prepaid card and we just refill it from time to time.
Pros? No surprise like this! it's only limit to what I spend. I also get an SMS notification instantly when the stored value crosses my preset threshold.
Although unlimited data plan cost ~USD60, but 25MB/Month at for only USD-1/Month is a pretty good deal, good enough for my PDA. Only EDGE though, no 3G yet.
That's said, we only have 2 operators which basically they almost monopoly (or stereo-poly?) the market, may be that's why a non-lock in plan would work. But at least AT&T can have an SMS alert when the bill is shooting to the sky.
"1 order of magnitude larger is $500. 2 is $5,000. 3 is $50,000.
I think you meant 1-2 orders larger."
How many zeroes are there in "50.000"? How many zeroes are there in "20.000"?
I think he knew better than you when he said 3 orders of magnitude.
There was when I did, as a new US arrival I had to put down an $800 deposit because I had no credit. Got it back a year later. This was AT&T
nor should people who travel have to fear such ridiculously expensive prices.
I will say that travelers don't really have to fear this. I say this as a New Yorker who travels to Canada on average three times a year. There is a simple tactic to avoid these egregious bills.
Don't use your cell phone if you don't have to.
Sure, sometimes you will be in a situation where it is imperative to place a call immediately and only your cell phone will do. But most calls can wait, at least by my experience. And even the most crucial calls can be kept short (particularly when cost is an issue).
So I have, so far, found that calling cards are an excellent way to deal with this. Generally any convenience store can sell me a calling card for $5 that will give me more long distance time to the states or Canada for a week. By contrast, $5 on the cell phone, while roaming internationally, would go less than 3 minutes.
And if you really, really, need a cell phone, they have pre-paid wireless up there, too. Sure it means you'll carry two phones, but at least you'll be in full control of your phone costs, which for some people (like me) is more than worth the inconvenience.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
This kind of problem could easily be fixed if the telcos wanted to do it. One thing that would help would be to allow the customer to set his own limit on the phone and make it default to something not very high, say $100, so that the customer has to make a decision about what is reasonable for him. When you hit the limit, you can't use the phone anymore until you raise it. You could have both a soft limit, where you get a warning, and a hard limit where you can't use the phone.
The other thing would be to have a display that shows the running cost of the call.
AT&T has always been the most dishonest phone company in the US. They lie about terms and jack the fees constantly. They used to call and offer deals on long distance that would lower your bill for two months then raise it 20% over where it was to start with.
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
And since when is the self proclaimed comedian "Stephen Colbert" a journalist?
I mean, he himself refers to himself as a comedian.
Need a dictionary?
--Toll_Free
Why the cell phone companies can't combine the limits on prepaid plans with conventional rate plans is an interesting question, but I suspect the answer is not a technical limitation.
I suspect they WANT people to run up huge bills that they can barely pay. They don't mind writing some off or down since, of course, they are really raping the consumer on those charges anyway.
The last thing they're interested in doing is adding a warning dialog that you will get a bill larger than your mortgage payment if you continue.
Two months ago I started using Blyk, which is only for people age 16-24 (IIRC they check). They give me 240-ish free texts a month, and 50 free minutes. Extra texts and calls are at the standard Orange level of charges (10p a text etc).
Every few days they send me an advert by MMS. This morning I was sent a free ringtone -- presumably hoping I'd advertise the music -- and a link to buy the CD or something.
There's no data usage included, which would be nice, but I'm not too bothered since I no longer have a phone bill :-).
That's just great! When's somebody going to write a Wikipedia article about it?
I wonder how much AT&T actually makes on it. Rogers, the Canadian provider, likes to charge extortionate data rates. I know a few people who have accounts with US providers and pay the roaming charges here... because it's cheaper.
At least you can talk about Tibet and Falun Gong freely on Cingular and live to tell about it.
(incoming mods in 3...2...1...)
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Last Xmas we went back to the UK to see family. We live in NYC. My wife has an iPhone and uses it religiously. She hit $1000 pretty easily in the UK, but at that point ATT sent us a text, and cut off the data service, leaving the voice service on.
That seemed a pretty sensible default to me.
Similarly, when I had a UK cell phone with Vodafone on vacation I've received messages asking me to call to confirm my high phone usage and charges when I hit 2-3 hundred pounds sterling (~$500 maybe).
I can't imagine why ATT didn't alert them in this case.
