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?

Comments

Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"?

[Samalie]

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.

Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"?

[langelgjm]

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.

Re:Did His Contract Specify "Internal Waters"?

[fdicostanzo]

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.