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How To Rack Up $28,000 In Roaming Without Leaving the US
pmbasehore writes "While waiting for his cruise ship to depart, a man decided to use his AT&T wireless card and Slingbox account to watch the Bears vs. Lions football game. When he got his bill, he was slammed with $28,067.31 in 'International Roaming' charges, even though he never left American soil. The bill was finally dropped to $290.65, but only after the media got involved." He might have left the soil (the story says he was already aboard the ship), but shouldn't the dock count?
You have to dig pretty deep for this to actually be specified, but he was docked at Miami, before the ship ever left port.
The cock-up was that the ship had already turned on their satellite-based cell network, even though they shouldn't have, which resulted in the guy's phone connecting to the Ship's netwrok & being billed at international rates.
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It's likely that he wasn't roaming because he was already registered through the telco relay on the ship, which charges at international rates, despite being within spitting distance of the shore.
The real problem is that he was able to register to the international point before the ship had left port. I wonder how many other people get ripped off by making calls in that area while that ship is in port?
I think he should take it to court...
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http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-tr-insider5nov05
I know this article is a bit old and this might have changed already.
As I suspected, TFA says he was connected to the ship's cell network, which should not have been operational while it was docked.
So it's not just me having horrible experiences with AT&T, then. I tried to get DSL service from them last year. After four technician visits, I had service for two full days before it stopped working. I canceled service and returned the equipment in their postage-paid box, and they sent me a $70 bill. I called to complain, and told them I was willing to pay for the two days I had service, and nothing more. They told me they'd look into it, but they had no way of sending me a corrected bill. I did not pay them a penny, and I have not heard from them again.
We also had phone service with them for a bit. When I set it up, I specifically asked for unlimited calling to Canada, and was assured it was on the plan. I called back again for another reason, and was again assured that I had unlimited calling to Canada. Next month's bill? $1200. They had not added unlimited calling to Canada. It took me about a half-dozen calls to sort it out, during which time I was told that it was impossible for me to talk to anyone who was capable of modifying my bill, because "they don't have phone numbers."
I recently had to deal with AT&T Wireless, and was asked to verify my identity. I provided my information, and they told me it was incorrect. I told them they were incorrect. After about two hours of phone calls, it turns out they were using a default value for the information they asked for. When I provided the actual value, they looked at the default, and said that I was wrong. Apparently they could not figure out that "9999" was probably not the actual last 4 digits of anyone's SSN.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
This is completely ridiculous. Customers should be able to set a bill cap to prevent this kind of thing. If you hit the cap, your access gets cut unless you explicitly give permission to charge more. That's why I use a prepaid phone (I live in Germany, so it's dirt cheap here).
Such a cap wouldn't really help you with situations like these. When you roam on another provider that provider doesn't send your call details back to your home provider in real time. They typically collect a few days worth of calls and then upload them to your home provider. There's no way for your home provider to have a real time accounting of the calls that you make while roaming.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Actually, according to the article, AT&T was sending him repeated SMS warnings but he did not get them because it was a data card, not a phone. That means to me that they did know what was going on and a cap could be implemented.
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For future reference, "kha-ka" is spelled "caca" and it's a deformation of the Mexican Spanish "cuacha," meaning "shit."
Unless, of course, you meant cockeyed, which should be clear on its face that it means "cross-eyed."