Personally, I can see it from both sides. . . 1) I think that the customer's partially to blame, by not knowing all of the details in their contract. They can't blame anybody else for not being well enough informed. They stated that the employee never told them about international fees. Did they ask about international fees? Additionally, it's their kid. Sure, he only connected 21 times, but how much data did he transmit during those 21 times? 21 connections with only a few pictures per connection does not a 20k bill make. And, you figure if he's takin' pictures with a 5mp camera, and not compressing or shrinking them down prior to sending, that's his own bad. 2) I think that in the rush to get more and more customers to sign up and in their fold, wireless providers don't necessarily give all of the facts. Additionally, I think the problem is worsened 10 fold when you look at indirect dealers (contractors basically). They're so geared to make a buck, they'll falsely represent themselves, not get all the facts, etc. Hell, with I once saw a person get AT&T service at a mall in Orlando by using their "brother's" name and SSN. Even worse, that "brother" wasn't even there to verify that it was cool.
When is the FCC going to step-in and call this price gouging? Voice data on a digital network takes up way more bandwidth per minute than text/other data. So why isn't anything being done? My girlfriend's idiot sister managed to rake up an additional $600 on the family's shared cell phone bill after she downloaded a text client, where's the protection from this? The government is supposed to step in to protect consumers unscrupulous business practices and I sure as shit don't see that being done.
I've had a cell phone rep lie to me, probably several times, possibly not even on purpose.
And go back to your gun-shooting, racist, militaristic theocratic cesspool.
I would think that in the interests of PR, AT&T might send you a text or something when you go international roaming and pass some threshold of use, just to warn you. But really, if you pay extra to call Canada long distance, don't you think your cell phone/data card would work the same way?
Mine does. Sorta.
In the U.S., my screen says "AT&T" when I view the main screen. Shortly after passing into Canada, the same area says, "Rogers Wireless".
So, while not a text per se, it is an "or something" that let's me know I'm not in Kansas anymore.
Though if the European Commission wasn't there slapping them into line, the European telcos would be doing their best to screw their travelling customers.
I have a contract with O2 Germany and every time that I travel to a new country, EU or otherwise, where I have service, I receive a text message telling me the price of calls and text messages in that country.
I received a $3600 bill from Verizon in 2005.
Synopsis: I bought Verizon wireless's Aircard to get on their 3G network in February 2003.
I stuck it in an old Thinkpad 600 running Linux and it was a DREAM at work I locked it in the overhead bin and stuck it on the network as my own private proxy. I could surf any web site without going thru the watchful eyes of the corporate firewall.
And I could connect to my home computer running Windows and leave all my stock market analysis tools at home for easy use from work.
Everything worked perfectly and I had a ping running 24/7 every 3 seconds to keep the Aircard connected. That worked fine until 2006 when I think someone must have out-sourced their billing to India because they sent me a $3600 bill for my wireless unlimited.
When I called they said I needed to upgrade the software on Windows. WHen I explained I wasn't using Windows they said that they would remove the charge but by then I grew bored with being online all the time and had figured out how to work from home anyway and was using it only to get back INTO the corporate network rather than out INTO home so I dropped it and laughed at the $80/month back in my wallet was THEIR LOSS.
Moral: I would still have it and be mindlessly paying $80/month and I am very glad this "billing error" made me realize I did not need to keep this nor did I need to be anywhere but home.
The job after 12 years went to Singapore later in 2006 and looking back I think people need to decide where they want to lead their lives and stay there and quit thinking somewhere else is more important. Wireless is great for latch-key kids to stay in touch with Mom, but Dad needed to be at home with the kids anyway.
I try to read every contract and agreement, but I'd be a liar if I said that I understood and remembered everything in them. If you honestly do, I'd like to know what you are.
With that said, I would expect extra charges if I went to another country (still nowhere close to thousands of dollars), but I know a good bit more about how that works than most people do. Just because I can predict something doesn't mean I can expect everyone else to.
Might label you a terrorist but pay-as-you-go (PAYG) cell phone is all I use now.
Switched in early 2006 to T-mobile and an indestructible nearly functionless Nokia 6010 available for free (no charge) so I "bought" four of them (one for my Dad when he was alive, my sister who dropped Verizon the moment her farm life realized she didn't need Verizon for anything anymore she loved it.
T-mobile's simple 1000 minutes for 100-dollars good for a year is all I use now. No fees and charges (what a joke all those monthly bills cause you to be someone's CASH COW).
You can give your phone away if you see someone needs it more than you do (this has happened to me) and for 100-bucks you have a new one back in your pocket.
No more worries about MY CELLPHONE IS LOST... who cares?
if the FCC wasent so corrupt (although they are trying to make good headway with comcrap), they should impose a rule that states that if you say use data by the kb, and rack up charges to what the say unlimited kb plan would be, you would be automatically enrolled in that plan for the billing period. same goes for texts, if you rack up enough charges in texting, for say the 500 messages or unlimited messaging plans, you would be automatically enrolled in the plan for the billing cycle. Of course the downfall is, the companys would jack up the rates on theses plans so much that you would have to work really hard to hit them and be automatcally enrolled. Some sort of government oversight in favor of the consumer of the cellphone and internet industries are needed. No bandwith throttling/capping, rein in these cell phone companys that bill for this, that and the other.
I really think that something needs to be done about this sort of thing. I've heard many stories of people unknowingly racking up bills anywhere from a thousand dollars to many thousands of dollars. If it happened only once to one person, you could argue that they should have understood how the billing works. But it's happened many, many times. One possibility is that the phone companies should implement a system similar to the one that credit card companies have. If your bill suddenly reaches, say, $350 more than your average monthly total bill, they should put a hold on your service and you should hear a recorded message or something to the effect that there are unusual charges. You can then either call the customer service center, where they can verify your personal information and verify that you indeed wish to make additional charges at these rates, or you can report to them that someone is using your account without your knowledge, in which case something can be done. This way, if your bill is $350 higher one month, the worst that happens is that you need to come up with that extra dough, which could be difficult for some people. But at least it wouldn't be in the thousands of dollars. A $20,000 bill might take years to pay off! It would help immensely against people inadvertently racking up such high bills.
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
2-3 orders of magnitude larger?
Let's assume $50/month. 1 order of magnitude larger is $500. 2 is $5,000. 3 is $50,000.
I think you meant 1-2 orders larger.
Even with your own numbers, 2-3 orders of magnitude is reasonable. The bill in question was $19,370. If, as you say, they receive a $50 bill monthly, $19,370 is clearly about 4 times larger than 2 orders of magnitude ($5000). It is closest to 3 orders of magnitude (roughly 2.5 times smaller than $50,000). Strictly speaking, it's between 2 and 3 orders of magnitude, which is pretty much what the GP said.
Remember, the GP was using them to make an estimate. It's not intended to be a precise calculation. It's supposed to be in the ballpark, and it was.
This is just typical cell phone usage rates in Canada.
Ok, maybe I am exaggerating a little bit (but just a little bit) but if I could get US cell phone rates here in Canada I would be doing back flips down the street. The cell phone companies here in Canada are masters at gouging customers with some of the highest rates in the world (plus they add mandatory monthly connection fees, 911 fees, etc, etc, etc on top).
Technology is most abused by the very people it was created to help
I recently went away on a 7 day cruise to Bermuda. The first thing I noticed is how outrageously expensive Internet access on the ship was.... like $50+ for 2 hours! So I had to stay off the Internet.
My mom always has to call our aunt every few days, since she's checking up on the house and getting our mail. So she made 3 phone calls... each about 10 minutes long while the ship was at sea. And guess what happened at the end of the month? They charged us $25 for each call we made. The total - for about 30 minutes of phone calls - was over $75 dollars!!! FOR 3 PHONE CALLS.
Some of the people we saw on the ship - especially younger people - were talking on cell phones almost the whole trip. If any of them had AT&T and didn't understand their service contracts....
It's plain stupid. $75 for 3 calls.
Obviously world wide doesn't cover Canada. damn Canadians
I think the particularly telling piece of information is that if you want a plan where they do limit your charges and notify you when you reach thresholds.... you have to pay extra. They're called prepaid plans, and there are no surprises (well, within limits), but for common use cases, it's guaranteed you'll pay 2-4 times the amount a customer on a given rate plan will.
I'm in Canada which is similar to the States except probably worst. On prepaid it is actually cheaper then contract until you are using over about 150 minutes a month. For people like me who use closer to 30 minutes most months prepaid is much cheaper. Most months I pay about $11.50 including taxes. My phone cost me about $50.
The cheapest contracts seem to be about $45 dollars a month total payed (advertised at $25 or so dollars a month) with a free phone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I have an iPhone 3G with the 20 MB international data roaming plan. I had travelled to Switzerland in June, and Canada in July, and reached around 55 MB of usage by the time I was in Canada. AT&T called me while I was in Canada, offered to back-date an upgrade to their 50 MB plan so that I wouldn't have to pay as much. I'm also able to downgrade to the cheaper plan (after any existing data charges have posted to my bill) without penalty.
So, yes, I know AT&T can suck, as do many carriers, especially when they "forget" to remind you to get a reasonable data plan and charge you ridiculous $$$$... but in this case there is a sign they are learning.
-Stu
Yes. I'd have to say that at least the Canadian carriers do text you when you cross the border. I went to Seattle from Vancouver and once I was far enough across the border for my network to switch, I got a text-message from Telus (TELUS of all companies) letting me know I was now roaming and a basic synopsis of extra fees. I think the phone even had a special icon that showed up in roaming mode
Same thing with Rogers, which as a lucky thing actually. I was in Niagara falls, and even though I was on the Canadian side, for some reason my phone decided to connect to a US carrier from across the border. Good thing too, otherwise I'd imagine I would have footed a hefty bill if I had picked up any calls there.
your under the illusion you actually understood what you read, and that it'll stay the same. phone companies seem to have everyone fooled that normal contract laws don't apply to them
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This happened to me too! But the scenario is different. While i was in Air Force Tech School, I purchased a Cell Phone modem from AT&T(was Cingular at the time). I already had one voice plan with them. So, i was adding a 2nd Data line. Well, the ID 10 T that was setting up the 2nd line didnt seem to understand that this was a DATA line. At the time, Cingular provided unlimited (no quota) internet access for $49 (i think, not sure on the price anymore).
Well, i lost my Steam account so i redownloaded it. I didnt have my CounterStrike or Half Life 2 discs any more either. Well, i was able to get about 14KBps so i said "What the hell.. it will just take a week to download!". Then i got the first bill. I dont remember the exact amount, but it was somewhere in the range of $14K USD.
Like I said.. the first guy didnt set up the plan correctly. He just added a 2nd Voice line. So i was getting billed for using Data on a Voice line. I think the rate was like 15 cents per KB. Again, since i downloaded ALL of Half life 2 and Counterstrike from Steam, it added up to like 8GB.
They were actually very nice on the phone though. Their records showed that i was supposed to have a data line, but it was set up incorrectly. They promptly fixed the error and did not charge me the 14K. Luckily i didnt have that much in my account or it would have been automagicaly withdrawn!
Cancel your account and cut your loss. there is no way at&t will ever get that money.
So the "service" was used 21 times. Total cost: $19,370 (USD).
So $19,370 / 21 = $922.38 (USD), PER USE.
WTF? How could they charge that much? Oh, because they can charge what ever they want. Nice..
Big cheer for monopolies charging what they want!
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
Dear AT&T,
Fix this problem. I'm going to follow this news story. If this is not resolved in a way that makes me happy (as a parent and customer), I'll be choosing another company in the future for my
a) dsl
b) phone service
c) cell phone service
Sincerely,
An anonymous customer.
I must also chime in and say you're misinformed, at least for roaming within North America. I live on San Juan Island, WA, just across the Haro Strait from Victoria BC, and my cell phone often switches over to the BC Rogers cell across the water with no change in functionality -- and I have never called AT&T to "enable" any such roaming technology, it simply does it automatically. In fact, I have to be very cautious with my billing statements to make sure that AT&T isn't busy trying to slip a ton of extra charges in there for maintaining a cell tower here on the island that's so underpowered I wind up getting the one next door instead.
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
They were evil before Microsoft even existed.
"There are laws that enslave men, and laws that set them free. " - Sean Connery as King Arthur
They should ask for a jury trial. I suspect most people would expect some kind of reasonable warning or cut-off point. Anybody who has kids knows the mayhem they can cause. This is a consumer service, not a business service.
Although its based on a contract, because consumers usually cannot negotiate individual terms, but must take the contract as all-or-nothing, courts tend to be more lenient on consumers than businesses.
Table-ized A.I.
Now that comcrap and several other ISP's are rolling out metering and bandwidth caps. you can be sure this will be ratcheted up to the point where you get bills like this from your land line ISP's soon enough.
Thank you FCC, FTC, and Congress for your careful preservation of broadband "competition" *thumbsup*
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
After 400 years of being mocked as financial luddites, we bible thumpers that said charging of interest was a sin, have in fact been vindicated...
seriously... has the thought ever occurred to you that there may be a growing minority of Americans that basically borrowed a ton of money with no intention of paying it back whatsoever? You can cry predatory lending all you want, but lets not forget that this is also the class of people that has by far almost all the murders exclusively in its demographic.
I mean, if a guy goes and rings up 50k in credit card debt and lives in a house for free for two years until the bank takes it, whose really the victim? How am I victim if I got to take other people's money and not ever pay it back? Sounds to me more like I got a lot of free stuff.
This is my sig.
How can you say that these people are victims when they got to live in a house for free for a couple of years, got to ring up big credit card debts and walk away?
I got news for you. I'd bet that for every supposed victim of supposed predatory lending, you've got 10 guys that probably bought a house with absolutely no intention of paying the mortgage.
Yeah, the corporations were really evil. They passed out a ton of money to poor people, and they didn't get a dime of it back.
This is my sig.
If you scare consumers they will stop using and buying your products and services. Companies like AT&T need to focus on maintaining profit through customer satisfaction. And the opposite of satisfaction is inducing widespread fear. It's stupid to operate a business in a way that does not serve the interests of the business.
Every time these sorts of crazy bills happen we need to make sure they are pasted all over the media until AT&T others get the hint and fix their process, policies and pricing.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
How do you call someone who speaks two languages? bilingual.
How do you call someone who speaks three languages? trilingual.
How do you call someone who speaks just one language?
It's probably true.
Reminds me of that friend of mine who thinks that you can cure anything with homeopathy. It's probably true, too: she's not dead yet.
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Did they return you $800 + interest or did they use your money for a year interest free ?
Wow $20000 bill, and millions of dollars worth of bad publicity, what business genius on the part of AT&T.
You can imagine the family conversations about not using AT&T.
Have to say I had my most expensive phone call in the USA, $4 for a call that was 2 seconds long before the network dropped it.
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enjoy voting for ron paul and enjoy your aspergers and enjoy never having sex.
with your mean. "what would you like?" "I don't really mind" you reply.
Your bill comes along with an item:
Wine (2 glasses): £12,500
A vintage bottle of wine was opened. And, once opened, even for two glasses, the bottle is now of no further value.
"Hey, you said you didn't mind!!!"
put a "We estimate this will cost $3,943.65 to send" BEFORE SENDING.
And put bonuses on there she never recieved (doubled salary so that the mortgage multiplier meant they could approve the loan).
They also never mentioned that it was a 2.1% discount rate for two years with five year lock-in (at a time when the base rate was 3%).
You don't expect the salesman to LIE to you. So you believe they are telling you "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth". So help us, God.
Do YOU understand contract law as well as their company lawyer?
No?
So how can there be a "meeting of minds" when it requires a solicitor on hand for understanding?
Rachel, what are you talking about ? I have used Sidekicks since the very first B&W one, and traveled to Europe extensively. Sidekick/T-mobile never worked in Europe.
I guess this should be a lesson to all of us parents out there. Do not let your kid use your wireless card outside the nation you have service. Why couldn't he go to a Starbucks or another wifi hotpot and upload the pictures from there and send email? To me the parents had this coming to them when they lent their aircard to their son for foreign travel.
Not even AT&T thinks Canada is a foreign country.
has already chosen to turn a blind eye to corporate wrong-doing, so of course the company is going to try to hurt them again in new and creative ways.
Everybody knows that cell phones are a problem for simple physical reasons, but they either don't care, pretend it's not true, or have been successfully lied to. Either way, what better crop of victims could an evil overlord possibly ask for? People who are practically begging for further abuse. And so they will be further abused until they choose not to be victims anymore.
It's entirely possible to get along in life without a cell phone. Heck, with a decent VOIP company and a naked DSL line, it's possible to enjoy unlimited high speed internet and high-quality world-wide communications through any phone system ALL for about $50 a month. That's what I do, and it's awesome. --And I don't have to put up with my own telephone trying to scramble my brain. I encourage everybody to look into this.
-FL
or are a Slashdot editor.
Everyone else would remember this from a few days ago.
AT&T is made up of SBC, Bell South and AT&T managers at all levels. The guys over the Labs and Network Engineering are an AT&T guys. The CTO is from VeriSign. The guy over Wireless operations is from Bell South.
A collegue started making a lot of phone calls to France a while ago, going from a regular usage of 50eur/month to over 2000eur/month. He was called when his usage was around 500eur and asked to verify his identity (to make sure the phone wasn't stolen).
This was the perfect way to ensure the usage was by the owner and was on purpose. They also offered him to switch to a different contract, which made calls to France about 75% cheaper.
So it CAN be done right...
That's an excellent point - they're not designed/used to inform the customer. Maybe rate plans should follow want banks have to do in the U.S. - have a summary printed out in plain language that shows how much you're going to pay. The loan paper basically says up front and center your loan amount, how much of that is original and how much is profit for the bank, and your monthly payment and schedule. It's all very easy to see, and was clearly designed to inform customers so they didn't fall victim to loansharks.
For rate plans, a simple 'how much you would pay' for typical usage, as well as say, spending 2 weeks abroad with daily usage. It would cut down on situations like these.
TFA, which of course no one actually reads here, begins with this claim:
Why? Why not?
The problem here is NOT with the user. The problem is with a global telecom Frankensystem that's stitched together out of the parts of dead and dying old-world PTTs and monopolies and oligopolies.
I have a T-Mobile USA account that gives me unlimited GPRS/Edge to my Nokia phone. I can connect my Nokia N800 or my Macbook via bluetooth. I can roam anywhere in the United States, on any US-based GSM network, for no extra charge. Yeah, Wi-fi is better/faster, when I can get it, but GPRS goes a whole lot more places.
If I connect to a "foreign" network -- even if it's a "foreign" T-Mobile network, as in Europe -- I'll have to sell my kids on Ebay to cover the bill.
I'm going to India next week. I'll have to go into my phone's configuration and disable Bluetooth, lest I accidentally use the phone network to check my email.
There is no technological reason for this. It's not related to any legitimate cost--of-service issue.
It's simply "because they can." It's part of the whole pattern of human idiocy, carving the globe up into territories, pointing guns at one another, demanding tribute and committing extortion, that has held humanity back throughout all of time.
The extraordinary thing about the Internet that has enabled it to transform human communication is the free-sharing pattern that was established back in the days when Jon Postel could keep all the DNS details in his head. Open peering exchanges and flat-rate service let us all interact across vast distances without being fleeced by digital highwaymen. Yeah, it's all a bit naive and hippie-dippy, if your worldview is that of a corporate predator, but it works.
The Internet is increasingly falling into the hands of those predators, people who want to charge and surcharge and double-charge ... because they can. Because they're not driven by an interest in technology and a desire to create a great transformative system, but rather the old hunger for confiscation and looting.
Verizon calls if your bill gets above normal, stupid at&t.
It's hardly "voluntary" when you can "choose" extortionate rate A or extortionate rate B. Here in Canada we have some of the highest data rates in the world. This is precisely because there is no real competition which is my point. If there was real competition in the US there is no way a couple of dozen logons a some emails would cost that kind of money, the market would force rates down closer to the actual cost which is my second point, there is no real capitalism at work in America (or Canada to a lesser extent) anymore. Market forces are great - if they are allowed to function.
Excellent post, but I'd like to comment specifically on the above excerpt.
Why does EACH PERSON who signs one of these contracts have to INDEPENDENTLY vet it for gotchas? The company has its team of lawyers construct ONE contract that is then read by thousands (millions?) of users. The cost to the company, per user, is minimal compared to what it would cost EACH USER to investigate the contract in all its ramifications.
What if there were a centralized means for users to share and comment on these contracts? After a few people have reviewed an agreement and shared the gotchas they have found, other users could benefit from that investigation, too, without having to start from scratch every single time.
Consider EULAs. I've seen well-reasoned discussions about them here. It seems to me that THIS discussion is of a similar nature. I cannot recall where I heard of it, but I've taken to using EULAlyzer to review every EULA that I encounter. It helps point out aspects that I might otherwise overlook. I am aware of the risk of encountering a false negative (it might not notice something significant). Still, I'm a very happy user and have declined installing some apps on a number of occasions because of onerous terms it has brought to my attention.
Hmmm... Here's an opportunity for someone to start "ContractDot", based on the slashcode base (or roll your own from scratch). Any takers?
You voted for Nixon, didn't you?
Hic iacet Arthurus, rex quondam rexque futurus.
This is exactly why I do prepay service, to eliminate the possibity of this bs surprise charges. Prepay has no taxes, and for me is far cheaper than using a plan. No contract, cancel anytime, etc.
My bad. The Europe phenomenon is for Blackberry/T-Mobile at least.
I've never tried Sidekicks in Europe; I just figured dataplans were dataplans. (I have another friend who travels with his Sidekick all the time though, so I should ask...)
They're called prepaid plans, and there are no surprises (well, within limits), but for common use cases, it's guaranteed you'll pay 2-4 times the amount a customer on a given rate plan will.
That depends very much on how much you use it. My prepaid (VirginMobile) runs me about $18/month. ~120 minutes/month.
Thats about 1/2 the cheapest regular plan you can find. The regular plan is, of course many more minutes. But why should I pay for airtime I will never, ever use?
AT&T wireless once took $1000 out of my checking account because they claim it was within their rights to change my "plan" without my consent from
my previous $60/month with 1500 minutes to $20/month with about $1/minute.
I used the same amount of minutes as I always had and those assholes charged me nearly $1000 for what had previously cost $60. They wouldn't refund my money. They did try to blackmail me into offering a 50% refund if I gave them an additional 2 year contract.
I cancelled my service. If I would have had time, I would have taken them to small claims court.
The lesson, is to never-ever let a company access to your checking account with automatic withdrawal. Once they get your money, there is little you can do about it. without taking them to court.
I'm just impressed that they were able to get it working reliably enough to transfer that much data...
I always though the incredibly crappy quality/speed of cell phone data technology was a bit self-limiting on over-billing.
Maybe it's getting better.
I still think that cell phones/carriers should be mandated to have an accurate, real time billing meter being showed when it's being used. Like a taxi meter. When you're in your home area, with a plan, it confirms you're not paying extra. If you go over your plan minutes, it lets you know you're being billed. If you roam, it tells you you're being charged. Letting people know what they're racking up is only fair, and should be mandated. It is against the whole methodology used by all cell carriers, but the government should regulate and mandate this as a basic consumer protection.
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
Wow, "he headed north to Vancouver" across the river from Portland, OR in to Washington state and they charged him that much for roaming? Oh wait, you meant to specify Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Probably much safer than heading south to Lebanon, or south east to Damascus, or possibly east to Ontario [not Canada] or north east to Moscow. Or maybe just a quick jump off I-5 to tour Oakland, Dallas and Detroit.
Actually it CAN cost your provider if you run up a huge international roaming bill that you can't afford to pay, because your provider will likely end up owing money to whatever foreign phone company was providing service while you were roaming. Usually the roaming partnerships between companies/countries involve company X billing company Y at some negotiated rate for all the service X provides to Y's customers while they are in X's country. Company Y then bills their customers accordingly. Of course, by "accordingly" I mean "more than what they actually had to pay company X."
You're missing the point. Of course there are "pay as you go" plans in the U.S., we've had them pretty much forever. The point is that if you "pay as you go," you invariably end up paying a lot more per minute than you would have if you purchased a standard "We'll send you a bill for everything at the end of the month" plan.
2 orders of magnitude: 5,000
3 orders of magnitude: 50,000
Amount charged by AT&T: 20,000
Thank you for making yourself look like a prick, and an idiotic one at that.
A few years back I had moved to Toronto in order to take a co-op position in college, but I kept my dial-up ISP in London, Ontario. At the time, Bell had a plan where long distance charges were capped during evenings (after 6:00 PM) - a plan I made use of :)
I was quite surprised when I received my first bill of approx. $4300.00 - before the savings for the plan were applied...only $34.00 after (as I had mistakenly dialed up a few times before 6:00 PM). The following two months were only around $2300.00 each.
When I traveled to the UK I signed up for a talkmobile prepay plan. I could dial a special code on my handset and it would give me the exact amount of money I had left in my account, and when I ran below 2 GBP, whenever I placed a call, it would first direct me to a voice messages stating that my credit was running low and that I should top-up before connecting me. I was very pleased. Not gonna see anything like that in the US.
See, this is called NEGOTIATION. You have your terms, I have mine.
Look, this is America, we don't believe in "negotiation." That's a tactic that terrorists and community organizers use to lull us into complacency by making agreements they don't intend to keep.
It all turns out better if you give one party the power to dictate the agreement. Peace through strength.
Tweet, tweet.
Partially at least because the amount of all billing can't be known in realtime with the current system
if I travel somewhere if I cross a foreign carrier it will verify my phone is 'good' with my home carrier-- and then let me use my phone.. as I make calls-- the local systems will record the tracking/billing info-- and update it to my home carrier periodically.. it may be daily, weekly, monthly..
now imagine I'm going through 4 countries.
it is NOT economical or feasible for every cellular company with cross-service agreements to have billing systems open up a connection to say a USA wireless carrier for each call I, and EVERY subscriber make... it is far more sinmple for Carrier A to transimit to carrier B once per week/time period and transmit everything in a batch- that it is for them to send the equivlant of a SMS's worth of information for every call made-by every person on the planet, and wait for confirmation, and calculate everything else on a per call basis...
(I mean crap- do you know what they charge for international data? they'd have to pay that to themselves & each other for each call!)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
It's the same here, except it is also a bit cheaper. I got a TracFone for $15.00 at the grocery store (does what I need it to do), keeping minutes on it and / active runs about .15 - .20 (depending on how large a chunk you purchase at a time) a 'unit', so it ends up about $5.00 a month for me.
There's four simple words to avoid all problems such as this:
Pay As You Go
Never mind "unlimited plans" or all kinds of other crap like that. I have a phone. I put money on it beforehand, and it automagically stops when that amount of money runs out. If I put $100 on it for a vacation and it mysteriously runs out after a 2 minute phone call, then you can safely assume that whatever provider you have is horribly hosing you for calling from there. You can then swear profusely, and then go to an internet cafe and send email from there.
Not that I'm putting my chips on the side of AT&T mind you... I'm just putting this out there as a suggestion to people traveling. It avoids the potential problems of companies screwing you over. Well, to at least within your control, anyway.
Yes you do pay more per minute, but if you use less minutes then you still can be cheaper (hence why I spent maybe £10-20 a month on PAYG rather than have a £30 contract - I would have had to get a £45 contract to get a decent text/data package back then). I didn't think that was their point at all anyway..
which is totally what she said
you've obviously never had to file for bankruptcy or lived in a household on the verge of being bankrupt.
Well, actually, I have. My wife got sick when she was pregnant, our income plummeted, we spent too much on credit cards, and the phones rang off the hook. We stopped paying the cards, focused on the mortgage and the cars, sold the house in a very difficult economy, slashed expenses, worked out payment plans with all the lenders, and are gradually digging our way out.
I looked at bankruptcy and I qualified for sure but it was just a terrible option. Having thought it through, it occurred to me that bankruptcy from credit card debt actually benefits credit card companies more than it does consumers. The thing is, if you have a house or a car loan, then, the house and the car can get taken and you'd prefer to avoid that.. and you really have little leverage with the lender because they have an asset to recover. But, in the case of credit card companies, they have no assets that they can recover and they factor that into their interest rates and other fees. Sure, you can get sued by a credit card company and they can attach a lien, but, even then, you STILL have some leverage with them.
I had a lien on my house for like a lot of money, and, while jiggering the money to try and make the sale of the house work, I went and called the lenders and said, look, we can either drag this out forever with payments, or, you can get the proceeds now when I sell the house, if you accept this price. It worked.
The moral of the story is this. If you are in financial trouble, pay the things that the banks can take first, and forget about the rest of the loans. They will put you through hell but at the end of the day, you have nothing they can take and you know it, and they know it, and therefor, you have ALL the leverage when it comes to making settlements.
Avoid those "debt counselling services" like the plague. They flat out don't work, and ultimately, they really just try and convince you to do a payment stream that is simply unaffordable, and again, they make you think that they are holding all the cards, and really, you, as the debtor are.
So, when I say, yeah, I got a ton of free stuff for a year, and I got to live in a house for free for a year, well, I'm saying it from the perspective of someone who has gotten harrassed by collections agencies, lawyers, and even got sued on Christmas Day. But, at the end of the day, the way the laws are stacked now, if you have balls of brass and nerves of steel, is that truly, you have all the cards once the bank lends you money, and, if you really didn't care about the honor of a debt, in fact, you really could just not pay them back and accept having a lot of "free stuff".
All this talk about consumers being victims really only serves to reinforce the perception that they have no power, when, at the end of the day, the debtor is the one holding ALL of the cards.
This is my sig.
I tethered my laptop to my phone while in Mexico and was listening to streaming music. I got my bill and it was $3000.00. I called AT&T and told them I did not realize that the roaming plan I had was not adequate for this type of behaviour and they adjusted the bill to a plan that would have covered the usage.
In the end I paid less than $200
The funny part is that little Johnny could have sent pics and e-mails for very cheap, even had he left that AirCard-bearing device at home. Internet cafe + USB stick + $5 for one hours of use. So how does AT&T get away with charging $19370 for something like that?
Interesting question, isn't it?
I think someone's eating our lunch...
That was, rather, the point.